One Way Backlinks
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A backlink is a link on a page on one web site (the linking page) that links to a page on another web site (the landing page). Backlinks are also popularly known as inbound links or incoming links. Search engines, while crawling the Internet, make a note of all the links they find and use this information as part of the criteria that determines a web page's ranking for any given search term.
Now then. It isn't the quantity of backlinks to pages on your web site that matters so much as the quality of those backlinks.
What do we mean by quality?
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Firstly there is the quality of the page on which the backlink to your site is positioned. This quality is measured largely by the relevance of the linking page to the landing page.
If the linking page is all about Purple Widgets and the landing page is also about Purple Widgets, then obviously the relevance is very high and the backlink will be seen as important and have a greater positive effect on the ranking of the landing page.
The relevance does not have to be exact, as in the example above, however the greater the synergy or compatibility between the linking page and the landing page the better.
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Positioning backlinks on pages that have little or no relevance to the landing page will not harm the ranking of the landing page, however it will not be of any great benefit either. Thousands of backlinks from non-relevant pages will usually have less effect on search engine ranking than a handful of backlinks from high quality, relevant pages.
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Secondly there is the quality of the anchor text. The anchor text is the words that are used under the link. For example, it would be less useful to use either "purple" or "widgets" to link to our page about Purple Widgets, and more useful to use "purple widgets". It would not be useful to use a phrase such as "click here" or "more info" for the anchor text. Good anchor text helps the search engines to see that the context is right, which in turn will benefit the ranking of both the linking page and the landing page.
And then there is the question of reciprocal links versus one way backlinks.
Reciprocal links are what you end up with when a page on your web site links to a page on another web site, and a page on that web site links back to a page on your web site, i.e. a mutual exchange of links.
Search engines these days give little or no weight to reciprocal links. They see it as cheating and, as their algorithms have become more and more sophisticated, they can easily spot reciprocal links and discount them. However, while there is no great benefit today to be gained from building up a bloated list of reciprocal links, reciprocal linking won't normally harm your ranking unless you go totally overboard with it, i.e. if a very high proportion of the links going out from your site are reciprocated, it may damage your ranking in the search engines, particularly in Google.
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The best backlinks are one way backlinks, links which are not reciprocated. All the search engines give much greater weight to one way back links. A handful of one way backlinks from relevant pages on a handful of good quality web sites can be of much more benefit than hundreds or even thousands of reciprocal links. This is because one way backlinks are seen by search engines as being more natural and a better indication of the link being a "vote" for the landing page.
As with reciprocal links, it is also possible to go overboard with one way backlinks. Too many too quickly may raise a warning flag with the search engines and cause them to look very closely at what is happening.
If a search engine gets it into its head that the sudden, unnatural surge in backlinks to your site is because you are paying for those backlinks, your rankings may suffer because the search engine may discount entirely those links which it thinks have been bought.
One way backlinks build gradually over time, anything else may be seen as unnatural and, if you have paid for links, you could well have wasted quite a lot of money. So if you are going to buy backlinks, buy them gradually, not all at once, and be very careful.
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It is often mooted that incoming links will never hurt your site because you cannot control who links to you. As far as ranking is concerned, for the most part this is true.
However, something which is not often taken into consideration is the damage that can be done to your business by wasting time and/or money on reckless backlinking techniques such as getting involved with link farms and automated link exchange schemes. This time could have been spent on any number of tried and tested sucessful methods of improving your ranking in search engines.
Ultimately, having spent months and often years trying dodgy SEO techniques, all businesses but the most foolhardy see that it has been a complete waste of time and many then turn to professional SEO consultants for help.
Usually, the first thing they learn from the SEO firm is that the single most important factor in determining search engine ranking is the number of high quality, relevant backlinks to a web site.
It is said that for web sites Content is king. This cannot be denied. But backlinks are to content what votes are to politicians; without them, you are going nowhere.
