Backlinks, Dofollow and Nofollow Links, and Search Engine Optimization

A backlink for website (A) is made when (A)'s URL is posted on another website (B).

A better, more valuable backlink for (A) is made on (B) when the content of website (B) is related to the content of (A), rather than when a backlink for (A) is made on website (C), which has content that is unrelated to (A).


Application:
I posted the link to the website of a friend's new book, Behind the Lines in Greece (which is about a military unit that operated in Greece during World War II) in two places on Facebook: on my wall and on a World War II group page. The link I posted on the WW II group page is much more valuable than the one I posted on my wall--and also more valuable than the one I just made here by making the title of his book a hyperlink, or backlink, to his website.

Thus, in this example, the book's webpage corresponds to (A), the WW II group on Facebook is a (B) because it has content related to (A), and both my Facebook profile page and this blog's page are (C's) because they have contents unrelated to (A).



An even better backlink for (A) is a dofollow link made on website (B), which has content relevant to (A).

The very best backlinks are a series of dofollow backlinks, where each site is relevant to (A), in this example, webpages (B), (D) and (E):
(A) backlinked on (B),
(B) is backlinked on (D), and
(D) is backlinked on (E).


More elaborate links could be made into a web: (A) backlinked to (D), (B) backlinked to (E), etc. Make one-way backlinks: don't backlink pages to each other, i.e. don't backlink (A) to (B) and (B) to (A).




Let's unpack that.

1. Links (or hyperlinks or backlinks) drive traffic to your website. Someone clicks on a link and is taken to your website.

2. Links may look alike, but they are not all the same: they may be dofollow links or nofollow links; although either could be changed into the other by the webmaster, i.e., a dofollow link may be, after a set period of time, changed to a nofollow link.

3. Dofollow backlinks are helpful: they are noticed by search engines. In other words, making backlinks with dofollow links helps your site receive better rankings --nearer to the beginning of the list-- in search engines' results.

4. Nofollow backlinks are neutral: they bring traffic to your page, but they are not noticed by search engines, so they do not help with search engine optimization.



Why is search engine optimization important?

Traffic arrives at your site from three paths, when someone:
1. uses search engines, chooses your site from the list of results and clicks on your site,
2. clicks a hyperlink (dofollow or nofollow) on a website that links to your site (arrives on your site through a backlink), or
3. types your page's URL in the address bar of his browser.

Most traffic comes through search engine results, and the least comes from those who have typed into their browser's address bar the URL of your site. Because most of your traffic comes from search engines, you want to enhance your website's importance and optimize its position in search engine results (i.e., bring it closer to the beginning of the list of search results). Do this by making valuable dofollow backlinks to relevant sites.

Many people do not look past page one of search engine results, so it is important to get your website near the beginning of the list, on page one, to drive more traffic to your site. More traffic means that more people go to your site, and so the number of views will increase faster. A website presented at the end of the search engine's list will be seen by very few people, and thus will drive very little, if any, traffic to your site.


Let's go back to the example application above, where the book's webpage corresponds to (A), the WW II group on Facebook is a (B), and both my Facebook profile page and this blog's page are (C's).

When I speak of value or importance of a backlink, I mean that search engines give more weight, more importance, to websites that have backlinks from other pages with similar content. The result is that search engines rank website (A), backlinked by (B), higher in search results than if that website (A) were backlinked only by (C), an unrelated page.



Most articles on the web have no backlinks, so any backlink is good (helpful), backlinks from related websites are better, and a series of dofollow backlinks from related websites is the best.

RedGage, SheToldMe, Snipsly, YouSayToo, and this blog on Blogger are a few sites that provide dofollow links; Xomba is one site that has nofollow links.

How do I know if a backlink is a dofollow link rather than a nofollow link? I use SEO Toolbar, which is a browser plug-in for Firefox. Find it here. After installing the toolbar, click on the nofollow link icon and all nofollow links on the webpage are highlighted in red.

Backlinks for African violets

It takes time to make proper backlinks, because the original article's title must be changed in each new post, and many sites require a certain number of words, characters, or sentences in the description. Rather than posting and running, I've been spending time on these other sites, participating in reviews of others' works.

