Backlink

Backlinks (or back-links (UK)) are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). 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.

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 (Björneborn and Ingwersen, 2004). Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.

Search engine rankings

Search engines often use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the factors for determining that website's search engine ranking. Websites often employ various techniques (called search engine optimization) to increase the number of backlinks pointing to their website.

There are several factors that determine the quality of a backlink. The most important factor is the page rank of the web page giving the backlink. Backlinks from highly ranked sites are of good quality. Another factor is the subject of the pages which are linked by a backlink. If both sites are discussing the same topic, the backlink is relevant and of good quality. Third, important factor is the anchor text of the backlink. If the anchor text is related to the theme of the website that the link is pointing to, then it is called a good quality backlink. A good quality backlink will increase the page rank of your website.

Obtaining backlinks from search engines

Most commercial search engines provide a mechanism to determine the number of backlinks they have recorded to a particular web page. For example, Google can be searched using (or ) to find the number of pages on the Web pointing to http://wikipedia.org/.

[http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ Yahoo!’s Site Explorer] is a method of obtaining the number of backlinks on a site.

Technical

When HTML was designed, there was no explicit mechanism in the design to keep track of backlinks in software, as this carried additional logistical and network overhead.

Some website software internally keeps track of backlinks. Examples of this include most wiki and CMS software.

Other mechanisms have been developed to track backlinks between disparate webpages controlled by organizations that aren't associated with each other. The most notable example of this is TrackBacks between blogs.

See also

* Google bomb
* Linkback
* Link farm
* Methods of website linking
* PageRank
* Search Engine Optimization

References

*

External links

* [http://www.kfblog.com/2007/11/15/how-to-check-backlinks-to-your-blog-website/ How to check backlinks to your blog/website?]
* [http://www.mdswebstudios.com/resources/SEO/backlinks.php Backlinks: What are they, how you get them, and what they do for you]