Backlinks are basically links from other websites that are pointed back to you own internet pages. You need backlinks because they drive traffic and help you rank well in the search engines. Without traffic or good ranking, your website is a good as dead. There are many ways to get backlinks to your website.
One of the most common ways would be article submissions. This is a process where you submit your articles to article directories. The moment your article is published in the article directory, you automatically receive a backlink. The more articles you submit, the most backlinks you’ll get in return. However, backlinks you get from article directories are not really that strong compared to other methods of getting backlinks. The reason why they are not strong is because the article page is new and do not have pagerank. With article submissions, you’ll benefit most from traffic instead of linking power that would play and important role in search engine rankings.
Another common way of acquiring backlinks would be link directory submissions. This is a process where your links are submitted to hundreds or even thousands of link directories online. Unfortunately, it takes a period of time for your links to get approved and listed. The approval process can take weeks to months. Even though some link directories may approve your links quicker than expected, the value of the backlink you are getting isn't that of any good because it’s most probable that your links would be listed in a page that has little or no pagerank at all.
Reciprocal ink exchanges are yet another common way to get backlinks pointing to your website. This is a process where you exchange links with other websites. You place a link to their website and they will place a link to your website in return. Manual reciprocal link exchanges can be a pain if done manually because you will have to look for suitable link partners, write them an email then if everything goes well, you will need to manually add link pointing to your partner’s website. Fortunately, there are reciprocal link exchange management scripts that automate the process. For this method of acquiring backlink, it takes a bit of luck to get strong links especially if you site is new and does not have page rank.
Article submission, link directory submission and reciprocal link exchange are 3 of the most common methods to of getting backlinks to your website. There are of course many other ways to get backlinks to your website. You can get backlinks from blog commenting, video submission, classified posting, forum posting etc etc. But most of the time, you will be getting backlinks with little or no value. Not only that, it is time consuming as well.
So what about buying backlinks? Will it help? Well it may or may not. If you buy backlinks from the scammers, it certainly won’t help. If you buy backlinks from websites that oversell link spaces, it won’t help either. There are many things you need to understand about buying backlinks. Some of the criteria you need to look at would be to check if it has genuine page rank, the website or page is index in Google and it doesn't have to many links displayed. There are of course other standards such as pricing and its page rank. If all the criteria is met, you may have very well found yourself a good buy.
The sad thing is, a lot of us starting out on a limited budget cannot afford buying high quality backlinks (page rank 6 and above) as they are very costly. From page rank tables found online, a page rank 6 link is equivalent to 91,414 page rank 1 links. Notice it to be page rank 1 links? Not page rank 0 but page rank 1? If you submit your articles to hundreds or thousands of article directories and get approved for listings, there’s still a degree of doubt that you will even get a page rank 0 backlink. Mostly, the backlinks you will get do not have any page rank at all as it is new and there’s no permanent backlinks pointing to it. Same goes for link directory submissions as well. Your link will most likely appear on a page that has no page rank value at all. Without any page rank, you can forget about ranking well in Google.
There are 2 main reasons why people would buy backlinks. Firstly, for traffic and strong backlink which will improve their site’s search engine rankings? Secondly, they understand that it is more efficient to buy affordable backlinks instead of spending money on article writers or directory submission services. There are many places where you buy backlinks. Webmaster Forums for instance. Almost every webmaster forums you can find online will have a section dedicated to link trading. An alternative would backlink brokers online. Even though you can buy backlinks from backlink brokers, they are often more expensive compared those of webmaster forums.
So in conclusion if you have some money at your disposal, don’t forget to start buying backlinks. The best scenario would be to practice the common ways of getting backlinks combined with buying backlinks.
