Posted: 04-07-2006
Author: purva Mewar

As a SE Optimizer or someone building your business website yourself, you are sure to have come across the term "backlink". Backlinks hold an important place in the field of Search Engine Optimization. It is one of several criteria considered by search engines when indexing and driving traffic to your site. We will concentrate on importance of backlinks here.

Building quality backlinks is very crucial for Search Engine Optimization, and it should be given the importance it deserves and therefore necessary efforts should be made to optimize the site. Understanding importance of backlinks and its application can make or mar your efforts to drive traffic to your website. Now let's understand why you need good quality incoming or inbound links to your site.

Search Engine Optimization is a technique with the help of which websites' position in the search engine is decided. If your next question is "how does ranking higher on the search engines help?" let me answer it for you. The higher you are positioned in SEs the more traffic you will generate. The more the traffic, better are the chances of sales and profitability.

There are many factors that decide your position on the search engines. Backlinks are one of them. In this article I will try to explain the role and importance of backlinks in Search Engine Positioning.

Backlinks are the links that point towards your site. These backlinks to your site could be found on forums, blogs, other sites of similar or dis similar nature anywhere across the net. backlinks are also known as Inbound Links.

Link Popularity and number of backlinks are directly proportional to each other. The more the backlinks, the better the popularity of a site. Backlinks are very crucial for Search Engine Optimization and Ranking. Some Search Engines, especially Google gives a lot of importance to the number of backlinks a website has. Google considers website more credible that others on the basis of number of quality backlinks it has and considers them more accurate and relevant in their results pages for a search queries.

Please note that quality backlinks and relevant backlinks are two very important considerations. A backlink from a site that has quality content plus content related to the theme of your site will hold you in a much better stead than a back link coming from a poorly designed or optimized site. Or from a site that has nothing to do with the theme of your site.

Building backlinks is a continuous process. And it should ideally happen over a period of time. Sometimes webmasters or search engine optimizers do try to tweak or manipulate the search engine but the bubble bursts sooner than later. Organic backlinks building is the only legitimate way to rise up the search engines.

Webmasters or search engine optimizers should keep a few things in mind. Internal linking helps only to the extent of facilitating navigation for the visitor. It doesn't help your position is search engines in any way as it is sometimes claimed. Reciprocal linking with substandard or irrelevant sites does not help. It has also been observed that people who operate say 6 websites link them with each other but the same IP number that all these sites share nullifies the effect. Linking too many websites from the same IP number may harm. Few, say one or two can work. These are very important facts that you should always bear in mind.

Simplest techniques are best to follow and get results. Try getting lots of quality sites link to your site. Build them over a period of time. Don't be in a hurry to build backlinks lest search engines develop doubt. Avoid a bad neighbor at all costs.