Search engines do not publish the algorithms they use, so there is no sure way of determining how exactly they rank pages. It is, however, common knowledge that backlinks play a vital role in ranking high in your targeted search results.
Backlinks or inbound links are incoming links from other Web sites that point to your Web site. More than telling other people that your site exists, backlinks have been proven valuable in the area of search engine optimization as they are known indicators of your site’s popularity, which is a determining factor of your site’s PageRank. The PageRank, in turn, is one of the more important considerations that search engine algorithms take into consideration when ranking your site.
That does not mean that you should just go and seed your Web site’s URL in a whole lot of pages. Link farms, in particular, have been known to lower your search engine rankings instead of increasing it. And there are a lot of services that offer you literally thousands of backlinks overnight, but your Web site ends up getting banned from search engine overnight!
Further, for search engine optimization purposes the backlinks would garner better results if it is placed on links that have high quality. High quality links are those that are relevant and ranks high in search engines. Higher ranking Web sites have higher credibility with search engines, for the same reason that sites that are part of link farms have lower page ranks. That credibility factor is carried over to your own Web site. Another way to establish credibility is the relevance of the site that features your links. If you have a bankruptcy-related Web site, for example, having a link from a crafts blog will not give you a high page rank.
Link trading or reciprocity is also frowned upon by search engines, primarily Google. It is seen as a way to artificially raise your page rank, so Google bypasses reciprocal links. This further strengthens the idea that the best backlinks are best when it is obtained organically, meaning in a natural way like when someone likes your site and blogs about it.
Search engine optimization is a dynamic process and a Herculean task precisely because search engines changes their rules every so often to ensure that the search results one gets is what one needs and reflects what is really popular. To maximize your SEO efforts on your site, have as many organic backlinks that point to your site one way from a high ranking and relevant source.
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In search engine optimization, backlinks are considered as important tools. For this reason, the building of backlinks is highly recommended.
Thank you Justin!
This is some fantastic advice. I’m keenly following along and looking forward to learning from you.