It might be the first time you hear the word backlink. What does it mean? It refers to a picture, or text, that joins to pages in a website, two websites or even sections within a page. This chunks of text join websites together like tunnels do with metro stations. If you press on a backlink with your mouse or keyboard you are taken to whatever destination the website designer wants you to go to. In the past this function was even more important because search engines did not exist and links were the only way to get people to visit your website.
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.
At this stage you might be asking yourself what a search engine is. It is simply a website that is used to search for certain keywords in the whole internet. This is a huge task, some have estimated that the internet has over 100 trillion words. Search engines have to sift through all those words and pages to try and find the best match to a users search. This is done by the use of a formula that computes the content of a page, its relevance to the keywords in the search, the number of links a webpage has and the quality of the site as a whole. The final value this formula provides is called the Page Rank.
Search Engines are programs that allow users to search for specific keywords in the internet. Sorting out the millions of pages that exist is hard work. This is the job of complex formulas that weigh up a number of factors to provide an ordered list of what pages it feels are more relevant to your site.
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.
For example if an internet user does a search for monkey astronauts and your site has hundreds of links with the words monkey astronauts in them you have a good chance of appearing at the top of the search list.
That is called the anchor text, the text that internet viewers see and must click on to take them to another site, page or section of a site. It is worth spending some time choosing the anchor text as search engines will look at the content of those that point away and towards your site when deciding what relevance your webpage has to a certain search.
As you can see, increasing the backlink volume to your site is crucial if you want to increase the number of visitors to your site. Which, let us face it, is what all webpage owners want.
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