Today if we wish to have a successful website, we must work with niche markets, top rate content, search engine optimization and enormous competition. And this list is merely the start. We almost certainly need to acquaint ourselves with marketing and copywriting as well as converting visitors into buyers. But, for almost every webmaster, the number one difficulty is bringing in traffic.

That brings us to the subject of this particular article. How can I attract Internet surfers to my site? One of the answers to this question is backlinks! So, exactly what are backlinks and exactly what do they have to do with getting traffic to my site?

Well, there are two basic forms of traffic, paid traffic and organic traffic. Paid traffic includes things like advertising through pay per click networks, banners on other peoples' sites and various other ways in which you are able to pay to attract a surfer's attention and tempt him to visit your site. If you are focusing your attention on paid traffic then you don't need to pay much attention to backlinks.

Organic traffic comes when a person does a search on one of the search engines for a subject that they are interested in. When the free listings come up the surfer then clicks on one of the site listings to visit the appropriate webpage. In the case of organic traffic the webmaster does not need to pay directly for the link that the surfer clicks on.

Normally, organic traffic is talked about as being free traffic. Despite the fact that it can be, it usually comes at a price. The webmaster has got to put in quite a bit of work to get a page listed on the first couple of pages of search engine results. This brings us back to the subject of backlinks.

Normally, the number and quality of backlinks attached to a site are what determines sites that appear after we do a search. A backlink is nothing more than a hyperlink from one site to another site. So it helps greatly if you have a number of websites hyperlinked to your site if you wish to have your pages ranked well in the organic search engine results.

But do not forget that quality matters as well. A backlink will be considered to offer high quality if:

* The content on the site on which the backlink originates is related to the content on your site.

* The page rank of the site linking to yours is relatively high (if possible a PR3 or more) and here it is a case of the higher the better.

* The site linking to yours has a lot of high quality backlinks linking to it.

* The words used to create the hyperlink (referred to as the 'anchor' text) are highly relevant to the content of the page that the link is leading to. (You should not use "click here"!)

Naturally there are other criteria, but the criteria given here represent the basics.

So, precisely how does a webmaster go about creating a quantity of good quality backlinks to his site? There are many ways and even more software programs that are designed to help in providing the answer. Of course, purchasing the software increases the cost of your backlinks.

The really free method is to wait for another webmaster to discover your site and think enugh of it to link to you. That's great, but will take a while. Of course you can contact other webmasters and ask whether they will trade links with you. You give them a link from your site and they provide you with one from their site in return. These are called reciprocal links and are of uncertain value these days.

Another method is to make use of Article Marketing which initially involves writing articles about topics that fit with your site. You then submit your articles to a selection of article directories and include hyperlinks of your own choice in the resources box following your content. Submitting your website to a range of site directories is another option that can fit into the category of free links.

You may also choose to pay for backlinks. One simple method is to purchase a link directly. Internet marketing discussion boards are a very good place to find links for sale. You might have to pay $50 a month or more to put a link on a site with a PR of 5. You will get a lot of juice out of it, but you will have to pay for it. Of course the lower the page rank is then the lower the cost.

Whichever technique you select, acquiring backlinks is critical to your success in ranking in the search engines. You want to build hundreds or if possible thousands of backlinks. What's important is that you get going and build your links up steadily over time so that you will enjoy a continuous and growing flow of traffic to your site.