A lot of newbies keep asking this question to me, so finally, I figured out that I should answer it to the best of my abilities. If you are someone who already knows this concept by heart then don’t waste your time here; rather read my articles on how to find backlinks for free! ;)
Let us say that there are two websites: Site A and Site B. They not only differ in name but also in terms of power and position. ;)
a) Site A is a huge, authority site, enjoying an enviable position in search engines. A very old site with a high Pagerank, Alexa™ rank and Compete™ rank. It not only receives lots of free traffic from Google™ but also tons of spam from backlink builders! :D (kidding)
b) Site B pales in comparison to Site A. Not only it is a new domain, it neither enjoys any free traffic nor good position in Google! Short and sweet, it has no authority on the web at all. No one knows about it.
Now if SiteA, which already enjoys an authoritative position in search engines as well as the web in general, links back to Site B for some reason, search engines generally see it as a "positive vote" for Site B from Site A – an authority. Consequently, Site B, hitherto an unknown entity, gets listed in Google within a matter of days! :D
Let me explain it even more clearly. Let us say that you are going to apply for a job. Unless you are one of those few lucky people who get appointed in high positions solely on the power of their own merits, you have been certainly "recommended" by someone who already enjoys an authoritative position in the office where you are applying for a job. Here you submit your "résumé" to the "employer", and there that "powerful officer" recommends you from behind as a good candidate. Voila, you get enrolled in your preferred position in no time. Could you have gotten to that same position even without the officer’s recommendation? Sure you might, after years of endless struggle and sweat, or maybe…never! ;)
In the same way, when Site A recommends Site B, search engines look at Site B with great respect; they tend to think: "Hey, that powerful site is recommending this site by linking to it, so it must be worth something!". :D
So, what is "backlink building"? In simple terms, backlink building is an act of collecting several of those "recommendations" from "big sites" for your own site, so that your site ranks high in search engines’ results pages (SERP); this in turn would boost the traffic and sales of your website! :)
I hope that the concept of "backlink" is no longer unclear to you! :D
The concept of backlinks eluded me for a long time. I just couldn’t get it! But this explanation is excellent for understanding not only the process, but the reason why it is important to get backlinks in the first place. Thank you again, Arindam, for your clear explanation!
Nice explanation about backlinks. Anybody who don’t have idea about of backlinks, will get a good idea about it. One year back I also did not have much idea about it. But I leaned a lot and now providing own backlinks building service.
Looking forward for great post again :-)
I love the explanation because it’s so simple. It took me a good while to understand the whole backlink concept. I wished I had seen this post before, it would have simplified things.
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