Hoping to raise some interest in African violets, I uploaded 15 photos of my African violets to RedGage and to Facebook a couple of days ago, and I did receive a few comments about growing them. In reply, I backlinked to RedGage my article, "How to Water an African Violet." A friend had backlinked the article to Xomba on April 30. I backlinked it to SheToldMe and to Snipsly today. SheToldMe and Snipsly have dofollow links; Xomba does not. I backlinked SheToldMe to RedGage and Snipsly to RedGage. This gives two lines of dofollow links: original to SheToldMe to RedGage; and original to Snipsly to RedGage. I had already backlinked the original article to a Facebook group named "African Violet Nerds."

After the article about watering African violets has been on RedGage, SheToldMe, and Snipsly for several days or more, I'll backlink a related article. It seems to me that waiting between new postings of original articles would allow time for some traffic from these sites to go to my article, increasing web traffic and the chance that the article would be "shared" via e-mail or social networking. Sharing an article in these ways helps search engines to "notice" the article. More people on the article page should correlate with higher interest in relevant ads, shown by click through. After all, the objective is to provide excellent content and raise passive income.

Backlinking the Backlinks

RedGage is, by far, the easiest site for creating backlinks. I've been busy on SheToldMe, Xomba and RedGage to backlink three of my articles.

"How to Tie Shoelaces to be Secure and Easily Untied" had already been backlinked on SheToldMe by a friend. Yesterday, I backlinked the SheToldMe backlink to RedGage, and then backlinked the original eHow article to RedGage.

"How to Write a Useful Obituary" had been backlinked on InnovativePassiveIncome by another friend. I backlinked the InnovativePassiveIncome backlink to RedGage, backlinked the original eHow article to RedGage, and backlinked the original article to Xomba. Yes, I know that I've not (yet) backlinked the original to SheToldMe.

The first article I wrote on eHow, "How to Compose a Sympathy Message that will be Cherished," has earned more than all others combined. Today, I backlinked it to SheToldMe and to Xomba; backlinked SheToldMe to RedGage; Xomba to RedGage; and the original article to RedGage.

I'd like to show you a chart of articles, monthly earnings for each, and unique page views (the latter just for fun, since the number of views per se doesn't earn income for me), which can be used to track any increase in traffic or earnings as time goes by. After finding out about what not to do -- copy and paste from Word onto this blog -- the same can probably be said for Excel. On the other hand, time is probably better spent creating levels of backlinks for my articles before making charts.


You may have noticed the StumbleUpon button at the end of each post, which I installed last night. Whether that drives more traffic to this blog remains to be seen.

Preparing to use social networking to spread this blog's address, I used Su.pr to shorten the URL from http://increase-passive-income-online.blogspot.com/ to http://su.pr/8JjdfW

I joined YouSayToo, to backlink my blog there, but haven't yet been successful. When I receive a reply from tech support sometime next week, I'll need to add the code for YouSayToo to each page of this blog -- that is, when I make pages in this blog.

SEO Meta Tags and Increasing Web Traffic

Among search engine optimization tips, I've heard that the use of meta tags can help search engines more easily categorize a website, thereby increasing web traffic. Meta tags contain the title, concise description and keywords of the page. There are several sources of free meta tag builders. I used the one from ScrubTheWeb to create this meta tag:

< .head>
< .meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
< .title>Learn to Increase Passive Income Online< ./title>
< .meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en" />
< .meta name="description" content="Increase passive income online by implementing relevant strategies and tools." />
< .meta name="keywords" content="search engine optimization tips, search engine strategies, earn money on the Internet, increasing web traffic, make money on the net" />
< .!-- Meta Tags Created With: STW Meta Tag Builder http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/ -->
< ./head>


(The only way I could get these meta tags to be visible was to insert two spaces and a period right after each < Otherwise, the tags disappeared when I previewed the post.)

