What is a backlink?

A "backlink" is a link from one website leading "back" to another website. All of the major search engines employ equations that study how many links from other web pages link to any given web page when determining search ranking results. These "backlinks" are, of course, what determines a web page's "link popularity".

When an SEO is studying backlinks, all of the links to a given website are collected.

Great Backlink Analysis Tool: Tool # 9

Keyword Difficulty Analysis Tool

Understanding how competitive a key term is can be a time consuming process. How many pages contain the term? How many websites target the term with an SEO strategy? How many backlinks do the top ranking websites have leading back to their high ranking page?

The following tool, while not perfect, is a great way to gauge the competitiveness of any key term:

Key Term Difficulty Analysis

PageRank Estimation Tool

SEO's use several different methods to estimate the PR of any given page while waiting for the Google Toolbar to update.

While the actual estimated PR that the following tool generates is not often correct, utilizing the tool on a normal basis gives an SEO the ability to quickly gauge gains or losses in link popularity, as Google sees it.

Great Google PR Estimation Tool - Click here.

Link Partners: Finding Quality Link Exchange Partners

SEO's use a wide variety of methods to find quality link exchange partners:

Link Partner Google Tools - Finding Link Exchange Partners:

Method 1: Find link exchange partners using complex add url & link exchange search string.....

Method 2: Find link exchange partners using allinanchor and keywords.....

Method 3: Find link exchange partners using allintitle and keywords.....

Method 4: Find link exchange partners using allintitle, keywords and submit site.....

Method 5: Find directories.....