What are backlinks? - Basics for Newbies

Whether you create a websight, landing page or post articles you want the search engines to recognize them right?
So you want to get people reading and listening to what you have to say.
Well your site/s or web page/s are not going to be recognized or indexed without you doing some major work.
You have to get some connections or some links coming to your web page from different places.
That's what backlinks are. They are links from other websites to your website.

Points about backlinks:


* They are mostly free but some are paid.(At this stage I pay for NONE!)
* They can be one way links or reciprocal links (if you scratch my back I'll scratch yours kinda thing!)
* They can be found manually (timely) or with a backlinks tool (efficient)
* They can come from regular websites, forums, social bookmarking sites, social networking sights,article directories,blogs,blog commenting, article commenting,online directories (DMOZ), video sights, Q&A sites(Yahoo!Answers)
* There are follow and no follow backlinks (check another post on this one)
* There are free, paid, cheap, expensive and VERY expensive backlinks tools on the market that help you build backlinks.

I am just touching the surface and answering a question that people OFTEN ask me.
Please check this on HOW TO CREATE BACKLINKS if you want more basics or another post called How to BUILD BACKLINKS