Quality backlinks is the top criteria that search engines use to judge the importance of your website. The more backlinks you have, the higher you rise in the search engine rankings and the more likely your website will come up to the top of the search result.

Here is a simple strategy to help new Internet marketers to build quality backlinks and search engine rankings.

Step 1. Choose a keyword phrase and optimize your website with it.

Choosing a keyword phrase needs to happen first in the order of actions that you take. A well considered keyword phrase will provide a focus for your marketing campaign. You will also need it to be the anchor text for all the links that you will be building. Make sure you pick a phrase that has actually been searched for in the search engines.

Step 2. Write 8-10 articles in your niche, plant a link to your website in the author resource box with your keyword phrase as the anchor text, and submit them to article directories.

Article marketing is by far the most value-adding and effective approach to build backlinks. You are providing resources to the general public at the same time of building backlinks. This helps build credibility and authority of our web presence in the eye of the Internet audience.

Article writing should be repeated over and over again consistently. The goal to shoot for is to submit two articles a week. It is the best if you can write the articles by yourself. If not, for the sake of marketing your website efficiently, you probably should consider getting them ghost-written and submit them (or have them submitted) to as many article directories as possible.

It is OK to write less. However, the less you write, the more slowly you build your backlinks. Depending on what kind of programs you are affiliates with, it may cost you more to wait on building backlinks and losing the potential organic, targeted search engine traffic than to hire a ghost writer and/or an article submission service such as SubmitYourArticles.com.

Regardless of what your normal pace of writing articles is, consider starting a backlink building campaign in the immediate next month. Have 8-10 articles ready, whether written by yourself or purchased, and submit them to 100 article directories, whether by yourself or through a hired service. This will jump start your backlink building process and start the momentum of traffic generating.

Step 3. Submit your website to web directories.

Submitting your website to web directories is similar to getting your phone number listed in the phone books. That's how people find your site. This can be a time consuming process but well worth doing.

There are thousands of directories on the Internet; some are free, and some are paid. A most likely preferred approach for new Internet marketers is probably to submit to all the free, non-reciprocal web directories with the best possible page ranks. There is a helpful list of web directories: http://webdirectorylist.smashingdir.com. You can filter to get free, non-reciprocal directories sorted by the page ranks.

There are other ways to build backlinks and generate traffic. However, the 3 step approach above is probably the most effective at the least cost. As you become more advanced in Internet marketing, you can branch out to more fancy ways of exposure.

To conclude, the backlink building strategy suggested above has 3 steps. It is simple to follow but still requires commitment. It behooves the new Internet marketers to take actions and start a backlink building campaign as soon as they realize its importance. The sooner the realization, the sooner the marketers' business will get a chance to take off.

Copyright by Ying Hong 2008