Reams and reams have been written about the importance of Back Links or incoming links or inbound links in determining the success of a website. However, still there seems to be a curiosity to know a bit more on how the back links really affect the ranking of a website as determined by popular Search Engines, like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. And that’s precisely why you are here!
For the uninitiated, Back Links are simply the links to a website situated on different websites. For instance, if I have a website mywebsite.com and you have a website yourwebsite.com. Now, if yourwebsite.com contains a link that leads the surfer to mywebsite.com, it’ll be known as a back link for mywebsite.com.
Importance of Back Links for Search Engines
Back Links are usually regarded as a vote for the linked website, and each vote increases the total votes of the linked website. It is these total votes that determine the Search Engine ranking. Obviously, there are a number of other factors that count as a vote for a website, but back links are definitely one of the strongest pushers of a Search Engine’s determination of ranking of your website.
Link popularity has come to acquire a pivotal position in determining rankings in Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This obviously led to sprouting of dishonest practices, like linkspam, where the content of the webpage is given a go-by and more and more inbound links are placed without any relevance.
Considerations for Search Engines Regarding Back Links
Let’s understand how precisely the Search Engines affect SERP rankings. The first mistake you are likely to commit is to buy back links from irrelevant sources that do not know much about the way Search Engines function. Consider this. Your SEO guy may not be aware of the fact that a back link received from the homepage of the linking site is much more valuable than a link from one of the internal pages. Similarly, receiving links to the homepage of your website are much better than a link that points to one of the internal pages of your site. In a nutshell, it’s the quality of a link that you should try to improve and not the quantity.
The good quality links can be sourced from mainstream news sites, related industry sites, structured internal linking on your own website, blogs, forums – in that order.
Summary: Back Links certainly increase the popularity of your website. However, instead of trying to increase the number of back links, it’s better to improve the quality of back links in order to secure higher SERP rankings.