Backlinks from other websites to your website is used as a determining factor by the major search engines of how popular your website is. Each backlink to your websites is considered by the search engines as a popularity ‘vote’ and the more inbound website links to your website, the more popular and valuable your website becomes in the search engine rankings and this is confirmed in the higher page ranking attained.
Individual backlinks are not of equal status, as the major search engines have a hierarchy of values for different types of backlinks. But first of all inbound backlinks pointing to your website must belong to websites which are of a higher ranking to your website, this type of backlink will mean a positive increase in the hierarchy of values. Adversely, a backlink from a website with a lower page ranking than your website may undoubtedly reduce the page ranking of the receiving website.
Backlinks received from must be based on quality not quantity, the choice of whether a potential backlink website is suitable or not should be decided just to increase the quantity of backlinks. The quality and page ranking of the potential back-linking website must be the determining factor whether to accept or refuse the backlink.
Understand the importance of 10 high quality backlinks from high ranking websites is definitely more valuable than even a 1000 backlinks from poor website or even if you’re dubious whether the backlinks website contains illegal content – avoid these types of websites backlinks, unless you definitely know the websites are of high standing and the contents contain rich content. Even so, if the websites are of lower ranking than your website, then avoid them.
When all is said and done, ranking high in the major search engines means vastly increasing quality backlinks to your website, and every backlink from websites higher ranking, or even similar ranking levels, is important. Google especially, considers each backlink a ‘vote’ of popularity for the receiving website, so not so high quality backlinks will assist in gaining popularity and thus increased page ranking in the major search engines ranking algorithms.
In reality, highest quality backlinks are the hardest links to access; these are backlinks from older and well established domain websites, the backlinks from high page ranking websites, from well established official websites and again, from well established top ranked websites. These websites rank in the crème de la crème category of the top and highest ranking websites, possibly with many millions of backlinks.
The alternative approach with regard to initial backlink building, is to backlink to as many as possible of quality backlinks and build on the other less quality backlinks too, that is the lower page ranking websites and the easier lower quality websites, who tends to be desperate, link yourself, to increase their page ranking by accumulating backlinks. Remember, each and every quality backlink is a ‘vote’ for the websites popularity of the website, in essence, the more popular the website, the higher in the page ranking algorithms of the major search engines.
It is repeated by the SEO traditionalist to avoid backlinks to websites which have a ‘NoFollow’ code in their Meta Tags. Actually, Google and Yahoo generally ignore the ‘NoFollow’ instruction rule and Index the website, so if you have an opportunity to receive a quality backlink from a ‘NoFollow’ website, then I suggest you accept it.
An important point at this time to emphasise is that a backlink is not necessarily a reciprocating link – a reciprocating link is a link to and from an individual website. The major search engines base their popularity algorithms more on backlinks to your websites, and a website with more backlinks to the website than outgoing links. Websites will rank higher with more backlinks, than a website with more or as many outgoing links.
To work around this issue, is to create a website with a ‘Link to Us’ webpage, which will develop an html code for websites which wish to link to your website. Webmasters with a preference to link to you through this webpage, can ‘copy’ and paste’ the code into their webpage. You will now have the desired link and the relevant keywords you wish to use.