If you have your very own website then there is a reasonable chance that you are going to have heard the term search engine optimization, or SEO for short. If you have then looked into what is involved with SEO then you are going to have heard of backlinks and how important they are but in most cases people simply do not understand the term or how it can have such an impact on where your website appears on the results pages.
To summarise the terms in basic terms a backlink is a link to your website posted elsewhere on the internet but it is important to point out that there are different types of them and these are recognised by the search engines in different ways. It is therefore best to get a range of backlinks for your website as this is preferred by the likes of Google and AOL and this is going to push you up the rankings instead of having your site languish several pages down where few people ever look or click on a link.
The way a search engine grades the link is due to how relevant it is to the content that appears on your own site so if you have a website about a health product then a link on a health website is seen as being better than a link on a site about furniture. This is because it then starts to recognise your site as being a real authority on a particular subject if other sites within the same field have a link directed back to your own site.
However one good way of getting some backlinks is by doing some article marketing and submitting them to various article directories. This not only gives you these vital links but it also helps to bring more people to your website as thousands search for articles on a wide range of subjects on a daily basis. One other thing that does happen is webmasters search these directories for some extra content for their own sites so this can give you extra links without you having to do anything yourself.
The most common places to submit articles on the internet are websites such as EzineArticles, eHow, ArticlesBase, Squidoo, and Hub Pages but there are many more if you just do a simple search. It is always best to try and submit to a number of them as this increases exposure of what you have written and each one counts as another backlink which is the main aim of this type of online marketing. Always check how many hits they get in a day before submitting and aim to get them listed on the most popular in order to get the best return for the work you have put in with writing them.
There is an extensive list so do spend some time checking out the types of articles each one deals in and indeed check out their rules when it comes to submitting articles because if it is refused then no link is going to be created. If you submit to a number of them and also have the article on your own website then it is possible to get a large number of links for a single article which then pushes it further up the search engine results and therefore gets more hits from a range of people.
The way that they normally work is that at the base of your article you have the authors box and this is where you enter some basic information about yourself and a link to your website. It is this part that creates the link and you should always look upon it as being the place where you can sell yourself to the people reading the article so perhaps think about looking at what other authors put in their box before having a few attempts at writing your own.
It is also best to write a number of articles over a period of time in order to keep developing the number of links back to your website. The search engines do prefer what appears to be a natural build up of links for your site so think about submitting a couple of articles twice a week over several months in order to get the best results but always remember to complete your authors box or it is a wasted opportunity.
If you do not create these kinds of links then there is no chance of you ranking high enough in search engines for people to notice you. There are however different types of backlinks and it is always best to get a variety of them as this does reflect better on your website and your article with regards to the search engines.
This means that apart from those links created by submitting articles to the different directories you should also look at creating links through blog postings or even forum postings. These backlinks can be either for your website or the article itself but always try to make the link relevant to your site so do not just place a link anywhere as the search engines shall not pay anywhere near as much attention to it than they would when placed in the correct location.
So backlinks are vital to the success of your website or the popularity of your articles as without them you shall only appear that far down the search engine results that nobody shall really pay any attention to what you have to say. There really is no need for this as they are easy to create and even if you do not have the time there are companies out there that specialise in this kind of service so it is possible to pay someone to do the work for you. The only piece of advice with this however would be to make sure that they do things correctly and do not use techniques that can see you penalised by the search engines as this could end up having disastrous results for your site and therefore your online business.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6135552