I don't understand. What's the use of backlinks?

[Amar]

I know how to optimize keywords but I don't know how to backlink and it's use? Can someone explain it to me in an easy way to understand? thanks

[Jake]

Search engines count links from other sites as popularity votes, although a larger variety of signals are now used to establish a site's ranking, backlinks are still one of the essentials.
Google policy states something like "Any links created for the purpose of search rank manipulation are a violation" non the less, building backlinks is a very common practice, as suspicious link detection methods improve, it's becoming more important to avoid getting low quality links, like link exchanges with unrelated sites or bulk buy computer generated spam links, some backlinks are 100X more valuable than others. A general rule, the easier a link is to get, the less valuable it is.

You can check te backlink count of the competition with tools like opensiteexplorer.org

[Tony]

Never tried to explain it. Here goes: backlinks are important. Relevance is key and what that means if the link comes from a site that is similar to yours that gives the link more "link juice" For example if you have a real estate site and have links coming from other real estate sites this gives you an advantage. There is also great web 2.0 sites that give you great juice such as youtube, squidoo, hubpages etc. Are you familiar with article marketing especially using ezinearticles many sites go to the them for articles and you get links for the content you write. The links are what you need because they go on relevant sites. You can get the code by searching for it. I am by no means a "techie" and can say it is very easy. Search warriorforum for more info. I have sites that are on the first page of search engines for what is known as long tail keywords. Look that term up.

[Samantha]

In the eyes of the search engines each backlink to your site is a vote for your site. The more quality links you have to your site, the more google and other search engines look at your site as an authority and push it higher in the search results.