Backlink, Why Important And How To Use Them
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.
They are also a way to increase the number of people that visit your site from other pages. Finally, it is a nice ego boost when other webmasters think highly enough of your site to be willing to send some of their readers to your site. This obviously means you have created something they consider useful, interesting or of value.
But, what is a search engine? I hear you ask. Search Engines are amazing pieces of code that allow users to search for specific words or series of words among the ocean of information the internet is. Without them we would have to hear about a specific site and know its address in order to read its information. Search engines make web browsing and searching much easier.
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.
Page Rank is made up of a a patent protected formula that computes a number of elements like content and number of backlinks. Each link is seen as a vote from one website to another. If the website that points to your page is high ranking the value of the it is much higher. Relevance also plays an important part . If your client or potential viewer is looking for a page on autocad manuals the search engine is going to give you a higher page rank if you have plenty of links with sites that also talk about autocad manuals. This congruency of subjects is also measured by looking into the actual anchor text.
Anchor text is composed of the words you must click on to navigate from one page to another. A link will be much more valuable for a search engine if it contains anchor text that describes the content and agrees to the keywords used to make the 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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