Backlinks are the legendary gold dust that everyone wants for their website. All things being equal, the more quality backlinks the better. But a word of warning, be careful that you obtain links from sites that are relevant to your business niche. A link from a website all about floristry, to your website all about dog food, just doesn't make much sense in the eyes of Google. Try to obtain links from dog owner websites, dog grooming websites, dog training websites - well, you know more about your niche than me, so you know what other niches surround your niche in your online neighbourhood.

Among the many SEO techniques and tools available, quality inbound links are one of the heavy weights in search engine results page ranking. Many SEO experts agree that fewer quality links are better than large numbers of unrelated links. Quality links come from websites of long standing, that have consistently high page ranking and have related or similar themes as the website being linked. Search engines also give importance to .gov and .edu extensions because of the rigorous conditions that the pertinent government and education agencies require before the sites are granted their domains.

If you're thinking of trying out one of the many schemes out there that allow you to sign up, pay your dollar(s) and purchase links from other websites then proceed with caution. Google knows all about link farms, paid links and link exchange websites. If you try any of these, then the likelihood is that sooner or later you'll be found out, and any benefit gained from those links will evaporate overnight. Better to put your efforts into links you know will not be scratched by the search engines at some point.

Try getting involved in online communities related to your niche, or making useful suggestions on blogs that are closely related to your area of expertise. Many of these online communities and forums are well respected by search engines due to the massive amount of original content they offer specifically related to their particular niche. Your backlinks from these web properties are likely to carry more weight, and have more longevity, than a paid-for link farm. Some social media participants also try to build profile backlinks where they can include relevant information about their site or niche. To make this technique work, they add some relevant content that contain pertinent keywords or related phrases that search engines are able to recognize.

Backlinks take time, effort and patience, and of course it helps if you have great content on your own website that people like linking to.