Backlinks. What are they? Why Are They Important?

Monday, November 3rd 2008, by Adam Barger

If you've been trying to figure out how to get listed on top of Google, Yahoo, and MSN then you've probably heard of the term "backlinks" by now. What exactly is a "backlink"? A backlink is a text link from another website to your website. Backlinks are an essential part of how your rank on major search engines is determined. In general search engines figure if you have a lot of links coming from other websites to your website then your website must be more relevant. The more relevant a search engine thinks your site is... the better ranking you get.

Before you go off trying to get all kinds of links to your website from other sites there are some important things to keep in mind when it comes to backlinks. In this article I'll cover some of the basic things you need to consider when it comes to backlinks.

1. Make sure the keyword or phrase your're targeting is in your backlink.

All search engine optimization strategies begin with keyword research. If you haven't already done so you'll need to figure out what kind of keywords people are likely to type into a search engine to find a site like yours. Once you've determined which keywords and phrases you'd like to target you'll want to make sure those keywords and phrases are included in your backlinks. For example: Here at WebStarts we want people to make the link portion of text backlinks to be only the words Free Website. Because we'd like to rank high for the term 'Free Website' So many times a linking site may display Create A Free Website With WebStarts but only the Free Website portion actually links to our homepage.

2. Try to get links from relevant authortive websites.

When it comes to getting backlinks you want to make sure you get what are referred to as "quality links". A quality link is one that comes from another website that's subject matter is relevant to your own, has been around a while, and hopefully has some pagerank. In addition you want to stay away from sites that have an entire page of outbound links. Pages that trade links or give away links too freely are often time considered non-authorative. One of the best ways to get links is to contact people who blog about your particular product or service and ask them to do a review or make a press release. A link from a major news site never hurts.

3. Where and how to get backlinks.

Getting backlinks can be a difficult task. No matter what the case getting good quality backlinks is going to take some time and a whole lot of work. There are some easy ways to get backlinks but a good rule of thumb is 'the harder it is to get a backlink the more valuable that link is'. That being said getting a few easy backlinks can help you get included on Google and get in the flow of getitng links. Some ways you can get easy backlinks are posting on forums and user-generated answer sites like Yahoo Answers.  These links don't carry a lot of weight but every link will help.

Some other good ways to get backlinks include press releases, article submissions, contacting local newspapers, bloggers, and really anyone who has a website that might be willing to do a write up of you and your company and provide a link to your site. Stay tuned for some of my upcoming articles as I elaborate on some of the ways you can get goodl quality backlinks to your website.