Google suggests that it might be worth your effort to request to have links removed that are pointing from low grade sites to yours. The easiest way this can be done is by searching the site for a “Contact Us” page, email address, or a phone number. If none can not be found then a Whois search can be performed. A Whois search will typically return the contact information of the site owner. Sometimes site owners block their contact information with a private registration. If that’s the case, then it may be possible to pass a message to the owner through the hosting company.

Of course if it’s not easy to contact the owners of the sites linking to yours, then it might not be worth the time invested. On the Google Webmaster Central blog, they suggests that efforts be made towards having links removed; however, if there are sites less than desirable linking to yours, Google does offer some reassurance by stating that they have 200 factors when it comes to determining relevancy in the search results. I don’t recommend investing time towards contacting site owners requesting the removal of links. Instead, I suggest investing time towards increasing the number of higher quality links pointing to your site.

Controllable things are another thing that should be taken into consideration. Once again, Google points focus on their design, content, technical, and quality guidelines. Google implies that they understand that certain things fall outside your control. With that, explain that emphasis is given things that webmasters can control such as having a well maintained site with high quality and original content with an excellent linking structure. And I agree. I can’t think of a single popular site that I would consider to be a terrible site. I am sure they exist, and I am sure you can leave a comment pointing me to a few; but all in all, in my opinion, all popular sites I have seen, fall within these guidelines.

My advice to site owners is to maintain a clean, high quality, and organized site that genuinely interests people. Don’t invest time into removing low quality backlinks and only invest some time into high quality backlink molding. I think it’s more important to spread awareness about your site, instead. If people like what they see, then they’ll come back many times over, and also they’ll link to it as well. Additionally, encouraging people to share information is very helpful too.

So what do you think? Do you think that it’s worth your time to remove low quality backlinks? What about spending time towards backlink molding? And what about time spent marketing and promoting your site? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Make no mistake folks, link building is a very important aspect in getting traffic from Google. Many of you guys and gals read my personal blog and I spend quite a bit of time talking about building micro niche blogs and targeting keywords that don’t require backlinks. While that is true, in a way that also limits you from capitalizing on prime keywords. Ranking for prime keywords are definitely in your reach; however, this can not be archived without launching a well thought out and well researched link building campaign.

So how do you launch an effective link building campaign? Well, really for many of you reading this, the problem is finding sites that will willingly add your link to their pages. But if you think about this for a second, you very well may already have a huge source of sites to use at your disposal. How many web sites or blogs do you have? Is there any reason why you’re not using your own web sites or blogs to help build backlinks to another blog or web site of yours?

I do this all the time! Granted, I have friends who’ll add my link to certain blogs posts upon request, but a large percentage of my link building comes from my own internal fleet of blogs. There is nothing wrong with using your existing blogs or web sites to help build up the number of backlinks to another blog or web site that you own.

What about doing this on sites that all share the same IP address? Well, that’s a good question… I am glad I asked myself that. Here are my thoughts about that. If you are in the business of building sites with the aim of trying to get them to rank high in the SERPs then you really need to do things right and be organized with how you distribute your sites among different servers. Granted, I think a lot of the myth about having multiple sites on the same IP might be slightly over-rated.

But guess what? I can’t prove that! I don’t work at Google. I don’t have their magical formula. There is one thing that I do know, and that is the cost of web hosting. When I started building web sites, hosting was expensive! Today, you can order web hosting for as little as $4.95 / month! So, to answer your question about having multiple sites on the same IP address, I’ll say this. I can’t prove that this is good or bad, but seeing how cheap web hosting is today, why risk it? Be organized, and distribute your sites among different servers.

Having that said, let’s talk about how to build backlinks to your web sites and blogs by using your own sites. When you determine which keywords that you want to start using to plug links to a certain site or blog of yours, simply do a Google search for that keyword on your site to see how many instances are there.

Example: site:yourname.com “keyword phrase”

When you do that, Google will return a list of web pages or blog posts on your site or blog that where that keyword is used. If the page or post is older, you can almost guarantee that there will be a little bit of PageRank on that page as well. Go back and edit this page or post and plug your link to point to the blog or site that you are trying to build links to.

If you are like me and use WordPress blogs and want to do this automatically, then there is a very handy plugin that will soon become your best friend. The plugin is called aLinks and unfortunately the web site has been down for several months. The only place I have found where you can download this plugin is HERE. aLinks is a plugin that allows you to automatically link keywords on your blog and point them to any destination that you want. It’s one of my personal favorites.

Anyway, I hope that you found this article to be helpful. What are some other creative ways to build backlinks to your site? Drop a comment below and share your thoughts!

