So one may say, based on this, that the more backlinks you have the better.
This would seem rational, however, this is not totally true.
If links are coming back to your site from poor quality sites and sites that are specifically set up to point links to various other sites, then these links will not be as productive.
The reason for this, again, is pretty logical.
First, we want links to our site so that people will visit it.
If your links are posted on what are called link farms, then these are just artificial sites set up by webmasters and as a result, you will not get any real human traffic.
Second, search engines use algorithms to determine the relevance of any given site.
As part of the algorithm, they measure how many links are pointing to your site.
This is why, in the past, webmasters got together to create link farms so as to artificially increase the number of links to their site.
Search engines quickly figured this out and immediately started to discount these links.
Additionally, as mentioned, if you have links pointing from another site to your site that does not relate to your content, then these links are not as powerful.
With that said, backlinks are very important if they are positioned in the right places.
Your links do not have to be exactly relevant; for example, a site on garden tools could have a link pointing back to your site on lawn care.
The more backlinks you have the better, simply because it gives your site more opportunities to receive traffic.
Additionally, search engines like backlinks and will deem your site as more of an authority.
So how do you go about getting these links? First, the search engines prefer what they term as natural linking.
This implies that no one has negotiated to share links with one another.
When natural linking occurs, people like the content on the site and link to it without being requested to do so.
However, the challenge is that people have to see your site first to say they like it and furthermore, this process would take a long time unless you had some luck with viral content.
So to get links to your site, you can post comments on blogs and on forums.
You can write articles and have links pointing back through article directories.
Additionally, you can add your site to web directories.
If your site is new, you can do a press release.
Finally, when a link points back to your site, it has what is known as an "anchor text".
This is basically the click portion of the link.
This is very important as the search engines read this text so as to understand what your site is about.
So you need to do keyword research and use the keyword that you want your site to appear on the top of the search results for.