Matt Cutts Confirms Footer Backlinks Do Not Hold Weight Like Article Links

Depending on your niche, backlinks to your website are getting harder to get. This is one of the most important factors in how your page will rank in Google, Yahoo and Bing Searches. You could have the “prefect website” when it comes to proper coding and URL Structure, but if you have no backlinks you will be a website with very little traffic.

I still see some major websites (especially in the car industry) loaded up with footer links, and I’ve know for at least 2 years how footer links lack quality. I’ve even been involved with some heated discussions on some SEO Forums about the matter.

Matt Cutts is the unofficial internet spokesman for Google, and he is the head of the Google SPAM team. Every now and then he posts a series of videos answering questions from webmasters all over the world. Today he cosigned my theory:

So where can you get good backlinks?

1) The best backlink you can get is from a website with relevant content to your website. I suggest you find a professional blogger and hire him or her to write a blog post for you. Usually they’ll give you 2 external links.

2) When obtaining backlinks from bloggers, they will ask you what your anchor text is. You want your anchor text to be something people search for. Like if I was to get a backlink to my used car website in Orlando, I would tell them to use that anchor. Note the link, it has my keywords in it.

3) DMOZ is a great backlink, but good luck getting in. There is rumors of corruption within DMOZ. All of the editors that approve and deny links are volunteers. Unfortunately many of them are your competition, so they will never let you in. just apply for DMOZ, move on and don’t hold your breath.

4) Yahoo Directory: This is a great backlink because a human approves you, so other search engines know you are not a spam site because you’re listed in there. Unfortunately it costs 300.00 a year.

5) Internet Directories: There are 10’s of thousands of internet directories out there. They don’t hold much weight, but it’s still a backlink. Work on submitting to 2 a day. It may take 2 months to get approved (unless you pay), but in a years time you will have over 700 backlinks.

There are a few things you should understand before you try to build backlinks:

1) Links with the nofollow tag doesn’t flow pagerank. It has been debated that they may hold a little weight, but Matt Cutts says they don’t at all. Watch This Video:

2) Javascript links do not pass juice, therefore you are wasting your time.

3) Don’t look like a “link farm”. Let’s take a nationwide car dealer for example. Let’s say you owned 500 dealerships all around the country. You may think you’re being slick by linking each dealership to each other. This could actually get you penalized. The reason? One of the factors search engines consider is who owns the domain name. If you visit whois.sc for each domain name, it will list the owner. If all of your domains are registered to one person or company, you are now an official link farm.

4) Links from your Facebook Account, Twitter and other Social Networking websites do not count as backlinks.