By this time, you must have heard about backlinks and how important they are if you want to make money bloggin.  Essentially, back links are just incoming links, or links on other sites or blogs that go directly back to your own blog or blog posts.  In other words, if a person “links” to you, the link on his site that traces back to your own blog is pretty much what a backlink is.

Of course, backlinks aren’t just some little detail that bloggers can forget about.  In fact, they’re responsible for your success as a blogger, and have a direct effect on your blog’s ranking on major search engines.  The more backlinks your blog has, the higher its rank will be on Google and other search engines.  If you have more backlinks for a keyword that other blogs are already targeting, your ranking on search engines will be much higher, therefore making you more accessible to the online community.

Some backlinks are even better at getting Google’s attention than others.  These backlinks have keywords that your blog is already focused on, and another kind of backlink called “anchor text” contains these keywords and leads the reader to a specific blog post on your site.  Here are a few tips on how you can get more of these links and land higher on search engine rankings:

1.  Comment on other blogs:
Don’t just keep yourself huddled in a little corner: let the blogosphere know of your presence by interacting with fellow bloggers, particularly those in the same niche as yours.  A good way to make yourself known is by posting relevant and well-thought out comments on other blogs.  This is also a very subtle way to create a backlink for your site:  simply type out your comment and include your URL at the foot of your message.  Even better: you can use your targeted keyword as your name, which will normally contain a link back to your own site.

2.  Hop onto forum boards:
Another way to collect more backlinks is by joining a forum board where you can socialize with other like-minded people about subjects that your blog is already dealing with.  Be active in these forum boards, and make informative and helpful contributions on various topics that might arise in these boards.  Be as polite and friendly as you can, leave your URL at your signature, and you’ll have people clicking over to your blog before you know it.

3.  Link baiting:
Link baiting is basically writing a post about the latest or hottest news about your niche, especially if that piece of news is the sort that everyone wants to know about.  Controversial topics are also good link baits and are bound to get the attention of other bloggers who might end up linking to you if they like your post.  It goes without saying, however, that your post should be unique, well-written, and chock-full of fresh insights on the topic you chose.  It’s also a good idea to put up your targeted keywords as the title of your blog post; that way, other people can just copy the title and turn it into an anchor text that leads straight up to your blog.

Although getting backlinks is a major priority for professional bloggers, you shouldn’t let that take precedence over writing good and reliable content for your readers to enjoy.  No amount of backlinks can support a poorly kept blog, so try to get as many legitimate backlinks as you can without neglecting your content.