However, it turns out that the major search engines really don't use the meta tags, so there's little advantage to adding them to your page's code. Quality of content is much more important. Here are three reasons why I'm not adding meta tags:

1. This blog is written on one of the templates of Google's Blogger, and such templates are difficult to alter, as I have found;
2. Google's search engine, among others, doesn't pay much attention to meta tags anyway, as mentioned above;
3. Inserting extra code can cause the page to load more slowly and thus provide a less enjoyable experience for readers.

OK, I've got to go back and focus on getting backlinks for my articles -- something that definitely will be giving them better ratings and increasing web traffic. Before the takeover of eHow by Demand Studios, several eHow friends and I took turns finding places to backlink each others' articles. To date, here are the articles of mine that have been backlinked:

How to Water an African Violet was backlinked by a friend at
http://www.xomba.com/how_water_african_violet

I also backlinked this article on two African violet groups' Facebook pages. Because the content of the Facebook groups' pages is relevant to the article's topic, those two backlinks are more valuable than that from Xomba, but that one helps, too. Most articles on the Internet don't have any backlinks; so three backlinks for this article make it look more important, among the group of articles that can be found on this topic, to search engines.

How to Remove Wrinkles Without Using an Iron or Steam
http://ihaveanotion.blogspot.com/2010/01/digital-velocity-steam-iron-v100-by.html
http://thisridiculousworld.com/china/blockage-30032010/comment-page-1/#comment-647

How to Write a Useful Obituary
http://www.innovativepassiveincome.com/invest-in-real-estate-a-little-a-time/

How to Tie Shoelaces to be Secure and Easily Untied
http://shetoldme.com/Lifestyle/How-to-Tie-Shoelaces-the-Old-fashioned-Way

How to Rinse Your Nasal Passages to Avoid Flu
http://shetoldme.com/Health/How-to-Properly-Rinse-Nasal-Passages

How to Take Care of Someone who has H1N1 Swine Flu
http://shetoldme.com/Health/How-to-Care-for-a-Person-with-Swine-Flu-H1N1

How to Stop Cold Drafts Through Electrical Outlets
http://shetoldme.com/Lifestyle/How-to-Stop-Drafts-Through-Electrical-Outlets

How to Become an Organ, Eye and Tissue Donor
http://twitter.com/PoloPony95/status/11672137589

I backlinked that article in two other places:
http://shetoldme.com/Health/How-to-Become-an-Organ-Eye-and-Tissue-Donor
http://www.xomba.com/how_become_organ_eye_and_tissue_donor


For these eight articles, I have provided links to the original articles as well as to the web pages where their backlinks are found. Not only is this a convenience to you, to see the articles and how to set up corresponding backlinks, but I have also created another backlink to each article and to each article's backlink source. Thus, the article first on the list, How to Water an African Violet, has a two-level backlink chain; the article is backlinked at Xomba, and the Xomba article is backlinked here.


The majority of my articles do not have backlinks outside of eHow. When two or more of my articles were related -- such as those I wrote on the topic of African violets -- the resource section of each African violet article backlinked the other African violet articles.

Thoughts? Questions? Recommendations?


By the way, last night I submitted this URL to Yahoo! and to Bing search engines.
I've no idea why all article links are not the same color. When I've gone back to highlight and change the color to match the others, the result is still not what I intended. ??

Backlinks and Advertising

To write a blog is often recommended as a step toward making money online, so I signed up and started this one today. TaDa!

I had already taken several other recommended steps by joining SheToldMe.com, Xomba.com, Snipsly.com and RedGage.com for the purpose of adding backlinks to my articles. Backlinks make the article appear more valuable to a search engine; in turn, the search engine presents that article nearer to the beginning of the list of generated search results, which drives more Internet traffic to the website. More traffic brings more opportunities for the site to make money. Most people don't look beyond the first page of results. (I do, but most don't.) Three- and four-level backlinks (i.e., "A" backlinks to "B" which backlinks to "C" which backlinks to "D") are the best for enhancing a site's value.

My Google AdSense and Kontera applications were approved yesterday. Yea! If you're interested in joining them, please let me know. I applied to and am waiting to hear from Chitika.