What backlinks are the best to get in order to get a top ranking? – is a question we are quite often asked.

The answer is surprisingly simple since by looking at the competitive landscape and using Google we can get the answer easily.

Here’s a little process we use from time to time which uses a free tool – www.touchgraph.com/seo – and the Google advanced operator ‘RELATED’. The latter command will find sites which Google regards as very similar to and therefore, by definition, good sites to get links from.

Here’s an example….

Lets say we want to get a top ranking for the tem ‘garden office’. If we go to http://www.touchgraph.com/seo and type in ‘garden office’ like so…

touchgraph

 

We see this graphic…

garden-office

The significance of these sites is that Google is telling us that as far as it’s concerned these are the most important sites for this particular keyphrase – by definition getting links therefore from these sites will almost certainly lead to a very high – if not number one – ranking. The issue of course is that some of these will be competitors sites so unlikely they will be happy to link with you – although depending on the keyphrase typed some of them will. For example quite often the most important directories or blogs may be shown. So let go to the next level down by clicking one of the sites. Lets click on ‘roomworks’….

 

related-garden-office

So clearly these are other highly relevant and related sites – some of which we can add to our target list. Incidentally the larger the circle the more important the website in Google’s eyes. Working through in this way we’ll end up with a list of highly relevant target sites, and by definition, ‘Penguin’ compliant.

Its another task to then work out the best way of getting a link but almost certainly a direct approach for reciprocation is ideal. Then it’s a matter of discussing with the webmaster why and where the links should be. It’s worth putting some effort into this as you won’t find better and more relevant ways of finding links than this.