What is the meaning of the word backlink? It is a chunk of text, or even a picture, that joins two websites, pages or even sections within the same page. The page you are now reading no doubt has many of them. They are normally highlighted in blue and underlined. Strictly speaking I have just described a link. Backlinks are links that point back to a website. They are very useful for webmasters, the managers of websites, because they allow people to visit their site. Before the creation of search engines they were the only way internet users had to find a specific site.

What is their significance? They are very valuable to website owners for various reasons. First they show that other readers and webmasters are interested in their site enough to recommend it to their readers. Second it is an avenue for more people to read their pages. Thirdly it is one of the factors that search engines take into account when deciding what Page Rank they give a particular page.

Why are they important? Webmasters treasure their backlinks because they are a way of indicating the popularity of their business or site. This holds true for two basic reasons. It is a great feeling when you see other people linking to your content, because it shows they value it and think their readers will care for it too. The other reason is their importance is search engine optimization. The number you have pointing to your site is one of the main factors search engines take into account to decide what ranking to give a particular page.

Page Rank is an important formula for internet users and website businesspeople. The formula is composed of a number of elements that combine the number of links that a website has pointing to it, the content, and its perceived quality as well as other factors that are not public disclosed by search engines. What we do know is that backlinks are an important part in page rank.

For instance if you do a search for French cooking lessons, it will favor websites that include those keywords prominently and often, that have backlinks from other sites that use those keywords and that have a history of providing quality information. All these factors work together to create a Page Rank.

For example if an internet user does a search for monkey astronauts and your site has hundreds of links with the words monkey astronauts in them you have a good chance of appearing at the top of the search list.

That is called the anchor text, the text that internet viewers see and must click on to take them to another site, page or section of a site. It is worth spending some time choosing the anchor text as search engines will look at the content of those that point away and towards your site when deciding what relevance your webpage has to a certain search.

How is it done? Increasing the number of backlinks your site is an important task for webmasters. This can be done by producing high quality news other sites want to backlink to and readers to view and by exchanging them with other sites, although this method is not as valuable from a SEO perspective.

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Learning how to get backlinks is something of a challenge for first time webmasters, but the truth is that you can learn everything you need to know to get started in five hundred words. Don\’t believe us? We\’ll prove it…

Don\’t be too Desperate

If you find a website with hundreds of links and they want to swap links with you, forget it. You\’re sharing the strength of that site with hundreds of other links, and putting a link on your site in exchange for four or five hits just isn\’t worth it. What you want to do is trade links with maybe ten or twenty popular sites who, themselves, are only sharing with maybe ten or twenty other sites.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is what we call the simple trick of using a few keywords in your web content. When you have anchored text, meaning linked text, you want to make sure that that anchored text is a hot keyword to improve your Google visibility. You can look up hot keywords on search engines to see what people are looking for, but the top one or two will always be pretty easy to take a guess at. For example, someone looking to buy a lawn chair will always type in \”Lawn Chair\”, and not, say \”Chair to sit on in the backyard\”.

Never Hesitate to Ask for a Linkswap

We mentioned that you want to save your linkswaps for reputable, high profile sites, right? Well when you\’re just starting out, how do you get the dot com celebrities to share some of their visitors with you? That\’s up to you. You can provide great content, you can offer a unique product or service, or maybe you can even get lucky and happen to email that webmaster when they\’re in a particularly great mood. It never hurts to ask, though, so never hesitate to ask. The worst that can happen is that they might say no.

Spy on the Competition

And see who\’s linking to them! Go visit the sites linking to them, and see if they\’re willing to trade with you, too. The funny thing about this method is that it guarantees that you\’re in competition, but… It also guarantees that you\’re IN the competition, and not sitting on the sidelines wishing that you were the one getting those links.

And Last but not Least: Link to the Best

Not who you\’re linked from. Now, of course, it can\’t hurt to have as many backlinks to your site out there as possible, but if you have a bunch of links on your site to crummy web pages, it can hurt your site\’s trust, in both the viewer\’s eyes and in Google\’s. Let anyone who wants to link to you, but be careful who you link to. If you link to the authorities on a subject, that improves your link\’s trust. So for, say, a site about pets, you could link to the American Kennel Society, but you probably wouldn\’t want to link to an AOL member\’s page about their poodle, Twinklebelle.

Mike Gates is an online marketer and recommends HostGator for hosting. HostGator is the cheapest web host. You can use hostgator coupon to get discount at the time of sign up.