There's a nice analogy that helps me to think about the role that backlinks play in SEO and website promotion: that of the magnetic field that surrounds a magnetic object.

Every child learns in elementary science lessons about the difference between an ordinary piece of iron and one that's been magnetised: in the ordinary one, the molecules are arranged in a random order and exhibit minimal magnetic properties; in a magnet however, the particles are mostly aligned in a particular direction, which is what creates the magnetic effect. The interesting thing is that it is possible to transform an ordinary non-magnetic piece of iron into a magnet by stroking it with another magnet to pull its particles into alignment. The resulting magnetic field around the piece of iron will of course attract other metallic objects, and furthermore will cause a compass to deflect in the direction of the field, which is a good way to measure and visualise the field.

Now, it's not that different with websites - a site with few or no backlinks will not attract much traffic, but the more links it accrues, the more traffic will follow. And links with particular anchor text especially will make the target site magnetic for traffic that's targetted to that keyword. The search engines are the compass in this analogy, and the stronger the magnetic field generated by your site, the more closely they will align their results to your site and keywords.

So, to make your website magnetic and earn good rankings in the search engines, all you have to do is throw targetted backlinks at it. Sure the on-page SEO stuff is important but it will only take you so far - it's what other sites say about yours that carries the most weight in the eyes of the search engines.

Rodney J Smith