When it comes to creating a backlink strategy, there is a popular myth out there - a pervasive urban legend. That legend is that “it’s all numbers game”. There are countless SEO ‘experts’ running around charging customers huge sums of money to get thousands of links back to their websites.

These guys argue that Google loves external links to a website. The more backlinks it finds, the higher it will regard that website and the more often it will appear on top of search results.

Yes and no. Yes, Google likes links. The more indeed the merrier. But Google is a little bit more clever than this. Setting up 10 000 pages with nothing else than links back to your website will most likely not get you anywhere with Google.

The important issue for Google is not quantity but quality. They have never published the exact algorithm they use to rank the listing of web pages, but it’s fairly certain that they don’t simply look at the number of incoming links to a site, but to the quality of those links as well.

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.

Google will still rank the old lady’s website first. Why? Because the one backlink she has is from a highly regarded source. A source that gets thousands of visitors every day and which has numerous other top quality websites linking to it. Not to mention that the link pages you bought have no content except for the links and is therefore totally irrelevant to Google as far as your website’s ranking in search results is concerned.

How do you get backlinks from such important, relevant websites though? If your website content is really of a high standard, you could contact well know websites in that category and ask them for backlinks. This is hard work, but can be very effective.

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.

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