I have been seeing a rise in the amount of content written by online publications that are waking up to the notion that BackLinks are the real difference maker when it comes to achieving sustainable high search engine rankings. We have written quite a bit on the subject for over a year now.

However, the writings that I read are not really focussing on the fact that one backlink is not as good as another backlink. The articles generally fail to state that the backlinks need to be highly relevant and focused on one or two very defined keywords. Search is and will always be about RELEVANCE. If you think about it, this is not a very brave or even instructive point. How can search by definition ever not be about relevance first.

However, you can buy backlinks, you can get free backlinks through directories or other online indexing options. However these are not nearly as good, i.e. point-getting, as naturally-occurring-backlinks that have highly relevant content on both sides of the link.

Specifically, ARTICLES relevant content, focused on keywords, that is unique, optimized and directly linked by a website, such as an online publisher, directly to relevant content on a particular page on the website being optimized.

Its easy to understand that a naturally occurring, highly relevant backlink is going to score significantly more Google Points than any other kind of backlink. A website is linking to you without asking for anything in return AND the spiders can tell that both ends of the link are highly relevant.

So, if you are talking to any Internet Marketing Company, Internet Consultant, SEO, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Company, if they arent emphasizing content and relevant backlinks, they arent focusing on the most important differentiator in the Search Engine World.

And you can be certainl of one thing: Those on page 1 of Google for a competitive term are not there by accident they have more highly relevant, naturally occurring backlinks than those not on page 1.