OK...let's be honest every internet business owner wants to see their business opportunity keyword reach the number one position on Google. We all strive for that elusive award. We dream of it, we buy e-books and applications that promise to help us achieve that, yet only the really SEO savvy ever get there.

If the truth be told, we really don't know exactly how Google's algorithms work and just how we can gain that ever striving first position. We do know that Google loves to keep us on our toes. But we do know that from much expert analysis that backlinks play a part in that key role.

So what is a backlink? Backlinks are links that come from other sites to your business website. Google looks at them as votes in favor of the content on that page. Therefore, the more votes you get the higher the ranking on Google.

So how do you get these votes?

1. It's important to have many but they must be good quality. Google will rate you based on whether your sites has something in common and if Google views them as an authority.

So the online business owner can get these links by contacting webmasters and asking for links back to your site in exchange for a link to their site. You can pay a link exchange company to place a link back to your site. You can use social bookmarking to get links back to your site. However you choose to get them, there should be more incoming than outgoing to help you rank high.

2. Google page rank is valuable but not of great importance in the overall scheme. But when it comes to backlinks it can be valuable to that number one goal. You should be aware of your page rank and when asking for backlinks the higher the page rank back to your site from an authority site within your industry the better chance you have of achieving a higher position.

3. Blog posts are loved by the search engines because of their fresh and useful content. Make it a practice to comment on other related posts and include a backlink back to your site. This also holds true for forum posts. Join a forum in your niche or industry, comment often and include a link to your site in your signature file.

There are differing opinions on the usefulness of backlinks today. No matter who you decide to listen to you can never argue with the fact that backlinks offer visibility. And that visibility when done correctly, will in the end account for significant sales.