Backlinks and Their Important Role on the Internet

I hear this question constantly on the internet recently. Since backlinks play a huge, huge part of how you rank in Google, MSN, etc, then people naturally want to find a fast, easy, and effective way to build backlinks. It has to be a legit way so you don't find yourself banned one way, so you need to trade like a normal exchange, but in an automated way so you're continually hunting down trading partners and changing html code all the time.

Despite what you may hear on the internet, backlinks are still very much alive and highly valued by search engines. The internet is sometimes called the Web because, like in a spider web, one point ( a website) connects to many others. Web sites linking to each other is not only usual, but essential.

The deal with Google and backlinks is that they too agree that backlinks are natural. On-topic backlinks that is. Sites naturally, if there were no incentive due to search engines, link to other websites their visitors would also like. This is an on-topic backlink, and is valued by search engines much more than random backlinks for the sake of having a link.

So, what does this teach us as webmasters?

What it means to us is that while we should keep search engines in our mind when working on websites and designing them, the focus should be users. Provide good material and a good website, and you'll naturally get backlinks and build a relationship with your users. Word of mouth is a very powerful friend indeed.

So, what CAN you can do to build your backlinks?

There are many options you can use to build natural-type backlinks.
1. Write articles. Writing articles(like I am doing now) and having them get out to article directories and other websites means you get free backlinks from good sources. This really helps out, and the more you write, the more gain and traffic you'll see. Write an article a day and you're in great shape.

2. Join an on-the-level link exchange site. This means join one in which every exchange is manually approved, and not one where 10,000 links show up to your site overnight. You can see where that is not a natural curve, so stick with link exchange sites that you choose who you link to/from and stay safe. Another positive note is that the other websites are there looking to exchange also, so it's much faster than searching down websites and waiting weeks for a response.

3. Link directories. This is where you submit your site link, and in return give the directory site a backlink(usually mandatory). Though these aren't too valueable to Google, they still may get you some visitors here and there which is always a good thing.

So, in conclusion, let's come back to the initial question. Do link exchanges work? Absolutely. There are many ways to get legit backlinks (much safer) and that's what you need to concentrate on. The trick is to keep your link partners as close to your topic as you can. The more relevant, the more it weighs.