What are links and backlinks?

Discussion in 'Link Development' started by SA101, May 22, 2009.

  1. #1
    What are these links used for? I don't understand this topic of links at all.
     
    SA101, May 22, 2009 IP
  2. GuruCreation

    GuruCreation Notable Member

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    #2
    A backlink is a link from another site, whether it be a blog or a website, that has a link somewhere on their site that is pointing to your site. These sites can be any kind of website, link directories, or blog. Basically, search engines, like Google, will use this information, among other factors, to determine how popular and/or important your website is.
     
    GuruCreation, May 22, 2009 IP
  3. JamesColin

    JamesColin Prominent Member

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    #3
    a backlink is simply any link to your page that is made from another domain name.
     
    JamesColin, May 23, 2009 IP
  4. rashida

    rashida Active Member

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    #4
    A link is nothing but pointing to your site or other site. Backlinks are nothing that are pointing on other sites to your own site.There are basically two types of links.They are the inbound links and outbound links.Inbound links are links pointing to your own site.And outbound links are links pointing other site to your own site.
     
    rashida, Jun 8, 2009 IP
  5. linkdealer

    linkdealer Active Member

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    #5
    A link is a medium to connect two web pages or websites. Backlink is a link coming from another website back to your own, also called inward or inbound links. Some Search Engines use backlinks as an indicator of the popularity of a site.
     
    linkdealer, Jun 9, 2009 IP
  6. Johnyboy

    Johnyboy Peon

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    #6
    To better understand a backlink you should first understand what is a link.

    A link is a bit of clickable text, image or javascript. When this "link" is clicked you're taken to visit a website to where that link is pointing in the code.

    The HTML syntax for a link is:

    
    <a href="http://www.domain.com/path" [rel="nofollow"]>Some text here</a>
    
    Code (markup):
    The text is what appears on the webpage and the "href=" is the destination address of where the link is pointing to. This text, from the SEO point of view, should always include a keyword or a mix of keywords that is related to your website theme.

    On the other hand, a backlink is nothing more but a links that points back to your website. For example: if you comment on a blog you will have to put your name, email address, and optionally A LINK to your website and that form is taking care of translating what you input to HTML code.

    If you noticed I've included the "rel=" property into brackets, because this is totally optional and this prevents page rank (PR) leakage to your website.

    In other words, a link that has rel="nofollow" in its syntax has no value to your website from the ranking point of view. The link it is still clickable, but no page rank will be passed for your website.

    With that said, if you want to rise up your PR for your website, you should stay away from "rel=" property.

    Though, a link with rel="nofollow" will still bring visitors to your site.

    Importance of incoming context:

    You should rely on the incoming content from which your backlink comes. The content should be highly related to your website theme. If the content (page, paragraph, text) is related to your website, what happens is that search engines spidering that page, will recognize the main keywords (predominant ones) on the content and compare it with your websites content. If those two are related in any, SE will add value to your website.

    The amount of value added to your website is depending on lots of factors, but this is another story. I suggest learning some SEO.


    I hope this helps...
    Cheers,
     
    Johnyboy, Jun 9, 2009 IP
    Registernuke likes this.
  7. csscoll

    csscoll Peon

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    #7
    re 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.
     
    csscoll, Jun 9, 2009 IP
  8. Johnyboy

    Johnyboy Peon

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    #8
    Number of backlinks is less important. You could have 1000 PR1-PR2 links and if I have one PR6 linking back to me, chances are that I will rank higher :D

    The quality factor is what Google and other SEs search for. Not "farm linking". A lot of people seems to don't get this and using a lot of social submitters tools to get backlinks. But what they can't see is that usually, a social submitter does not include quality higher ranked social bookmarking sites.

    I saw people showing off they made 400+ backlinks just "this week", but after a while they are still the ones complaining they got banned from SEs or that their PR is still low.

    Cheers,
     
    Johnyboy, Jun 13, 2009 IP
  9. tl23v0l241

    tl23v0l241 Peon

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    #9
    what is the value of links in terms of top search results?
    does it mean anything?
     
    tl23v0l241, Jun 13, 2009 IP
  10. Johnyboy

    Johnyboy Peon

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    #10
    The value of links is defined by PRs of the websites you get your backlink as well as "how related" those websites (actual pages) that link to you are.

    If you want, include in the value here, the traffic driven from those websites. But obviously this is non SEO.

    In order to get in top search results, in a competitive market, you need these high valued PR pages to backlink to you. Otherwise you have no chance to get in the results.

    In these days of continuous evolution of the Internet, people are "fighting" each other to the top results. Of course in a "virgin" market, you could just put a website up and once you would be indexed, you could instantly be first. Assuming nobody competes with you.

    But these days are far gone. So the value of links definitely means everything for your webpage rankings.
     
    Johnyboy, Jun 13, 2009 IP
  11. dirkthedigger

    dirkthedigger Active Member

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    #11
    Back links are simply links that are going back to your website, they either have "nofollow" or "dofollow" tags applied to them, which decides weather the search engines will spider the link or not!
     
    dirkthedigger, Jun 13, 2009 IP
  12. geoiss2004

    geoiss2004 Guest

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    #12
    I asked the same questions when I was a noob.
     
    geoiss2004, Jun 14, 2009 IP
  13. Johnyboy

    Johnyboy Peon

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    #13
    ... and now you're simply showing off. You're not "a noob" anymore? :p
    Thanks for your help
     
    Johnyboy, Jun 14, 2009 IP
  14. Nidalap

    Nidalap Peon

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    #14
    Now I understand about the dofollow and nofollow significance. Thank you..
    ^^v
     
    Nidalap, Jun 14, 2009 IP