Even Though Backlinking Is A Term Used By Everyone Most People Don't Know What It Means

When it comes to Backlinking and SEO you will find there is a huge amount of debate over what it is. This isn't because the term isn't defined, it's because people often assign their own meaning to it. Backlinks are links you (or someone connected to you) create in order to get people to come back to your website. This isn't the same thing as Paid Links, Blog Posting, or other such common tools even though they offer the same effect. The reason that they are separate is because Backlinking is Black Hat SEO and the others are not.

The main reason many people don't pay attention to the correct use of the word "Backlinking" is that that don't understand what's really involved. They think that because it's about setting up links to your website, any link structure that does the same thing is also Backlinking. This includes Inbound Links created by other people who have nothing to do with directing people back to your website. If Backlinking wasn't a Black Hat SEO technique it wouldn't really matter so much if people used the word incorrectly.

Since Backlinking is Black Hat SEO and because the idea behind it seems so innocent, people are using it without understanding the risks. People are even commonly hiring others to set up Backlinks all over the place in the hopes of increasing their Search Results. They don't understand, and no one tells them, that this is a very risky business. If the Search Engines decide they don't like what your doing, because it violated their guidelines, your website could be removed from their databases altogether. For many websites that would be all it takes to destroy them. No Search Results = too little traffic = no money to run the website. So why do other people claiming to know Search Engine Optimization not make such an issue over Backlinking?

For them it's a simple and easy way to make money. It's something that creates an easily defined "result" that they can sell to their clients. Each link back to the website can be seen on the search engines. By typing the command "link:" in front of their URL (no spaces) into the Search Engines you can see how many other websites link to your own. The greater the number of such sites the better their placement on the Search Engines Results Page (SERPs). At least that's the conventional wisdom. The problem is that it simply isn't true.

It's another thing cloaked in misunderstanding. Because people call Inbound Links by the name Backlinks, and Inbound Links are the ones that increase your Search Results, people assume Backlinks increase Search Results. This is also why people so strongly debate Backlinks as a general rule. A lot of SEO groups focus huge amounts of their business doing this for people and they are unwilling to accept the reality of Backlinking. There are many other techniques that are acceptable to use, but because they are not as easily defined people don't want to use them as much. They want the quick solution to make the easy money. That's maybe good for them, but it's very, very bad for you.

Take some time to read some of the other posts related to the topic of Backlinking and Backlinks. The more you really know about what's involved the safer you will be when it comes to having SEO done by someone else.