What is a backlink?

[prasanth5]

Can you explain what is a backlink? Are backlinks available without much effort on the part of the marketer?

[niks00789]

Backlinks (or back-links [UK]) are incoming links to a website or web page.

you can read more about backlinks here :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlink

[prasanth5]

Thanks for the reply. Yes I found a lot of information there. It means that we should work hard to get backlinks too!

[GekiDan]

Can you explain what is a backlink? Are backlinks available without much effort on the part of the marketer?

Back links are links from other sites that links back (hence the word backlink) on your own site. It can be one way link, meaning you don't link to that site, or two-way link since you exchanged link with that site. It can also be do follow or no follow.

Wherein Google uses Do Follow backlinks in determining Page Rank.

[prasanth5]

If backlinking is considered a form of advertising then should we pay for it? Is is paid to advertise too?

[niks00789]

If backlinking is considered a form of advertising then should we pay for it? Is is paid to advertise too?

ya you can do that. And many people do that.
If you have a blog with high pagerank then you can earn quite a bit to keep a backlink on your website.
But finding advertisers is difficult part.

[Lukehluke]

A good place to get backlinks are forums that are related to your niche.

[prasanth5]

That is true. Article writing is also a good way to produce backlinks when we try to include a link back to our site in the article.

[GekiDan]

If backlinking is considered a form of advertising then should we pay for it? Is is paid to advertise too?

Yeah. You can do that.
There are lots of webmaster forums that have a marketplace when in you can offer or look for links to and from your site. I have sold some on my site and they are working good. Since ad links are much cheaper than banner advertising, most people tend to buy multiple months than single ones.

There are also webmasters who looks for people who do forum backlinking. These people are called link builder wherein they put their clients link to there sig and promote it to various forums.

[prasanth5]

Yes, it is good news then. If it is not that expensive then it should be worth taking a chance. I shall try my hand at it.