Backlink, Its Function And Importance
What is the meaning of the word backlink? It is a chunk of text, or even a picture, that joins two websites, pages or even sections within the same page. The page you are now reading no doubt has many of them. They are normally highlighted in blue and underlined. Strictly speaking I have just described a link. Backlinks are links that point back to a website. They are very useful for webmasters, the managers of websites, because they allow people to visit their site. Before the creation of search engines they were the only way internet users had to find a specific site.
What is their significance? They are very valuable to website owners for various reasons. First they show that other readers and webmasters are interested in their site enough to recommend it to their readers. Second it is an avenue for more people to read their pages. Thirdly it is one of the factors that search engines take into account when deciding what Page Rank they give a particular page.
At this stage you might be asking yourself what a search engine is. It is simply a website that is used to search for certain keywords in the whole internet. This is a huge task, some have estimated that the internet has over 100 trillion words. Search engines have to sift through all those words and pages to try and find the best match to a users search. This is done by the use of a formula that computes the content of a page, its relevance to the keywords in the search, the number of links a webpage has and the quality of the site as a whole. The final value this formula provides is called the Page Rank.
Page Rank is an important formula for internet users and website businesspeople. The formula is composed of a number of elements that combine the number of links that a website has pointing to it, the content, and its perceived quality as well as other factors that are not public disclosed by search engines. What we do know is that backlinks are an important part in page rank.
Each one counts as a vote to a site, the more votes you have the more chances you have of appearing at the top of search engine results pages. Another important aspect is that the text that is used to create the link is relevant to the keywords in the search.
Page Rank is made up of a a patent protected formula that computes a number of elements like content and number of backlinks. Each link is seen as a vote from one website to another. If the website that points to your page is high ranking the value of the it is much higher. Relevance also plays an important part . If your client or potential viewer is looking for a page on autocad manuals the search engine is going to give you a higher page rank if you have plenty of links with sites that also talk about autocad manuals. This congruency of subjects is also measured by looking into the actual anchor text.
That is called the anchor text, the text that internet viewers see and must click on to take them to another site, page or section of a site. It is worth spending some time choosing the anchor text as search engines will look at the content of those that point away and towards your site when deciding what relevance your webpage has to a certain search.
How is it done? Increasing the number of backlinks your site is an important task for webmasters. This can be done by producing high quality news other sites want to backlink to and readers to view and by exchanging them with other sites, although this method is not as valuable from a SEO perspective.
Mike Gates is an online marketer and recommends HostGator for hosting. HostGator is the cheapest web host. You can use hostgator coupons to get discount at the time of sign up.
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