Backlinks, also referred to as inbound links, are basically your website URL on other website. There are many different types of backlinks, although the 2 major types are no-follow and do-follow backlinks.
No-follow backlinks do not have any direct SEO benefits, although they can indirectly affect your rankings by increasing the prevalence of your URL on the Internet, thus providing your URL the chance to be discovered by a webmaster who may appreciate your content enough to link to it by providing you with a do-follow backlinks. Speaking of do-follow backlinks, these backlinks provide your website with direct SEO benefits, although not all do-follow backlinks provide the same benefits. In the past, many search engine optimisers relied on a website's PageRank to determine whether or not a backlink from a website was worth it, although http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/google-pr-update/.
These days, Internet marketers rely on a variety of metrics that estimate a website's value. Some of which include: Citation Flow, Trust Flow, MozRank, Domain Authority, and Page Authority to name a few. While these metrics are not perfect and only serve to estimate a site's value, they are often accurate enough for us to determine a website's value.
Additional types of backlinks you may read about include:
- SAPE Links - backlinks from a Russian link network.
- Blog Comment backlinks - backlinks posted in a blog's comments section.
- Paid Links - Backlinks that have been paid for.
- Automated Links - Backlinks that have been placed by an automated program.