What are backlinks? and how do you check them?
Quoted from Wikipedia.
Backlinks (or back-links UK) are incoming links to a website or web page. Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO). The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are also considered to be important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.
In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node. Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.
Essentially backlinks are url links leading from other websites TO YOUR website/s. Many argue the importance of these backlinks and SEO and I would have to agree with the side that says backlinks are crucial to making your site viewed as an authority and then in turn ranking you higher in the search engines. Here is a simple step by step guide for checking your websites backlinks.
first go to : backlinks checker tool (link opens in new window)
enter maineseo.wordpress.com into the box.
then click [continue]
the resulting data will be the amount of backlinks that lead back to your website.