What are backlinks? Blogging for Beginners basic understanding of Backlinks

What are backlinks?
Backlinks are links to your website that are located on other websites around the web.  They can be generated by you or by others who may wish to link to your content.  They provide search engines and individuals an easy way to locate your blog on the internet.

Why are backlinks important?
Backlinks are important because, search engines use backlinks.  When a search engine is crawling the Internet and stumble upon your backlink, it is an open invitation for that search engine spider to crawl your site.  Opening up the possibility for your site to be indexed.

But that is not the only reason backlinks are important.  They serve several purposes in increasing your blogs traffic.  Not only does that backlink provide awareness for search engines, but it also offers awareness for any individual who happens upon it.  Giving them the opportunity to “Check it out”.  This is an instant traffic generator.  It is a way to increase focused traffic to your blog.

On top of that, Search engines use quantity and quality of backlinks to factor into the SERP and page rank.  The actual value of backlinks to a search engine is well beyond my ability to calculate, but they use a very unique algorithm in order to determine page relevancy. 

So, with that, we can determine that backlinks are important, but how do we generate backlinks?
This is the time consuming part.  There are many forms of backlinks. So, let me cover a couple of your options in creating backlinks.

1.)Blog commenting – I just talked about this in my last post, about the importance of blog commenting, this is an easy and proven method in generating backlinks on sites that are relevant to your own. 

As a side note, it is important to try to generate backlinks on sites and in content that are within your own niche, id does play a factor, search engines will give unrelated backlinks less weight in calculating Page rank.

2.)Within your own blog – As I mentioned before, you will first off, want to make sure your title includes a link to your home page, this creates a backlink, even if it is devalued due to the fact that it comes from within the URL, it still is a backlink.  Also, include backlinks based on your keywords that you will include within your articles.  Some may call these links internal links or inter-linking, they too add to your backlink count, along with offering your readers a way to find other articles within your blog.

3.)Content – There are several content sites on the web that you can write for besides your blog.  I recommend it highly.  Become a member with sites like Hubpages, Bukisa, Ezine and Goarticles.  There are of course many more options to choose from here, these are just a few.  And with sites like Hubpages and Bukisa, you have the added benefit of earning money online, along the way.

4.)Account Profiles – Under most account profiles you will set up on line, they offer you a space to add your personal website URL.  Never forget to add it!  It is an easy backlink.  I am not sure how much real value this backlink adds, but every little bid does count!

5.)Social Bookmarking and Web 2.0 – Social bookmarking and social networking sites offer an excellent place to include your backlinks.  Although some social bookmarks frown upon self-promotion and view it as a form of spam, the occasional bookmarker will not hurt.  This along with any social networks you may be involved in, offer the chance to generate a lot of traffic, at little time cost to you.

6.)Naturally occurring – These are the best possible backlinks you can get.  Problem is, they are not something you have much control over.  In order to get naturally occurring backlinks, you will need other individuals to link to your site, through their own content or websites.  Again, this is going to be controlled by the quality of your content.

So, there you have it the blogging for beginner’s guide to understanding what are backlinks.  I hope this helps you in your blogging quest!