The issue with backlinks is quality. For a backlink to be counted by a search engine as good an that will help rank up your site it must fulfill a set of criteria to prove its quality. While search engines do not give out their code on this matter it essentially comes down to three things:

• Relevance - The site the backlink comes from must have some relevance to your site. Links from sites that are similar to your own will be counted more highly than those from sites that have no relevance to your site.
• Page Rank - The popularity of the site that the backlink comes from it very important. If a very large popular site links to you it is seen as a bigger endorsement than a bunch of very low page rank sites backlinking you.
• Originality - The content of the site that backlinks you must also be original content. Google punishes copied material and links from sites that are punished are punished accordingly also.

So now you know what a quality backlink is how do you get more of them? There are many ways this can be done. Some people advocate writing and submitting articles, posting on forums, making comments on blogs. Others talk about submitting their website to various internet directory. One directory that has an excellent reputation is called DMOZ, or the “Open Directory”. This directory is probably the most respected directory online today. The websites it contains have all been placed there by human editors; there is no “automation” to this directory. The only drawback that’s been discussed about this directory is that it takes so long to have a website included.

Another way that many people build backlinks for their website is to use Social Bookmarking websites. A “Social Bookmark” is a website that usually has a very popular ‘community’ aspect to it. Users sign up and create profiles on the sites that contain photos and information about themselves. They then can save “bookmarks” of favorite websites which can be itemized by ‘tags’, which are one or two word descriptions of what the sites contain, and these bookmarks can be saved to a list that’s private or can be listed publicly, so that everybody can see it.

Backlinks are one of the most important aspects you need to consider when you’re trying to build a higher ranking in the search engines. The search engines can perhaps find and index your site without backlinks, but without backing backlinks the search engines will never suggest your site to any of their visitors. Backlinks are essential for SearchEngine Optimization(SEO) because they help to judge the popularity and importance of the website based on their backlinks to other sites. Search engines use a number of standard criteria to rate sites on the web and backlinking is high on the list.  And Search engines can recognize quality link when they see one. Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. In other words, taking action to get your website to come up at the top of the list of returned websites when someone searches Google for your keyword. This is also known as the search engine results page or SERP. It is a combination of SEO and backlinks that will increase your page rank. What’s a page rank you ask?

Page Rank is simply a number Google gives your page based on how important it feels your page is. Google decides this number based on several factors including, you guessed it, backlinks.

Why should you care about page rank?

Page rank is a crucial part of the equation when it comes to deciding how high you rank on the search engine results page. A site with a higher page rank is going to come up higher on the list than a site with a lower page rank. We all know how much traffic a site listed on page one of google can get, and although it can be a difficult task to accomplish, however, one easy way you can help your site move up is with backlinks.

Google only updates PR every three months at best and during this time millions of new web pages are born that start off without any PR at all. When assessing your backlinks and you come across a page that appears to have a PR0 that has linked to you remember to check the PR of the home page because the subpage may have been created after the last Page Rank update and consequently won’t show any numbers on the green PR bar. Google also gives new websites a waiting period of three to four months before giving it any kind of Page Rank. This is referred to as the “sandbox effect”. Google search engine gives a lot of weight to backlinks that your site receives and the keywords that are used as anchor text in that link. Thats why Google’s Page Rank exists, to collect the votes (links) for your site and give a score (the Page Rank score).

Links from other sites would need to be something that is relevant to you site. The absolute best type of links are backlinks or one way links to your website. Linking to suspicious places is something else that you must avoid. While it is true that search engines do not punish you if you have backlinks from such places because it is supposed that you have no control over what bad guys link to, if you enter a link exchange program with the so called bad neighbors and you link to them, this can be disastrous to your SEO efforts. Link building (otherwise known as backlinks) are critical to driving guaranteed website traffic to you. Suddenly, you can get great surges in traffic and hopefully in revenue, if you have monetised your site.