Can anybody furnish an intro to backlinks? Most of the time i don;t even use them because a set of links to sites competing for my users eyeballs would seem a detriment.
But then getting caught up in the whole SEO maximation rage..
Backlinks are incoming links to a website. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website.
Search engines often use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the factors for determining that website's search engine ranking. Google's PageRank algorithm uses backlinks to help determine a site's rank. You can determine the approximate number of backlinks a website has when doing a search at Google by adding "link:" before the website's URL.
hmmn. thanks etech peter. These seo rules seem to be another stink bomb thrown into the mirk of online competition. Too bad people figure out ways to get around the rules and drive traffic that may not even be genuine, just makreting driven.
One should not be satisfied with merely getting a number of backlinks. It's the Quality and not Quantity of the links that matter in search engines particularly Google. A search engine considers the content of the site to determine the Quality of a link. Inbound links coming from sites which have content related to your site are considered more relevant links. The higher the relevance of the links the greater is their quality.
Another thing that you should pay attention to is the anchor text used in your backlinks. Obviously you want to use your keywords, but you should also vary it slightly so that the backlinks look more natural.
Backlinks help your search engine rank. The higher the PR not for sure the higher you site will rank but that PR will be passed down or some of it. So more the higher the PR and higher the search engine rank. But also google will rank them higher if there are related and also not link trades etc.