Many authors such as myself have multiple web sites or blog. It is a common strategy to feed off one or more of our own web sites or blogs to help promote and increase the PageRank of another blog by providing it with backlinks. The problem with this is that it isn’t always easy to search through previously published web pages or blog posts to find the targetable keywords that you are wanting to use to hyperlink to your other web site or blog.

If only there was an automatic way to do this, life would be great. Well, guess what? There is an automatic way to hyperlink words in your WordPress blog and it comes to you in a free WordPress plugin called aLinks. This is a plugin that I have been using for a long time, but never really told anyone because of how powerful the secret is.

aLinks Give You The Ability To Automatically Hyperlinks Words:

This free WordPress plugin is awesome and one of my own personal favorites. Using aLinks is very simple. You don’t have to know how to write code and you don’t have to understand any level of programming. Simply download the plugin, install and activate. After the aLinks WordPress plugin is activated, simply tell the program what words or phrases you want to link and where you want the destination hyperlink to go.

aLinks also has support for Amazon.com affiliate links too. This is a great way to make extra money online by sending Amazon.com referral type traffic. I don’t use the program for that though. My main purpose is to feed links to certain blogs of mine that i am trying to quickly develop.

aLinks is actually a perfect program for SEOHosting.com clients who have blogs. SEOHosting.com enables webmasters to host websites from one control panel (WHM) and assign each account it’s own different Class C IP address. Each SEO hosting plan comes with private branded nameservers on separate Class C IP addresses. So as you can see, using a program lik aLinks is perfect for you with helping boost backlinks, traffic and increasing PageRank to other blogs or web sites you run.

As I had mentioned, aLink is totally free. Simply visit the aLinks home page to learn more about this wonderful WordPress plugin and to snag your free copy today.

Here is an article that was actually requested by Murray a SEOHosting.com reader. He has a wonderful blog that I enjoy reading very much titled Soccer Coaching Guide. Murray is a pretty cool guy and we share a few things in common. He is a soccer dad and I am actually a baseball dad, so it’s pretty cool. At any rate, in a comment found on a previously published article of mine titled, “Can Social Networking and Bookmarking Effect Your SEO?“, Murray asked me if I would write an article that covers a few excellent ways to score some backlinks to your web site or blog.  So, in no particular order, here goes.

Digg.com:

Digg.com is one of the very few popular social networks that does not use the NOFOLLOW attribute. This is a great way to score a search engine friendly backlink to your web site or blog. It becomes especially powerful if the content submitted into Digg.com becomes popular. If it becomes popular that will increase the chance of other publishers writing about your post on their own blog. This in return creates even more backlinks to your blog.

DMOZ.org:

While it is very unlikely that you will ever get your web site or blog listed here, if you can, that is a huge win on your part. Most all of the categories in the Open Directory Project have a very established PageRank. Scoring a link into a category in DMOZ is huge. Good luck getting in though, I hear that there is a several month backlog.

Sites Listed in DMOZ.org:

If you find a relevant site is listed in DMOZ.org, the chances are that site is doing very well and is very established. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to email or contact the publisher of the established site and invite them to review your own web site or blog and consider sharing a link with their readers. Never ask to do a link exchange and never barter to get your link listed. The goal is to assure the publisher of the established site that by linking to your site, they will be providing a great added service to their readers.

Dir.Yahoo.Com:

While this is rather expensive, if you can afford to pay $299 dollars for a backlink, getting one in the Yahoo Directory is a very good option. The fee doesn’t guarantee inclusion; however, it does guarantee that your site will be reviewed in 7 days or less. You can also submit your site into Yahoo! for free; however just like with DMOZ.org, there is a long waiting list.

Sites Listed in Dir.Yahoo.Com:

Did you know that Yahoo! has a directory? Just like sites listed in DMOZ.org, if you happen to find sites listed in Dir.Yahoo.com that are relevant to your own, you can always contact the site publisher and suggest that they add your link to their site or write a review about your site.

Guest Blogging:

Guest blogging is the practice of writing and publishing content on someone else’s blog. You can either do this on a volunteer level or find a publisher who is willing to pay you to write content on their blog. If you have proven to the community that you are a skilled writer, can entertain or inform a crowd of people and have a high level of knowledge in a certain topic, chances are that you’ll find it very easy to find people who would love to have your volunteer and or paid writing services. In doing so, you can score a backlink on every post your publish.

Did I Miss Something?

There are many different methods for scoring very powerful backlinks to your web site or blog. If you can think of something else, take credit for your knowledge and share your thoughts by leaving us a comment. SEOHosting.com is a great community for learning more about SEO and that includes allowing you to share your feedback and thoughts. What are some additional ways to score backlinks to your web site or blog?

P.S. If you have a topic that you would like me to write about, feel free to let me know about it. Simply use the comment from below and speak your mind.