Backlinks Explained

Wednesday, February 10, 2010
By Ryan Lindstrom

People who are new to Internet Marketing (IM) or who have just started a new web-based business may not be familiar with "backlinks," a very hot term in SEO (search engine optimization) circles. Understanding backlinks is important because they are critical to gaining high search engine rankings on Google.

Marketing a new web-based business is often accomplished through paid advertising using various services, such as AdWords, AdBrite, or paid ads on Yahoo or other sites. In these situations it is less critical to learn about and understand backlinks, in particular, and search engine optimization in particular. However, anyone who does want exceptional rankings in relevant keyword searches on Google or other major search engines needs to understand and utilize these strategies - or find a service that can provide this help.

What, then, are backlinks? These are hyperlinks - bits of text that you click on and are taken to another website - that take users back to your own website. Some search engines use backlinks in how they order or rank what they find in keyword searches.

Search engines rank data in different ways: Representing less than a quarter of the search engine market, Bing and Yahoo use factors intrinsic to your site itself. However, Google, a comparative giant in the search engine world, uses backlinks to order and rank its information. Therefore the placement of your website in the Google results of a keyword search is dependent on the backlinks your site has out there.

How does Google use backlinks? Remember that a hyperlink is a bit of text, and you can see that Google can consider that text as part of its search. This is called "anchor text" with respect to the link, and the source of this backlink also holds a certain level of authority or credibility. The combination of the anchor text and the authority of the site with the backlink in it is Google's data for concluding the ranking of your site.

So, suppose you have a start-up website based business and you would like backlinks to create and build a good search engine ranking. In early internet etiquette, you would have approached webmasters directly, requesting placement of a link at their site and offering to do likewise for them.

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