What is a backlink strategy? This is simply a description of the strategy a website owner follows to get other websites to link back to his website. The popular misconception is that as far as this goes the more the better. Many “SEO experts” have become rich from selling virtually worthless backlinks.

The theory goes like this: Google likes links. Google was built on the premise that a website with more links to it must be an important site, it must be an authority otherwise all those other websites would not be linking to it. So getting more and more links is good, right?

Yes and no. Yes, Google likes links. The more indeed the merrier. But Google is a little bit more clever than this. If that were true anyone could quickly set up ten thousand pages with links back to his own website and get listed in the number one spot for whatever he wants.

Why is this? The reason is that as far as Google is concerned links are not all equal. Websites are not all equal, so why should links be equal? So Google ranks the links. Some will count more than others.

But what is a quality backlink then? Why would one link be given a higher value than another link? The answer is simple: relevance. It’s not really such a difficult concept to explain. Let’s say you have a website about building model aeroplanes and down the road is another guys with the same type of website. Now you get the local butcher to link to your website from his, while the other guy manages to get a link from a well-known, highly regarded website about hobbies. Who do you think Google should list at the top?

Suppose further that you pick up that Google is listing his website above yours in search results, so you make a deal with all the other butchers in town, as well as the supermarkets and the furniture removal guys to create special pages with links to your website. No relevant content there, just a link to your website.

What do you expect will happen? The answer is simple: nothing. Google will still rank the other guy on top, because the one link to his website is a) from an authoritative website that may have thousands of other websites linking to them and b) the content of his website is related to the content on that other website.

Getting links back to your website from highly regarded websites is not easy though. If you know what you are talking about, one possible solution is to start writing articles and submit them to article directories. Mostly you won’t get paid for them, but you will be able to include a backlink to your website.

Another option is to write articles about the subject and submit them to high quality article directories using what is called, article marketing. They will allow you to put a link in the article back to your website. If your articles are really good they will also be syndicated – picked up by other websites, which in turn will have backlinks to your site. This is a much more logical and effective backlink strategy than buying worthless links.