The best backlinks are linked to search terms that are important to the target site and are matched by search engines to actual searches performed online. Keywords linked in this way are commonly called “anchor text.” For obvious reasons, the target site owner is better placed to identify the words and phrases that are likely to affect their search engine rankings than to let reciprocal link partners determine the proper wording—another good reason to favor one-way links. instead of bidirectional.

So imagine your website is about growing tomatoes, ‘growing tomatoes’ is part of the domain name, and the site has twenty pages of content based on ‘growing tomatoes’. This is classified as internal website ‘search engine optimization’ and means that when someone enters ‘growing tomatoes’ into a search engine, your site has a good chance of ranking well in the results.

External optimization operates outside of the relevant site, for example by creating keyword-rich backlinks from other people’s sites.

For our current example, external optimization might involve writing articles and blog posts that include ‘growing tomatoes’ in their headlines and body text and as the hyperlink leading to the destination site.

MAIN BENEFITS OF BACKLINKING

Backlinks do more than simply increase a site’s reputation with search engines. For example:

* Backlinks add value to a website and increase its resale value, as well as inflate advertising revenue. Therefore, you can generally expect a higher resale price for a website with backlinks than a similar site without inbound links. Also, if you accept paid promotions on your site, your ad revenue should grow exponentially with inbound links.

* Abundant backlinks from respected websites establish you as an expert in your chosen field, especially when you offer advice and quality content across a wide range of online platforms. It does this by offering free advice in forums, for example, or by answering questions online, or by writing articles for online directories or blogs, where each new source of quality inbound links favorably impacts search engine rankings.

* Once website visitors recognize your name and trust your advice, they will start talking about you and recommend your site to other web users and thus build backlinks for you. Search engine ranking aside, every reference to your website URL has the potential to drive traffic to your site, regardless of the actual quality of the backlinks. This is because every visitor counts, and the more traffic that comes to your site, regardless of the source, the higher you can climb in search engine results.