Backlinks are the key to obtaining a high page rank and obtaining link popularity. Backlinks are extremely important for improving page rank within the search engines. Your web page cannot be indexed and searched by the search engines without backlinks. If you want your website suggested to users by the search engines you must have backlinks.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a huge part of a websites success. The search engines use the sites rankings to judge its popularity. The more popular the website the more important the search engines will see it as. Search engines use various methods to rank a website. Backlinks are one of the most important aspects search engines look at when ranking the site.

When another website places a link to your page on theirs it is considered a backlink. The amount of backlinks your website has will determine its popularity and importance. A backlink is nothing more than another website placing a link to your website on their own website that directs traffic to you when the link is clicked. One backlink is considered one vote for your site, the more backlinks you can get the better you rise to the top of the search results.

A PR or page rank is given by Google to rate your site, the higher the number the better. To be able to get your PR number increased you have to start collecting backlinks to your website. Other search engines may not find the backlinks as significant but they are still used to rank the importance of your page. Your site will need high quality content as well as good incoming links in order to rank well.

Google updates its page rankings about once every three months. During this update there are millions of pages that have just been created and start out with a PR0 rating. If you are checking your incoming links and notice a page that has a PR0 that is linked to your page, look at the homepage. Sometimes the sub pages are ne creations but the index page will have a high PR ranking already.

Google will traditionally make a new website wait to be given a PR number for several months. This gives new sites time to gather backlinks and create the right anchor text for their sites and to establish the right anchor text for their web pages. If you have backlinks they must be on subject your site. The best type of backlinks to have on your site are one way links.

To avoid undesired or irrelevant traffic avoid having backlinks that do not closely match your sites topic. You must be cautious not to mess around with backlink neighborhoods in the so called bad neighborhood. If you are linked to a a site with a bad reputation it can ruin your SEO rankings. Linking to sites that are on the bad list will get you penalized but you will not be punished for any sites that link to you.

Your webpage will benefit from more traffic due to backlinks. You want to make sure that the traffic is good and relevant to what your websites theme is. If you can search out pages that have a high PR to link to your page it will increase your chances or being noticed as well as allow the search engines to see your website as more important and popular.

Justin Harrison is an internationally recognised Internet Marketing expert who provides world class SEO Services to website owners. For more information visit: http://www.seorankings.co.za