If you have researched search engine optimisation the chances are you would have come across the term “backlink”. A backlink is essentially a hyperlink that is found on an external website (external to yours) that points back to your website. These are really important for SEO – search engines put a lot of weight behind them. As example, go into Google and search for the term “click here”. I bet the number one result is Acrobat Reader, right? How can Google put this at number 1??

If you log onto this website you won’t even be able to find the term “click here” on it once. So why does it get such a high result for this term? Well, the reason is simple. It’s because millions of sites all across the internet link back to this website with the anchor text “click here”. The anchor text is the text that appears over the top of the link. Search engines come to the conclusion that because so many other sites are linking to this site with the term “click here” it has to be the most important and relevant page on the net.

What’s a good backlink?

So with the click here example you can see that backlinks are very important ” but Google also checks out other factors. The backlinks that come from important sites (those with a great page rank) are considered a lot more important than those that come from sites with no page rank. If you can get a banklink from Wikipedia for example, this would be considered a very good quality backlink and Google will put more weight behind it.

Google also considers the quantity of backlinks, although this may not be as important as quality. The truth is, nobody really knows the Google algorithm.

Relevance is also considered by search engines. For example, if you have a backlink from a website that sells insurance to a website that offers advice on decorating then the relevance of these sites are completely different so the backlink will be considered of lesser quality.

Getting backlinks

Writing on forums with your backlinks in your signature is one method of generating backlinks. Another is to write blogs or articles. You must not ignore backlinks though if you are serious about getting on the front page of Google for your keyword term.

Related posts:

1. How Important Are Backlinks?
2. SEO: The Importance Of Backlinks
3. SEO: Backlinks and Their Importance
4. The Importance of Backlinks For SEO
5. Tips On The Best Ways To Create High Quality Backlinks And Why They Are Important

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