There are two types of backlinks: one-way links and reciprocal links.

One-Way Links are basically backlinks that only go one direction. Maybe it's a link that goes from your website to another website. Or maybe it's a link that goes from another site to yours. Either way, it's only going one way.

Reciprocal Links are backlinks that go from one website to another, and then back to the original website.

It's important to differentiate between one-way back links versus reciprocal links. Many search engine optimization experts believe that one-way back links are more valuable than reciprocal links because they're much harder to earn. The thinking is that since they're harder to earn, they must be more valuable, which means other people think very highly of your site. If people think highly of your site, it must be an important site, which means the search engines will give it a higher ranking than those sites that do not have a lot of one-way backlinks.

As search engines like Google grow and improve, they're putting more emphasis on how popular a website is, not whether they use all the right keywords. This popularity is measured through one-way backlinks. They're like votes to Google, and search engine ranking is more like a popularity contest: have a lot of links to your site and your site achieves a high ranking.  The easiest way to find the number of backlinks that lead to your site is to visit Google or Yahoo! and type in the following command:

link: yourwebsite.com

You will be shown a list of all the websites that have backlinks to your own domain. If you want to see who has links back to a particular page on your site, then type in the whole URL to that individual page.

Although no one can be sure of the exact algorithm Google and Yahoo use to rank sites, it's commonly believed that if a website has more backlinks, it will achieve a higher search engine ranking. There are other factors that go into the whole search engine ranking, but backlinks are one of the more important ones.

But it's important you have good quality backlinks, not just links that appear on any page you can find, like a link farm or sticking a comment on a page that has nothing to do with your website at all. That is, if you sell hammers, don't put any backlinks on a page that sells children's shoes.

That's because search engines like Google have started cracking down on link farms and backlinks spammers. The search engine spiders know how to tell the difference between backlinks on a link farm and links on a quality website. If you are caught spamming, you will be dropped in the rankings, or possibly even dropped completely from Google's index.

So you need to pay attention to the quality of your backlinks, now more than ever. One way to do this is to make sure you use the proper anchor text in your backlinks. For example, do not ever hot-link the words "click here." What you're basically telling the search engine spiders is that the website is about Click Here. Instead, use the keywords about the site that the backlinks are leading to. If you're creating backlinks to a site about hammers, put the word hammers in your links. "Click here" isn't about hammers.

In short, if you want some great search engine results, be sure to include backlinks as part of your search engine optimization strategy. You'll see it pay off with improved search engine rankings.

Need a quick review of Google Analytics? Here’s a very concise outline of its main aspects.

Google Analytics is a free tool that creates detailed statistical reports about visitors of a web site and their patterns of behavior, which is why it’s a key tool in all SEO services. Through this Analytics data, you can identify a viable strategy to obtain a solid return on investment (ROI). Let us reconstruct the key functions of this incredible tool.

The first thing you find after logging in is the Dashboard, a modifiable modular area that summarizes all your relevant reports.

On the left side, there is a control panel which gives the main four categories of report:

• Visitors
• Traffic sources
• Contents
• Goals

The primary aspect to consider is the Visitors section. Here, you find the Map overlay of your web site’s visitors.

Second, there is the Sources of traffic section, divided into four subsections:

• Direct traffic is visits from people who come to your site by typing the URL or bookmarking.
• Referring sites presents the visits from people who come to your site from another site.
• Search engines shows the visits coming from a search engine result page.

• Keywords shows the overall trends for specific keywords typed to get to your site. For each keyword, you can see the visits obtained (Visits), the average number of pages viewed during the visits (Page/Visit), the average duration of a visit (Avg. Time on Site), the percentage of visits by people who had never visited your site before (% New Visits), and the percentage of single-page visits (Bounce rate). The basic distinction is between paid and non-paid keywords. To this extent, the keyword subsection is important as for your pay-per-click strategy.

Third, Content provides an overview of the page view volume. It is important to monitor those pages with a high bounce rate and consider redesigning them.

Finally, Goal allows you to monitor the Conversion rate, which is the number or percentage of visitors who convert website visits into desired actions based on your requests (e.g. sales, registration, download, etc.). The process is simple: first, you define one or more goals and assign them a name. Then, you specify the funnel (the path that visitors should take on their way to converting to the goal). Defining these pages allows you to see how frequently visitors abandon goals, and where they go. From these metrics a good SEO company can devise what to change about your site and it’s navigation in order to improve your conversion rate and overall ROI.

Analytics is the number one weapon in your SEO company’s arsenal and it’s a major advantage if you can understand the data too.