LocalSeoHelper.com

What Are Backlinks?

I am constantly amazed when I speak to website owners who are not really Internet professionals. These are smart people who may own business, perform professionals services, etc. They have a lot of knowlededge in their own fields. But they do not automatically understand the term backlinks!

Define Backlinks

This is so simple. They are simply links back to your site from :

• Another website (External Backlinks)
• Other pages on your own site (Internal Backlinks)

So if you have a blog on, say, improving your credit scores to get a home loan, and Mr. Smith runs a general financial blog, he may link back to one of your articles. This gives you a backlink!

Why Are Backlinks Important?

There are multiple reasons why your website must have backlinks coming in. The type and qualify of these backward links to your site can matter too.  Let me define 3 basic types of backlinks. But understand that one link can play more than one role.

• Pure Traffic – You simply want others to find links to your site and click o them so they visit you!
• Search Engine Rank Increase – The exact formula that the major search engines use to rank sites is secret and constantly evolving. That’s part of what makes SEO so challenging. However, we are all pretty sure that the quality and quantity of external links plays a big part in making a site rank higher. All things being equal, site A with no backlinks will not do as well as site B with hundreds of good qualify backlinks coming in.
• Anchor Text – Beyond just a quanity of links, the actual text that gets clicked matters. This text is called “Anchor Text”. It also helps the search engines decide what your website is about by reading what other websites have to say about it. So, sometimes if you want a backlink to your “Big Red Widgets” page, you should use text that says something like “Big Red Widgets”. You may vary that so sometimes it says, “Large Red Widgets” or “Colored Widgets”, etc. But you get the idea, right? If not, explore the subject of anchor text.

Which type of baclinks are better? You will find as many opinions on this as you will SEO professionals. If you are just starting out, of if your website is not performing that well, strive for a mix.

Is Anybody Linking To You?

You can find a lot of free and paid ways to analize your incomeing backlinks.  One simple and free way to get a pretty idea of your linking profile is to use the Yahoo Site Explorer. It will probably NOT show you every link, but it will give you a pretty good picture. If you register your site with Google Webmaster tools, you can also view a selection of your backlinks.

Why don’t these tools report on every single one? One reason may be they have not found them all yet. Another reason may be they do not ocnsider some of them important enough to list. The real answer is a mysterious as the logic of the search engines themselves!

Stay tuned as we explore more ways to build your website’s backlink profile!

Related posts:

1. What Is SEO?
2. How Article Marketing Works in 2011
3. The Big 3 Local Search Submissions