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There’s no sense having a Web site if no one can find it, and for most business owners looking for new prospects, that means making sure your site ranks well in the search engines. On Google’s first page of results for your keywords, preferably in one of the top three positions.

The secret to ranking well boils down to one simple equation: tight on-page search engine optimization plus backlinks equals ranking well. I’ve talked about on-site and on-page SEO before, but I haven’t talked much about backlinks — what they are, how they work and why they’re important. That’s the focus of this column.

In my Sept. 26 column, “Relevance, reputation key to pleasing Google,” I explained what Google and other search engines look for.

One of the ways Google determines that your site is “relevant and reputable” is by your link popularity: In-bound links to your Web site, or backlinks. The more backlinks you have, the better, especially if they link to you as an authority and are considered “relevant and reputable” themselves.

Quality backlinks are essential for search engine optimization for all but the least competitive keywords. if you do a search on Google for a competitive term such as “real estate Columbia, MO” you’ll see more than 26 million results. How does Google decide which one comes first? and how can you persuade Google to boost your site a little closer to the top?

The keywords you use on your own pages (on-site SEO) aren’t enough. They’re easy to manipulate because you control them, so they’re not trusted quite as much by the search engines. and besides, on-site factors might be very similar on multiple sites. (I’ll bet a lot of those sites that appear in the 26 million results use the keywords “real estate Columbia, MO” somewhere in their domain name, title or meta-tags.)

So the search engines need another way to differentiate between all those sites vying for top positioning — something less easy for you to influence — and that’s inbound links. Google interprets a link from Page a to Page B as a vote by Page a for Page B. The more “votes” (backlinks) you have, the more popular your site is deemed to be (hence the term “link popularity”) and the higher that site will rank in the search results.

Let’s be even more specific. When you see a link (or hyperlink) on a Web page, it’s often underlined or in blue text (though not always.) But it is “clickable,” and when you click on it, you’re taken somewhere else — to another page within that same site or to another site altogether.

So from a Web marketer’s perspective, the more sites that have links on them that take visitors to your site when they’re clicked on, the better. That’s really all you need to know, especially if you’re going to hire someone to build backlinks for you. But it does get a little more complicated than that.

It’s not just the quantity of links to your site, it’s the quality. (And again, the more competitive the keywords are, the more important this is.)

The more high-quality, high-page-rank sites you get linking to yours, the better your chances are at getting your site ranked in a high position. (Page rank, or PR, is a numerical score of a Web page’s importance, developed by Google, with 10 being the highest. Not surprising, Google.com has a PR of 10. Amazon.com and YouTube.com both have a PR of 9.)

There are several factors that determine the value of a backlink. a backlink from a site that is considered an “authority” on a given topic (that has high PR itself) is highly valuable. if both sites have content that’s related to the keyword or topic, the backlink is considered even more relevant. Relevance, as I’ve mentioned before, is highly important for search engine positioning.

Also important is the anchor text of the backlink. The “anchor text” is the labeling of the link as it appears on the Web page — the actual words that are “clickable.” if the words used in the link are relevant to the content on the Web page, that makes the link more desirable. That’s why it’s important to link the keywords themselves, not generic terms such as“click here.” (Trivia — the site that ranks no. 1 in Google for the phrase “click here” is the Adobe Reader download page.)

That’s why when I build backlinks to client sites, I try whenever possible to match the topics on both sites. for example, I have a backlink from Staples.com to my business card design Web site. Staples.com has a page rank of 6 and is considered an authority on office supplies. So it’s a very valuable backlink to a site that offers information on a related product, business cards. Also, people actually click on that link and come visit my site — which makes it desirable to me, regardless of whether it influences the search engines at all.

Backlink-building often is more profitable and more long-term than advertising online, but it can be a tedious and time-consuming process. many business owners outsource this work to individuals or companies that specialize in search engine optimization. however, if you’d like to do some of the work yourself, stay tuned for the next column. I’ll cover some of the ways to get keyword-rich inbound links.

Diana Ratliff has been involved in Internet marketing since 1999 and operates YourFriendOnTheWeb.com, a local Web design and marketing business. Reach her at diana@yourfriendontheweb.com.

Reach Diana Ratliff at diana@yourfriendontheweb.com.

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