For a new site, does it matter which sites I get back links from first? I.e., are the first back links more important than later ones?

[sigma3x]

I've heard that when a site is new, the sources from which it gets its first back links are very important -- that the early links are more important for ranking than later links. Is this true. If so, what would be some good places to get these very first links?

Thanks.

[sigma3x]

Appreciate the wealth of information, Harald!. Thanks for the massive list of back link sources and for the comments regarding good vs. poor back link quality.

[sigma3x]

Thanks very much, Ryan, for explaining how the ratio works. That's exactly the information I needed to understand this issue. Thanks also for the great advice.

[sigma3x]

Thank you, Kane, for the good tips and for the great links. Very helpful.

[mediabase]

Hi Kenneth, A backlink is a link from another website to yours and they form the basis of Google rankings. The more quality backlinks to your site (or lens), the more attention you're going to get from Google. Google's algorithm is based on avoiding spam filled sites, a thousand low quality links will not compete with a handful of high quality ones.

So what do I mean by quality? Well first of all the sites linking to you should be as relevant to your lens as possible, if your sites about games then get links from gaming websites! The second factor in quality is pagerank, pagerank is a number between 1-10 that Google gives to a website, the higher the number the more important a site is to Google.

A backlink is basically a vote from another site to your site, by linking to you a site is basically telling Google 'Hey check out this site, its great!' The higher the pagerank of a site the more Google is going to pay attention. There are countless ways to get backlinks to your site and getting good quality backlinks is a large focus of ranking highly in Google.

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Building Backlinks

Backlinks form the key of your traffic and search engine ranking, so how do you go about building these backlinks? The most important thing is to try build DoFollow links, NoFollow links don't hurt your rankings and may still bring you traffic, but they are not as helpful in getting a high Google ranking. (See the No/DoFollow Section for more information). There are numerous ways to build backlinks including:

**Forums - **One of the best and most simplest ways to promote your sites. Sign-up for some forums related to your niche/keyword, place a link to your lens in your signature and build a backlink everytime you make a post. Be sure to keep your posts full of quality and you'll start seeing traffic coming from these forums aswell. This is also a great way to promote multiple lenses, by placing more then one lens in your signature you can build backlinks for numerous lenses at once! Having trouble finding good quality forums? 
Directories - Personally I no longer submit to directories, they are a waste of time. They bring little to no traffic (in most cases none) and are created by people to earn money, they don't care about your site in the slightest (with the exception of a few directories.) To make the most of directories you have to use the paid link options. This makes sure your link gets approved within the same year and you'll get a good link placement. Submitting to a few of the major directories doesn't hurt, but don't waste too much time here.

Articles - Article submission can take alot of time, but it's often well worth it, articles are indexed quickly by google and often rank very highly themselves, giving you a large rank boost since they link directly to your lens. Writing articles can be very easy or hard depending on your lens topic. Don't ever submit the same article to more then one submission site, you must make every article unique which can be time consuming.

-Social Media/Social BookMarking - Digg & StumpleUpon are both examples of social media sites, and are one of the newest ways to promote your lens, these sites give good backlinks and its very easy to get your lens on them (usually doesn't require any approval). There are literally thousands out there, so get socialising! There are just way too many to list here or even link to, I will discuss my favourites later on, if you're after regularly updated lists, I suggest joining the forums also listed below.

-Other Blogs/Lens - Getting a link on a related lens is very easy on Squidoo, it's called the discovery tool, so there's little work to be done here. If you have other lenses and/or blogs put your links on them, don't forget to use anchor text! Other ways include featured lenses and groups.

Helpful Backlinks To Get You Started

There are countless ways to get links to your site, the best way to stay updated about them all is to join some webmaster forums, place your lens in your signature and promote while you learn! Below are the sites that you should submit EVERY lens to, these should be your first steps after you first create a lens. There are thousands of sites like the ones listed below, but this list will only feature GOOD and QUALITY places to build backlinks.

