I am really new to website marketing, etc. Can someone please explain to me what a backlink is? One way link? Reciprocal Link? Also, how does having backlinks improve your ranking? Is a one way link better than a backlink? Why? Somebody mentioned earlier about getting a backlink from posting on forums--how? Maybe I need to read a book called "link info for dummies" Thank you sooooooo much for helping this newbie.
You have most of it figured out. Backlink is a link to your site from another site. One way is link from site to yours but no link back to that site. One way are best links reciprocal links are links between 2 sites they share page rank so they offer less than one way links.
Tramore35, Backlinks are links from other sites to your site. You can get backlinks in a variety of ways. A one way link is when a site links to you but you do not have an outgoing link from your site back to it. You can get one way links, for example, by posting on other peoples' blogs or forums (like this one) with a link to your site in your signature. Just visit a few blogs and forums and you will see how people put links in their signature that link to their sites or sites that they are promoting. A reciprocal link is when you provide a link back to a site that links to you. Some directories require a reciprocal links when you submit to them. I usually avoid these because there are so many others out there that don't require a reciprocal link. Backlinks really help your page ranking because they provide evidence to the search engines that your site is popular and you should be listed higher. In my opinion, and experience, one way links are better than reciprocal links, especially when a site is new. This is just a general summary of linking. There is a lot more you can learn about it. Try doing a search on this forum to find threads that discuss this in more detail. Hope this helps.
I advise you to install FF plugin called "Search Status" and with its help you will easily check indexed pages, PageRank, alexa rank, compete rank, backward links etc. it is free to download
You could also use sites like www.wholinks2me.com or www.trafficzap.com/linkpopularity.php to find who is linking to you from Google and Yahoo.
You can also use Google's Webmaster Tools (found under the 'About Google' link) to track backlinks, website errors and indexed pages.