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.

Sounds simple enough, right?  But as unassuming as these backlinks are, they actually play a major role in boosting your site’s rankings in Google and other major search engines.  In fact, these search engines will judge your site according to the number of backlinks that are credited to your site.  The more backlinks you have, the higher your ranking will ultimately be.  Between two blogs posts that deal with the same niche, and everything else being equal, the blog post with the higher number of backlinks will rank higher in Google’s search results for the same keyword relevant to both posts than the blog post with fewer incoming links.

You also have to know that backlinks are better if they contain a keyword that’s already targeted by your blog.  You also have to know about “anchor text”, which is basically a backlink that contains your targeted keywords.  These kinds of backlinks have a stronger pull on Google, so aim to get more of these, as well.  Here are some of the ways by which you can start getting backlinks and blogging more profitably:

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:
Forum boards are also a great way to create backlinks for yourself.  Be a member of a forum board that deals with your blog’s chosen niche, and set out to be an active poster in various discussions.  Always be courteous and informative in your posts, since forum boards are also notorious hotbeds for online brawls.  Be friendly with everyone, and don’t forget to sneak in your blog’s URL (and keywords, if possible) on your signature.

3.  Link baiting:
Link baiting is the practice of writing about hot news or controversial topics about the niche that your blog is focused on.  If you can pounce on breaking news about your niche and write a really good entry about that topic, you’re bound to get some people linking back to you.  This method’s a little trickier (because you’ll have to work at making your post unique and special), but it’s very good at making a lasting impression on your blog readers and visitors. Just make sure your title of your post contains the keyword that you’re targeting as it’ll be easy for webmasters to copy that as the anchor text for their backlinks to your blog post.

As you can see, getting more backlinks isn’t the hardest thing to do.  Just don’t neglect the part about dishing out good content that will impress readers and keep them coming back to your site.  In the end, there’s still no better way to promote yourself – and getting backlinks – than by writing great posts that your visitors will remember you for.