When talking of search engines and search engine optimization, one of the buzz words that one would most often here would be the term “back link”. What does this term mean, and why do these “back links” seems so important?

Information on the Internet consists mostly of websites and web pages connected to one another through what are known as hyperlinks or links for short. These links allow users to move from one point to another on the Internet, and are usually put up by webmasters and moderators of websites. Links are in fact arguably one of the most important components of the Internet, as connectivity and networking would be severely hampered without them. They are one of those things that we now take for granted, but are actually very important, and indeed, integral to the working of the Internet.
Back links just refer to those links that link back to a specific website or web page. Let us consider a simple example that may help illustrate this concept. Say that Bob is the webmaster of a website about his dog, on which he keeps a daily journal. Then suppose that one day, Alice happens to visit Bob’s website, and decides that she likes the website well enough to put up a link to it on her own website. This link to Bob’s site on Alice’s website is what is known as a back link for Bob’s website. Back links can thus also be thought of as inbound or incoming links towards a particular website.

These back links are important for webmasters who wish to make their websites more popular. On their own, back links provide additional ways for visitors to get to that specific website. The more back links a website has, the more places there are for potential visitors to come from – back links are a form of exposure by themselves. However, the Internet is a very big place, and one or two back links here or there would not make that much of a difference, overall. (Unless the back link is posted on an especially popular or relevant other website, of course!)

Rather, back links are usually more important because of the large role that they play in determining search engine rankings. Search engines are services that allow Internet users to, well, search the Internet for specific key words or phrases. This means that a user can more easily find what it is that he is looking for, by using a search engine to give him an idea of what is available online. Search engines have become almost indispensable for managing the great amounts of information on the Internet.

Most search engine algorithms nowadays consider the number of back links that a website or web page has to be indicative of its popularity and thus the ranking that it deserves. Both Google and Yahoo! search algorithms take back links into account, for instance. Not all algorithms come up with the same results however, due in part to the complexity of the Internet, and in part to the ingenuity of certain people to try and get around the rules.

Google usually lists a smaller number of back links than Yahoo does, which may be because simply of the different ranking algorithms that they use. It is also possible that Google does not consider some links as valid back links, perhaps because they seem untrustworthy or invalid. Examples of these bad back links include those links that are made just for the express purpose of increasing “back links” to an unscrupulous website.

But regardless of the specific algorithm, back links will always play a part in determining a website’s popularity. Thus almost all webmasters desiring a popular website should spend their efforts trying to build good and valid back links for their web pages.