Importance of Backlinks

How you end up near the top of any search results actually ties in closely with the algorithm that search engines use to ‘rank’ websites. Different search engines would do this differently of course, but it is only logical to focus first on the largest and most widely-used search engine of them all: Google.

Far as Google goes, there is one thing that has been proven to affect search engine rankings, and that is actual links by other third-party websites to your own, which are called ‘backlinks’.

For all purposes and effects, these ‘backlinks’ are counted as ‘votes’ regarding the quality of your website, and is based on the logic that the more websites that are actually linking too you, the better your website must be.

Due to this, one of the ways to start scaling search engine results is to start building up a reliable base of backlinks. Admittedly, the ‘quality’ of those backlinks does count too, and link-exchanges do not tend to work anywhere near as well as a backlink from a high authority (and high Page Ranked) website.

Note: Page Rank is basically a quantity, between 0 and 10, which Google assigns to websites based on how ‘good’ its algorithm thinks they are.

Later on, we’ll talk about social bookmarking, but at this juncture it should be enough to note that social bookmarking is one way to get backlinks.

Similarly directories are too, as are forums and blog commenting. We’ll be discussing the latter two a bit later on too. But for now, that should suffice.

Warning: Do not build backlinks ‘too fast’ or Google could latch onto your website and penalize you. Backlink building is fine, but ‘spam’ is not, and if you’re getting 1000 new backlinks in a short span of time, it could end up being flagged.