• The Kingdom of Squidoo, Lenslike, Squidoo Directory, SquidUp
  Lens orientated directories just for us Lensmasters!
• Wizzley
• Zujava Is just like Squidoo and a great place to build up some backlinks and drive some extra traffic to your lenses.
• Ezine Articles
  Best article site around, write and submit your own article.
• MyLot A highly active website full of discussion on any and every topic. Signup, add your lenses to your profile page and get easy backlinks and traffic.
• SocialMarker
  Want to get listed on 49 great social sites easily? SocialMarker can help you there, it lists links to all submit pages, saving you time.
• Reddit
  Add unlimited lenses to Reddit, very quick and easy it also features a PageRank of 8!
• InfoTiger
  Quick and indexed regularly.
• IceRocket
  Accepts Blogs/Lens on anything, PageRank 5 and a great site layout.
• LensRoll
  Another one just for lensmasters.
• Stumpedia
  Half search engine + half social media = 1 great quality backlink.
• DMOZ
  Best free directory around, acceptance is not guaranteed, but its definetely worth a try, you can also submit RSS feeds.
• FeedAge
  Another free RSS submission site, another great backlink.
• FeedAgg
  Submit your RSS feed for free, not only keeps your lens regularly indexed by Google, but counts as a high quality backlink.
• Viral Bookmarking
  Get your Social bookmarking links a boost.

I think that using .org as your first back link source is most important.I think that your query had been solved.editor's note: see http://www.squidoo.com/rank-first-on-google for complete post

[RyanKent]

Kane's answer is solid and gets a thumbs up from me. I would add a bit more detail to directly respond to your inquiry.

I've heard that when a site is new, the sources from which it gets its first back links are very important -- that the early links are more important for ranking than later links.

The primary concern is the first links are authentic, quality links. If your site has 100 quality links and then gathers 50 junk links, your link ratio of quality links vs spam show 66% quality links. If the first links to your sites were free directories, spam blog articles and other inorganic links then you can quickly show a link profile with 100% spam links which can cause ranking issues.

Your profile is not complete so I cannot tell what industry your site focuses. Let's say you sell watches. Some suggested first links you could acquire:

BBB (Better Business Bureau)

DMOZ / Yahoo / Business.com - other high quality directories

MasterCard SecureCode, Verified by Visa - programs offering secure shopping sites

Authorized retailer links from Seiko, Rolex, Casio, etc.

Share a couple "best on the web" quality articles on other sites discussing topics of interest such as "Watches - Does the Brand Matter?", "Watches of James Bond", etc.

Write top-quality reviews of specific watches and share them

Create short videos showing watches in detail and people using them

Distribute high quality images of the watches

Offer discounts to certain groups. For examples, 20% off all watches to graduates of (insert local university name) for 90 days after graduation. The university may provide a link to your site.

The list goes on. This is the point where I would suggest reaching out to the links Kane shared.

[KaneJamison]

The early links are important early on yes, though I want to clarify that the later links can't be junky ones. Also, you have to build links at a steady pace - don't build a ton right after you launch the site and then stop - that's bad.

Balance your link building efforts with your content efforts. I'd say for most sites, you probably shouldn't spend more time link building than you're spending on content creation.

What types of links you get will be somewhat dependent on what type of website you're promoting. A blog and a small business will have different strategies, for example, though there's definitely some overlap. If you feel like letting us know the type of site or the niche we can probably give a more targeted answer.

There's plenty of great link building posts on SEOMoz, but here are a few good places to start for someone who hasn't done much link building in the past:

• Growing Popularity & Links / What is Link Building? - SEOMoz Beginner's Guide to SEO, Chapter 7
• Complete List of Link Building Strategies - Point Blank SEO

I would give you more resources, but completing all of the items mentioned in the second link should probably take you years, since many of them are never ending strategies.