What are Backlinks, and Why Do I Need Them?
If you own a website, then you’re probably aware of the term backlink. It’s in every website owner’s interest to become familiar with backlinks and how they affect your website and overall online business.
What Are Backlinks?
Backlinks, which are sometimes called inbound links, are incoming links to either a specific web page or an entire website (home page). These incoming links to your website are important to search engines because their ranking algorithms measure the number of backlinks a website or web page has and ranks the web pages with more backlinks in a higher position.
Consider each backlink a vote for your site or web page. The more backlinks you get, the more votes you have, and search engines are going to rank your website or web page higher in their search listings.
Why Do I Need Backlinks?
Your goal as a webmaster and online business owner is to get as many “votes” for your website as possible so that it becomes popular in the eyes of search engines.
Once your site becomes popular, it’s then considered an authority. Obviously this is important for every website owner as they’re goal should be to stick out and stand above the thousands of other websites in their chosen field (niche).
How Do I know How Many Backlinks I Have?
There are numerous tools to determine how many incoming links a website has. Utilizing at least one of these tools is important as this will help you analyze not only your own progess but also your competition.
I personally prefer Yahoo! Site Explorer. You can view all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search, view the most popular pages from any site, view the total number of backlinks to a site, and more.
Now, another method to check backlinks is to login to your Google Webmasters account. I highly recommend getting an account as you can learn a lot about your website and how it’s indexed, discover any errors that your website is causing, and much more. The problem with using your Google Webmasters account to view the number of backlinks your site has is that Google doesn’t show all of them. Supposedly, they’re supposed to now, but people are still reporting different. So, I would say to use Yahoo! Site Explorer for the time being, or you can also use one of these other tools:
- http://seopro.com.au/free-seo-tools/link-checker/
- http://validrank.com/pages/backlinks-checker.php
- http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/link-popularity.html
Your goal with getting backlinks is twofold – You want as many backlinks to your site as possible, and you also want to get more backlinks than your competition, which is any website in your niche that is currently ranking higher than you in search engines for your targeted keywords.
What’s Next?
My next post is going to cover the relationship between backlinks and search engine rankings and how to properly use backlinks to get the most positive affect from them.
Still not sure what importance backlinks serve? Got any questions regarding backlinks or anything else? Go ahead… ask away…
Tags: backlinks, inbound links, online business, search engine rankings
Related posts...
Tagged with: backlinks • inbound links • online business • search engine rankings
Filed under: Link Building • online business
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Great Post! Yea backlinks is neccessary, i agree. thanks for the post man!
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@Samuel,
Glad you liked it, Samuel. Thanks for visiting and hope to see you around more often.
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Twitter: DennisEdell
says:
You put an interesting thought in my head. I may just do a post on how I personally see backlinks and inbound links in two different lights.
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..A Personal Post – Do Not Skim =-.
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing,
Funny… now I’m the one with an interesting thought in my head.
I’ll be looking forward to that if you do it.
[Reply]
Hi Alan
I’ve learned something new here. Thanks for sharing.
Michael
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@Michael,
Glad you were able to learn something new from this, Michael! You may be interested in my most recent post.
Glad to have you here and hope you’ll stick around.
[Reply]
Yes backlinks are too important to gain SERP. Backlinks from high PR sites can boost the site quickly. Thanks…
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@TriForce,
Right! Glad you liked the post, and thanks for stopping by.
[Reply]
Hi Alan,
Yes backlinks to our business is like water to our body – we need it for survival and ranking. However I recently learned in a course I took from Brian Johnson that Google gives higher ranking for websites that pass the “trust” factor. I went to work on my site using Brian’s method and put it to test on my niche website and it worked. That website has only 2 backlinks and is on Google’s page 1, #2 position and has remained there all because Google trusts my site.
The lesson I learned is that while backlinks are very important and will get you to the top spot, I think Google looks for much more about your website although as usual it is not telling
(what else is new)
Peter
.-= How to Make Money Blogging´s last blog ..Discover How EzArticleLink Auto Creates Backlinks For Your Blog =-.
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@How to Make Money Blogging,
Hey Peter,
That’s quite interesting. I wonder if there are any sources that would be able to even vaguely detail what Google looks for in a site to “trust” it? Right now my micro niche site is sitting #1, and I’ve only built a few backlinks to it as well.
[Reply]
backlinks are useful but theres no substitute for one way links, unfortunately they can be hard to obtain
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@neil@online reporting,
Backlinks are very easy to obtain actually. This post may be helpful for you: http://www.replaceyoursalary.com/work-from-home-blog/search-engine-optimization/how-to-properly-use-backlinks-to-increase-search-engine-rankings. Scroll clear to the end to find out how to get one way backlinks to your site.
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I agree that Google Webmaster Tools never show updated information. Personally I use SEO Spyglass (http://www.link-assistant.com/seo-spyglass/)…or rather, my competitors backlinks
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@Per H. Jørgensen,
Never heard of SEO Spyglass before. Looks useful. Do you have the free or pro edition?
[Reply]
@Alan,
I use the pro edition. It is pretty good, gives you much more info than other tools I have seen – domain pr, page pr, domain age, ip nr, whether the lins are nofollow or dofollow etc. etc.
It is recommeded by a couple of SEO experts here in Denmark, so maybe you should have a closer look at it
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@Per H. Jørgensen,
Cool… yeah I’ll have to take a closer look at it then. Thanks!
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Good article, i am currently trying to understand all the SEO bits needed as i build my minisite, will be checking out a few other posts here, many thanks
.-= Steve´s last blog ..China Wholesale Dropshippers and Affiliate reviews- Dropshipping News Headline =-.
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@Steve,
Awesome. Best wishes on your minisite. If you have any SEO related questions feel free to ask.
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I pretty agree with your point. I think when building back-links the quality of the links that you are acquiring should be in priority since links quality is more important than link quantities. That’s why often time you see a website that has less back-links outrank a sites that have more back-links.
Oil painting art´s last [type] ..Comment on Concrete Advice For Fine Art Collectors by Anita Gridley
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@Oil painting art,
You’re right… quality is always more important than quantity.
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Backlinks plays a crucial role and its very important to work on it. Without quality backlinks we cannot expect our websites to rank in Google but we should also think over building too many in a short period because its a tricky procedure and the site may get penalized.
[Reply]
Alan Mater
Twitter: AMater
@Brian@denver condos,
There really isn’t an issue of building too many in a short time, unless you’re building thousands and thousands in a couple of hours.
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