Every once in awhile new buzz words show up that might help the website owners out there.      Today’s random question asks a few people that I know – if they know what it is.  The thing is, that even though you – as a website author might not feel that these words could have any use to you; it’s a good idea to understand them just in case you could utilize it for your own sites benefit.

Just a reminder, I’m not a search engine freak, I don’t even care about search engine stuff, this is all about getting readership to your site.

Random Skype Question

Starting with Jason Tudor a very widely appreciated wordsmith and story author:

[audio:jason-tudor-backlink.mp3]

Jason’s answer while being short and to the point sums it up for quiet a few people, they just do not recognize the term right immediately as they hear it.   Which is okay, after a small conversation explaining the usage of the word, Jason knew all along what it meant and how backlinks can be used to generate traffic.

After Jason who is a story author, I decided to ask the same question to the people who I generally write articles for, the webcomic authors,first up is Antoine Gagnon from The Drunken Fools webcomic.

[audio:antoine-backlinks.mp3]

New buzzword terms sometimes do not make it globally as fast as they should, but being that this is the internet Antoine has heard the term used before just didn’t recognize it right away.

Then came  Frank … i’m not going to even pretend to know how to write his last name.

[audio:gofrankgo-backlinks.mp3]

While Frank has the right idea bout backlinks, is he really doing enough by sticking with the community he is in to share backlinks to each other?  To get more audience?  Quick answer:  No.

Finally I asked the question from a member of the WordPress Theme Review Team, Chip Bennett.

[audio:chipbennett-backlinks.mp3]

While Chip definitely knows what a backlink is, he doesn’t care about that sort of thing, i.e. increasing traffic to your site.

The Answer

Backlinks are links to your website that are put *anywhere* else on the internet that leads to your site.   Compare it to freeways that connect to your city, your city being your website.   The on-ramps you have accessing the freeways to get to your site the more traffic will be able to reach your site.

Pretty much the equivalent of stapling your business cards up so a passersby will notice and find your information.   While that being said, the majority of the people passing your business card, i.e. backlink there will pass it up and ignore it, but that other portion is new traffic, new readers that you did not have before.

There are many ways of utilizing a backlink, previously methods included sharing link images with other authors, posting your site on listing services or telling friends to tell friends (word of mouth) to post on their sites.

However, did you notice what I did above in this article?  I backlinked to their sites just for participating in this discussion.  They now have a possibility for new traffic coming to their site by just being involved in a couple minutes of conversation.

In WordPress

Have you ever noticed the “Incoming Links” section of your dashboard?

These are all backlinks to my Frumph.NET site, they show me who linked here.    This is automatically done in the WordPress dashboard to help out the blog owner find that information out.  .. I think I can explain the justamom backlink and revelance to to Frumph.NET .. wait, no.. no I can’t.   Maybe using my Easel theme.