Back links, what are they and how do I get them?

Most of you know by now I teach for a living, a passion of mine. While I love my role as an educator, we all know that I will never become wealthy doing so. If I have heard it once, I have heard it 10,000 times or more that teachers are paid too much. I have also heard the opposite from people like Oprah who are constantly sharing that teachers are not paid enough. My honest opinion is that as long as teachers are paid from public money, there will be major controversy on this subject. My purpose for sharing this is to explain my strong interest in generating income through blogging. I am not complaining about how much I am compensated, however, the reality is I do not earn enough to do some of the things that I would like to do for my family and myself in this world. I would love to travel more. Each time I have a new experience, it is knowledge that I bring back to my students to share. Thus, making money writing, which is something I enjoy, intrigues me. Oprah always says, “Figure out what you love to do and figure out a way to get paid to do it.”

The challenge of course is balancing the writing, which is the fun portion in my opinion, and the learning curve regarding of how to earn as actually taking the time to promote your writing.

Backlinks, what are they and how do I get them?

I keep hearing about backlinks and the importance of using them in order to be successful online. Well, I did a lot of research and hopefully have simplified this process for some of you.

Backlinks are sometimes called inbound links. In English, it means that there are links out there that lead directly back to your blog or website. I keep hearing that backlinks are necessary in order to place in the rankings on any of the top search engines such as Google. The key is to do this without spending a great deal of cash. Your job as the writer and promoter of your site is to find the highest quality, most established sites that you can that are willing to place a link on their site that will lead to your blog or webpage(s).

Thank you, I understand now what a backlink is and how they are obtained, how do I find quality sites that are willing to work with me?

I will call you a webmaster for the purpose of this article, as in a sense, you are the webmaster of your position of the website that you are writing blogs for.

List of ways to get backlinks

1. Post on forums or social networking sites listing your website with its link. For example, hubpages immediately offer opportunities for you to post on twitter.com or on facebook.com

2. DMOZ – an Open Directory Project (ODP), comes from directory.mozilla.org, which was its original domain name. It is a multilingual and open directory of web links that are owned by Netscape. They were developed and are controlled by an organization constructed of volunteer editors. Positives: one of the most respected directories online; negatives: it takes awhile to have a website posted on their directory http://www.dmoz.org/

3. Web 2.0 – positives: ease of use, sign in and create your profile, comment on stories or articles right on the website or blog, users may comment in return and communication has begun, a network system has begun; e.g. http://www.CodexFind.com – positives: quick and easy submission, free; negatives; none that I have identified as of yet

4. Pay for links services and sites such as Linkvana. positives: great results; negative: fee associated with best services – the old adage you get what you pay for.

You might ask: What is the distinction from one of the above to another, the answer is there isn’t really much and it truly won’t matter for your purpose. Your job is to locate sites that will allow information and links about your blog or website to be posted on their site as you need the backlinks.

The important thing to learn in this article is that writers, you need to go out there and find free or inexpensive sites that are willing to allow you to place your link on their site to bring visitors to your site and to gain rankings on the search engines, which will in turn, again, increase the traffic to your site.