backlinks

[bellab]

please can someone explain exactly what backlinks are and how they work?????

[roban]

Backlinks are links to your site from other sites. They are only important if they are from relevant sites. If you sell auto parts a link from a site that sells underwear is not relevant but a link from a site that sells tires is.

Google places importance and in some part determines your Page Rank based on the number and relevance of links from other sites to yours and the Page Rank of the site linking back to you is also a consideration. A site linking back to you with a PR of 5 has more weight than a site with a PR of 2.

If you are seeking back links most Web Masters require that you already have a link to them before they will link back to you. Your link to another site must not be more than 1 click away from your landing page.

There is no guarantee that even if you have a link to another site that they will link back to you and if they do, you will have to check on the links regularly to make sure they still exist.

There is plenty of controversy around Page Rank and its importance. The end result for any marketing effort is to drive targeted visitors to your site and in my opinion backlinks are only a small part of a site's optimization efforts.

Here's a brief list of what the SE's expect:

1. Links
All major crawlers would like to see other relevant sites link to yours. At the same time, all three discourage the use of link farms and irrelevant link exchange programs.
2. Information and content
Search engines would like to see content-rich sites that are created for people, not search engines. This means no doorway pages, cloaking, stuffing text with irrelevant terms and so on. Instead, create a site that your users and potential clients will find valuable. Search engines will follow.
3. Dynamic pages
Don’t use over-complicated URL structures. Long URLs with different parameters are harder for search engines to index. In case of Google, they may be buried in the supplemental index (backup database).
4. Static text links
Search engines follow more pages by crawling your web site. To make this process easier, make sure that all pages are connected with a static text link. You can achieve this by employing a good navigational structure and creating a site map.
5. Keywords
Use descriptive, relevant keywords throughout your web site (without over-doing it). Search engines differ in what tags they index, so we recommend an approach that addresses every potential tag. Use your keywords in the text of your web site, in the HTML title, meta description and keyword tags and in the ALT tags.
6. Robots.txt
Google, MSN and Yahoo encourage all webmasters to make use of the robots.txt file. This helps search engines know which parts of your web site should or should not be indexed and which search engines have the permission to do so.
7. HTML
To make it easier for the crawlers and for your users, use well-formed HTML on your pages. You can use W3C’s Markup Validation Service to check your pages for errors.
8. Spam
Not surprisingly, search engines don’t want the sites in their index to use any spam optimization techniques. Examples of “black hat SEO” include using irrelevant keywords on your pages, creating doorway pages, cloaking, participating in link farms and so on.

The above list is extracted from my SEO site peconicseo.com.

I don't use back links anymore. I think they are more trouble than they are worth. I am sure there is disagreement to this but I find content is more important and more reliable. If you offer great information on your site, people will come.

[Alfred23]

A backlink is the incoming link to your website. One important part of backlinks is the anchor text. You need to use words and phrases that fit your site as the anchor text of your links.

[piaciaperry]

Backlinks have become so important to the field of Search Engine Optimization, which have become some of the key pillars for a good SEO. BackLinks are links, which are targeted to the site. Also known as inbound links (IBL's). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that site. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, Google in particular, greater recognition of sites that have a good amount of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages of search queries.

[Zita123]

In my point of view, backlinks are nothing but incoming links to a website or web page, where it generate a link to your website from other website.

Backlinks are very important factor in SEO because it increases traffic to a website as well as gives high rank in Search Engine like Google.

[C0ldf1re]

... Google places importance and in some part determines your Page Rank based on the number and relevance of links from other sites to yours...

Are you sure that Google has cracked the relevance bit yet?

[The Old Sarge]

C0ldf1re,

I think the SEs rely on keywords and the occurance thereof to determine the relevance issue.

And along that same train of thought, how do they know when someone is "stuffing" IRrelevant keywords?

[Vambracelets]

Use odesk to hire people to get you backlinks. You can work directly with them and get exactly what you want.

[izapharry]

Back link are no of sites which provide you links and these back links are very important for ranking in Google , You can read Google beginner guide for SEO


BEst of luck

[C0ldf1re]

... And along that same train of thought, how do they know when someone is "stuffing" IRrelevant keywords?

Yes. I have just written a blog post about growing roses, and afterwards realised that the words "pest" and "mulch" occur just as often as the word "rose". If a human can tell the relevance of these associated words, Google should be able to analyse genuine texts and then build a database of associated words. This could then flag irrelevant keywords in a body of text.

[The Old Sarge]

Wouldn't be nice to peek behind the SE/algo curtain for just a few moments? Imagine the secrets awaiting discovery ...

[JEccles]

Wouldn't be nice to peek behind the SE/algo curtain for just a few moments? Imagine the secrets awaiting discovery ...

I don't know - I get visions of the finale of Raiders of the Lost Ark when I imagine it. Don't feel like having my eyeballs melt out of my head

[The Old Sarge]

lol That's downright GRUESOME, Janet. lol

[liamhowell]

Backlinks (also known as Inbound Links) are the links that are pointing to your website/blog. A website owner/SEO specialist must select only those sites that are related to the website he/she is promoting. Quality backlinks are also considered to be one of the main factors in search engine rankings.

[barog]

backlink is more important than content