What are Backlinks and Why They are Important in SEO

For those of you who are new to SEO, we thought that this week would be as good as any to review backlinks; and for you veterans, a quick review!!

Just what are backlinks? Simply put, backlinks are links directed to your website; the more links to your site is a positive indication to the search engines as to how popular your site is.

Multiple inbound links to your website are great, but here’s the catch; the search engines take this process one step further, they actually look for “quality” or “relevant” links. For example, if your site is about kite flying, then the search engines look for links from similar sites – a weather condition site that monitors wind speed and direction is a good example. A bad example would be a random link from a site about insects or butterflies.

So how do you monitor your backlinks? There is a tool available called Domain Stats Tool and it displays the backlinks of a domain in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Also, the Backlink Builder Tool will search for websites with related content, which more than likely will link to your site.

When outlining your SEO plans just remember that backlinks are extremely important and should be a priority in your plan of action.

Visit us online for more information on search engine optimization.