subject: Managing Web Presence By Using A Backlink Checker [print this page] Managing Web Presence By Using A Backlink Checker
When a web developer begins creating a new website, the website visibility and search engine optimization, or SEO, are major considerations. A backlink checker is invaluable in investigating this important information.
Search engines rank sites by, among other things, the number of backlinks. This term is used for the imaginary reverse link from a site to another site linking to it. Such a link implies that the linking site finds the linked site valuable and related in some way. Almost all search providers view such reverse links as positive influences on how they rank sites. The more reverse links, the more valuable the site.
While these reverse links are desirable, not all of them are equally valuable. Due to common knowledge of the effect of reverse links on site ranking, some web marketers try to influence the ranking artificially. They spread their links to many different, unrelated places. This creates a large number of links that do not accurately represent value in the site being linked to.
These attempts to game the system are recognized by the more advanced search engines. True links are differentiated from so-called linkspam and spamdexing, and given additional weight. Too many unrelated links to a site can even lower the ranking, instead of raising it as desired. Any offer to purchase or share links with another website should be deliberated carefully. Sharing with a respected site can be a valid way to improve web presence and search engine ranking, but sharing with a poorly ranked site can be a rankings catastrophe.
While these links are clearly important, and knowing how many of them and whence they come is valuable, no simple method for detecting this information exists. They are defined not by source but by target, making it very difficult to determine reverse links. A backlink checker will find some links to a given domain. A portion quantity and quality of the inbound links can be displayed by each checker, but no one checker shows all of them.
Major search providers do not do real time searches of web pages, but rather show the results as collected by their web crawlers. Since each web crawler is unique, each search provider gives unique results. Therefore, backlink checkers often show which search provider gave their results.
Many checkers are available, some free, some not. Many of the free versions allow each user a limited number of results in an hour or day. Many of the free checkers can be found on sites that sell SEO optimization. These sites hope to sell their SEO services to visitors dissatisfied with the results for their site and looking for ways to get more links.
All webmasters should use a backlink checker to learn how search engines view their site. Without one, all the webmaster has to rely on is hopes and guesses at how many inbound links there are to their site. If many low quality links are found, the webmaster can contact the pages hosting these links and request their removal. If only a small number of links, the webmaster may contact respected sites with related content and try to get more links from them. Informed decisions can be made once the inbound links are known.
