So far I have shown many different techniques for building backlinks from within your own site, in order to increase the page rank and authority of your internal pages, as well as make it easier for Google to crawl your site… and if it’s easier for them, then they figure it’s easier for humans to navigate your site and find information also.

Today’s internal link building tip is to go back into your archives and try to find places where you can add links to new posts you have written. The main time that people use internal linking is when they are writing a new post, referencing older posts on a similar topic that applies. (example: Look at the beginning of this post. I made links to my older posts about internal link building.)

The reason you would want to go back into your old posts and add some links to your newer posts, is that your older posts are probably already ranked well, and some of them should be bringing you consistent traffic from the search engines. Wouldn’t you want people who are getting to your older posts from the search engines to be directed to your new posts? This not only keeps your visitors on your site longer, which gives you more page views, more chances for them to click out to an advertiser, more chances for them to subscribe to your blog, etc etc etc, but it also helps you with regards to the search engines, as mentioned above, because it passes authority to your internal pages.

WARNING: When adding stuff to your older posts, make sure that you don’t rearrange or delete what you’ve already written, because that’s what is bringing visitors to your site. Only add stuff to the beginning and the end of the post. You can also use phrases that you’ve already written and turn those into links to your newer posts. Just don’t delete stuff…

So, when doing internal link building, don’t just focus on your your new posts, but also focus on your old posts too…

Please check out the other posts in this Internal Link Building series….

Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Prequel
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 1
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 2
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 3
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 4
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 5
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 6

Some of my most popular posts on this blog are:
How To Check How Many Backlinks Your Site Has
and
How To Check How Many Backlinks Your Site Has – Part 2

When people start link building campaigns, they want to be able to check their progress. Thanks to various websites who provide tools to see how many backlinks each site has (see the above articles), seeing that progress and your results is fairly easy to do. But, many people either use the tools improperly, use too many or too few tools, waste time, or just simply don’t use their full potential. Here are some tips to using backlink checking tools.

1. Don’t just use Google and Yahoo.
Many people when checking their backlinks, go to Google and type in “link:YourURLhere” and they usually don’t see many results, and therefore get discouraged. Yahoo!’s “link:YourURLhere” search does return more results, but it’s still not complete. Don’t just rely on these resources. Google’s Webmaster Tools, and Yahoo!’s SiteExplorer tools will give better results, but still don’t just rely on these.

2. Use multiple tools to check.
There are many different tools online that allow you to see how many backlinks your site has. But, they are not all created equal. Some use averages of major search engine numbers, Others don’t work with all search engines. Some provide you much more information such as your PageRank, your Alexa rank, the site your link is on’ PageRank, etc. Find 2 or 3 different tools that work the best for you, and stick with those. Sticking with just one won’t give you the most accurate, but using more than 3 or 4 will just be a waste of time.

3. Don’t compare one tool’s results to another tool’s results.
Even though I suggest using 2-3 different tools to check your backlinks, that doesn’t mean that you should compare them against eachother. The best thing to do is to create a spreadsheet, or just a normal .txt document, and write down the results from each tool. Then, once a week, check your results again, and log it in the spreadsheet. Then you can see the progress you have made with each tool.

4. Don’t check multiple times a day, or even week.
I know as a webmaster myself, that I want to check my stats multiple times a day. This is pretty useless, and a waste of time. Why waste your time checking your backlinks multiple times a day when you can focus your efforts on link building during that same time. If you focus on link building, you’ll be able to be more excited when you do check your results. Check maybe once or twice a week. You should pick a day, and check on that day every week.

5. Check your competitors backlinks.
When you are checking your backlinks, it is a good idea to check your competitor’s backlinks too. Find out what pages they have links on and see if you can get links on the same pages. You can also check if they are steadily increasing their backlinks or not. If they are not, then you know they are just begging to be taken over in the search engine rankings.

If you stick to these rules, you will be able to better see your progress and utilize your time and the tools better, in order to reach the top of the search engine rankings by focusing your efforts on link building instead of stat checking.