Getting backlinks

In the good ol' days of eHow, WCP writers could just about choose good keywords, and write a quality article and nothing more. That's often all that was needed to get ranked in the search engines because eHow had such good SEO and ranked so high on most topics.

Around last summer, it began to get tougher to get your articles ranked. Even some articles that had long since been ranked on the first page of google search results, began to slip, and in some cases, simply disappeared in the search results. Most people responded in one of three ways. Either they lamented the fact on the forums, asking others what was going on, or they suffered in silence. The third reaction was to go out and get more backlinks to their articles. This last reaction is the right one. Not that there is anything wrong with complaining or questioning on the forums -- that's a good idea because it brings problems out into the open and helps people learn. But in terms of getting articles ranked in search results, the ones who got more backlinks will always do better. In some cases, it helped and their ranking returned -- and with it their earnings. In some cases, it didn't help for very long (because another problem crept up: the UK site). Soon nothing seemed to help. And why were the search results for eHow articles changing so much anyway?  Good question. It seems apparent now that eHow was tinkering with its own SEO in a way that left WCP writers floundering and scrambling. They had been blindsided by eHow's changes, which favored different parts of the site over individual articles. Then suddenly the whole thing came to light when WCP writers began finding their articles ranking in search results on the first page again -- but for the eHow UK site. And the rest is still history in the making.

One lesson learned (hopefully) is that backlinks are very important to any writer, no matter what the writer's site. Good, anchored backlinks are one of the most important ways to get ranked in search results. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and start linking! But I wouldn't work on backlinks to your eHow articles just yet. You might end up having to go back and redo them all (the ones you can redo) later, if things are not resolved to your satisfaction. So work on getting good backlinks to your blogs, sites, and articles that are elsewhere, not on eHow, for the time being. 

Make sure, as much as possible, that you give yourself anchored backlinks.