Is a backlink anything?

[Sunfrog]

If I put a banner ad on someplace does that count as a backlink? Like if I place an ad on cnet?

What if I spam someone's comments. Is that a backlink?

What if I post my url on someone's forum in my siggy? Is that a backlink?

What if I link to my site from a flickr photo? Is that a backlink?

What if I put my url in an RSS feed?

What else is a backlink?

[Mystic]

If I put a banner ad on someplace does that count as a backlink? Like if I place an ad on cnet?
Yes, but when the ad is removed you also loose the backlink.

What if I spam someone's comments. Is that a backlink?
You mean doing comment spam in blogs? Most blogs use the no-follow tag. Those links wont count as backlink.

What if I post my url on someone's forum in my siggy? Is that a backlink?
Yes, if it is indexed by the search engine and if the forum doesnt use no-follow tag (most forums dont). However, many forums allow search engines to index only the light version which doesnt have signatures, avatars etc. So in that case you wont get a backlink.

What if I link to my site from a flickr photo? Is that a backlink?
Not sure, but it should be.

What if I put my url in an RSS feed?
Possibly yes.

"Does Google index RSS feeds?" (http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/rss_primer/)
Google does index RSS documents as evidenced by the fact you can limit searches to RSS using the filetype:rss operator while performing a Google search. For example a search of on Google using 'BBC filetype:rss' will result in a number of RSS feeds being retrieved. However Google's indexing of RSS feeds appears to be far from complete. A number of specialist search engines which index only RSS feeds are available including Feedster (www.feedster.com) and Newsisfree (www.newsisfree.com).

[Submerge]

As long as a link is on a website when a robot crawls it and the link isn't using a 'no follow' attribute, it is a back link.

[Sunfrog]

What's no-follow?
How often do spiders crawl around?
Does each link need it's own no-follow tag?

[Sunfrog]

Nevermind, I just did the google and it answered my questions. I also found this google dance (http://www.google-dance-tool.com/) tool which tells you when the spiders are crawling on you.

[Submerge]

What's no-follow?
How often do spiders crawl around?
Does each link need it's own no-follow tag?

No follow tags prevent spiders from crawling the link on your page, giving the website no benefit that you linked to them. If you have multiple links that you don't want the spider to visit you need a no follow attribute for every link.

ie. SITE

[boron]

Backlink value has to be considered from two viewpoints: a) backlink helps toward PR and b) toward position in SEs.

a) Good backlink which helps getting you PR comes from the site which has:
- high PR
- few outgoing links

Good tool for checking both PR and outgoing links of sites with your backlink is http://backlinkwatch.com It can take an hour or more to show all backlinks if they are many.

Here's a PR equation which tells how outgoing links (c) affect PR of your backlink


PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

PR= PageRank
d= dampening factor (~0.85)
c = number of links on the page
PR(T1)/C(T1) = PageRank of page 1 divided by the total number of links on page 1, (transferred PageRank)

**Above are not the only factors which affect PR. Read Page Technology paragraph here on Google (http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tech.html).

b) backlinks which help in listing in SEs:
- all mentioned under a) plus a site has to be
- content related, quality, old (old domain), big (many inner pages).

Summary: In effort to get rank high, few quality backlinks can supersede many low quality ones. Four-five backlinks from PR6 sites can do the same job as 1,000 backlinks from PR0-1 sites.

[affiliate7]

Hi Baron,
you can add anchor text is most important techniques to rank well.

[boron]

add anchor text is most important techniques to rank well.

I mentioned importance of the backlinks many times, also in all reviews in Reviews section. Anchor text can help toward SERPs ranking, but I think it has little or no value for PR. Let's wait a couple of weeks, when PR will be updated...

[affiliate7]

I mentioned importance of the backlinks many times, also in all reviews in Reviews section. Anchor text can help toward SERPs ranking, but I think it has little or no value for PR. Let's wait a couple of weeks, when PR will be updated...

Yes anchor text to rank well and links to get high page rank.
you can have high page rank but your web site will not rank well.
More: links not only to get backlinks it to get traffic, even with "nofollow", with this competitve market you should try to get traffic from every possible method.

[affiliate7]

I mentioned importance of the backlinks many times, also in all reviews in Reviews section. Anchor text can help toward SERPs ranking, but I think it has little or no value for PR. Let's wait a couple of weeks, when PR will be updated...

Yes anchor text to rank well and links to get high page rank.
you can have high page rank but your web site will not rank well.
More: links not only to get backlinks it to get traffic, even with "nofollow", with this competitve market you should try to get traffic from every possible method.

[Gracia]

Why pay that much for something you can get for free?

Good content...
<title>
<h1>
Google Sitemaps
Metatags
Backlinks

There you have it, the most important in 6 lines.