Terminology: What are backlinks?

Backlinks, also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, are incoming links to a website or web page. In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node.

Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today, their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO). The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (for example, this is used by Google to determine the PageRank of a webpage). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.

How many sites are backlink to my site?

There are a number of free sites out there for you to track the number of backlinks you have. Just do a search for "backlink tools" on your favorite search engine or try one of these, Backlink Watch and Alexa. Write down the number of link and don't forget to track it.

How can I increase my backlinks?

There are a number of ways to increase your backlinks, but basically, it falls into two categories: either you buy them or do it the old fashion way, which I will explain more later.

(1) Buying Links

This can be contraversal depending which camp you talk to. There are folks who can tell you stories on how much it helped them increase page ranking (PR) and some who think its a complete waste of money. As an alternative, perhaps you can try TextLinks. They offer you free links to their network of blogs and articles. You can rerun your backlink tool at the end of the month how many links are currently linked to your site. Side note, the Page Authority (the higher the ranking, the more weight it has on the ranking) quality of these programs can vary and may even hurt your overall ranking. Try going to Open Site Explorer to see what the PA of these sites linking to you are.

(2) Old Fashion Way (in no specific order)

• Commenting on other Blog sites
  Many bloggers worry about why their posts/articles dont receive any comments, in reality you should be only worried about commenting on other blog sites. Commenting is the key to increasing backlinks. For every comment you leave on another blog site, eventually this may count as a backlink. It does take time for search engines to account for the link and attribute the backlink back to your site.


• Directory submissions
  Go to the major directories and submit your URL, sites suchs as Google, Yahoo and Bing and the niche sites such as Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, Digg Comments, Yahoo! Directory, del.icio.us, Flickr and DMOZ. If you don't want to manually submit your site to each of these directiers, there are services that can help automate this process. You will get both the good and the bad directiers.


• Video, Blogs and Articles
  If relavant, create a blog and or video page on your site. You should only put quality content relavant to your topic. We all know the differences between a good and bad blog (or video site). The good ones are the ones that people would link to, comment and reference. If you are not a writer, try inviting guest writers or folks to interview for a webinar or write about a product/service that you have experience with. Not only should you post your material on your own site, don't forget about posting it on YouTube and Vimeo for your videos and squidoo.com and ehow.com for articles.


• Press Releases
  

  Press releases used to be written by public relations professionals exclusively for the media. The media (primarily huge news conglomerates and major trade publications) would then determine what would interest their readers, and/or was fit to print. The editor, publisher or producer had the final say end of story.

  Today companies can gain better control of how their news is distributed, thanks to the online news release, one of the most important marketing tools your company can possess.

  With online news releases companies dont have to send news releases only when big news is happening, and only to journalists. They can appeal directly to buyers and most importantly your news can be used to drive people into the purchasing cycle.

  Now organizations are able to use their news to build online visibility, increase rankings in search engines and appear on highly trafficked news sites. There are a number of free and fee based press releases avaialable, check out PRWeb and PR.com.



• Link Exchanges
  Have you heard of the show Wife Swap? Same concept, you swap links with other sites. Links can normally text or image based, the ones you see with a hyperlink or an image banner across most websites. There are link exchange programs that will swap links within their network, again, beware of low PA. Many services now can filter out the unwanted sites such as gambling or get rich programs.
• Link Bait
  Offer something enticing for users to link to you. For example, have a contest or a giveaway.

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