So I am by no means an EXPERT in SEO, which is why i'm coming here for some help or insight on questions I may have. Right now my main question is in regards to incoming links. We've built a number of sites for clients and in the footer added "Website design by Our Company" or whatever the link to our site may say. However, when I use a free tool for an inbound link search, for instance a tool like open site explorer, it says I have 121 inbound links from external sites, great, but some (a fair amount) of sites that I've built with Wordpress, and put our link in the footer aren't showing up. The sites we've built with basic HTML however DO show up in the inbound link report. Why is this? I'd say 2 out of 20 Wordpress built sites that we've put a link to our site in their footer for show up, the rest don't. Also, is a backlink the same as an inbound link? I know backlinks help SEO and I'm pretty sure an inbound link is the same, and would help the same. I can provide any more information you may need or clarify any questions I may not have addressed. Thanks in advance for everyone's input!
There could be a few reasons your links are not showing up in the report either its the tool you are using or the spider just hasnt cached the page yet so the backlink its not being reported. I think its best to use google webmaster tools to track backlinks as i found they show most all of them. Even links I have no idea where they came from show up in webmaster tools. As for the backlink and inbound link its the same thing just different terminology. inbound link is a backlink and outbound link is just that. There is also internal links where you are linking within your own website to other areas of your site.