An important part of online marketing is learning to increase backlinks to your website.

Backlinks are links pointing to a website or web page from another website. The number of backlinks a site or page has is an important part of search engine optimization (SEO) and generating website traffic. Search engines such as Google use the number of backlinks pointing to a website to help determine that site’s ranking in their index. The higher up a site is listed in a major search engine, the more likely it is to be seen and visited.

However, success with links is not just a numbers game. Link quality is also important. Two factors in the quality of a link are anchor text and relevance. Anchor text is the text you can click on in a link. It tells the search engines what the linked page is about. Always use keyword-rich anchor text rather than “click here”. Links are considered to be more relevant and of a higher value when they come from sites with related themes.

Here are some of the common online marketing methods you can use to increase backlinks and website traffic:

Writing and submitting articles. The resource box of an article provides a place for links to your site.
Video marketing. Include a link in the description of every video you upload (some video sites even make your link clickable).
Social media like MySpace.
Getting your site listed in directories such as DMOZ.
Blog posts and comments.
Posting in forums.

It is important to note that these online marketing methods are all basically free to use. One method to increase backlinks to your website that is not recommended is purchasing links from sites that exist solely for the purpose of trading or selling links. The common term for these websites is “link farm”. Using these links can actually hurt your rankings in the search engines.

Take the time to master linking. You can create a massive increase in your website traffic by using the right strategies to increase backlinks.