All Ado About SEO Backlinks

Most website owners may have heard by now about SEO backlinks, probably from SEO consultants promising increases in web traffic and online revenues by enhancing a website's online presence. If you are a website owner who's just about to decide whether or not to embark on an SEO campaign, or if you just want to know more about the practice of backlinking, here are answers to your most basic questions:

What are SEO backlinks and why do I need them?

Backlinks are hyperlinks on other webpages that refer back to your site. It means that an outside site has alluded to your site, and that it can redirect its reader back to your site by means of an internet link, if the reader wanted to.

Backlinks not only send visitors from other sites to your site; they can also enhance (or destroy) your reputation on the whole wide Web. This is because most search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing) consider these links as a sort of 'popularity vote' in favor of (or against) your site.

By this logic, the more popular you are, the higher your rank in the search result page. Building SEO backlinks is the conscious process (i.e. search engine optimization) of improving your popularity on the Internet, by making your website a 'reference point.'

Does having more links mean higher ranking?

The answer is a qualified yes. To borrow from showbiz, your 'popularity' could be the result of either good publicity or bad publicity. As things stand now, quality rather than quantity is more important in gaining ranking points from backlinks.

Observing search results and thence deducing their basis, it appears that votes (backlinks) count more if they are from 'authority sites' (sites that are long-established and are themselves high-ranking) or if the links are from 'relevant sites' (those that have content related or similar to your site) - this is good publicity.

Bad publicity means links that come from poorly-ranked sites, or referrals from sites that cater to a niche that is vastly different from your site. Beware: Google is known to penalize sites if they are backlinked from these negatively-regarded websites.

What must I do to have good links leading back to me?

There are different paths towards this end. Since the issue that needs to be addressed is relevance, it would do you good in the long term to pay more attention to your own content, making sure you have full- or near-expertise in what you post about. Eventually, you will establish yourself as an authority site.

Also, plan ahead. Select the proper keyword (the word or phrase that users will most likely type in the search box), and be known for this topic. When building backlinks (either through your own SEO campaign or via agreement of other sites), encourage to do so only on sites that are related to your topic or business.

Although the above are not based on exact science (search engines do not disclose their formula for evaluating a site), building SEO backlinks this way has a proven history of success.