What are Backlinks and Why Do I Need Links?

[SEORankSpecialist]

Hi Hoagie, First of all, it's best not to get too hung up on why one particular site has a higher PR than another. One can achieve a High PR in the long term by tacking action and building quality pages and overall authority sites. However, a page that has a high PR is generally linked to by many pages that also have a high PR themsevles. As opposed to a page that has a low PR - it may just be a brand new page and therefore it has no links to acually support it being 'important' to Google.

[hoagiemcgee]

Your explanation here on how backlinks work is very good. I still am trying to figure out why some sites have a higher value as measured in page rank than others. Can you explain?

[SEORankSpecialist]

p.s I forgot to mention of course if you are in doubt to nofollow vs dofollow on a web page it is easily checked in Firefox. Just go to Firefox/Web Developer/View Page Source and then control f 'nofollow.'

Kieran

[SEORankSpecialist]

Hi there. Firstly, thanks for your kind words. What you say below is 100% correct. Yes, YouTube places a nofollow tag for your links in the description tag. If you think about it logically it also makes sense - otherwise imagine how much spamming would be going on in youtube (leading to spammy websites/low quality websites). Precisely why Google brought this tag into play in 2005 to cut down the levels of spamming across the web. Hope that answers your question. Thanks, Kieran

[riem630]

Hey,

Great video!!

Quick question.. Does Youtube place a nofollow tag for links under video? (not the comments, rather under the video, like your domain name for ex.)

Thanks!

[SEORankSpecialist]

Well no defining reason why but I guess there are two main reasons. 1) Blue is a very distinguishable color when used with black text (which most web pages will display). 2) Become the norm over the internet landscape and you only have to look at the Google Search results to see Google loves blue on black too!

[grantrich40]

I like the way you define backlinks. Can you tell me this. Why are they most often blue?

[flupitio]

Nice expanation on how backlinks work--you make it sound so simple.

[billingsclyde]

I am trying to learn the importance of how back links work and the importance of the right kind of backlinks. I have heard that back links from sites that are not related to your site will not help and can actually hurt your seo is that true or just a bunch of bunk?

[SEORankSpecialist]

@billingsclyde Thanks for your question. We defined backlinks in this link building tutorial as 'postive votes.' So it's best not to get too hung up on backlinks hurting your overall SEO. There is no such thing as a 'Negative Backlink.' Understand that not all backlinks are created equal. Backlinks from sites related to yours are far more 'Valuable' than a link from a website where the content is not related to yours. We highlighted this in the video with our backlink example.