Title: Finding the Number of Backlinks to Your Site

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One of the measurements of your website’s popularity is the number of backlinks that point to it. A backlink is a link on another website that links to a page on your site.

To measure this, you need a tool to tell you what the numbers are. Well, the tools are free if you know where to look for them.

If you want to use Yahoo for your count, enter a search in Yahoo in the following format replacing "your-website-name.com" with the website name on which you want a banklink count.

linkdomain:www.your-website-name.com -site:www.your-website-name.com

There is a space between the first ".com" and the "-site". Your search will not work without it.

Look at the top of the search page where Yahoo will conveniently tell you how many links it has for your site.

To find what Windows Live Search knows about your site, go to

http://search.live.com

enter the same search string that you used in Yahoo above. The results do not tell you the number of links, but it will tell you the number of pages it returned. Multiply the number of links per page by the number of pages and you get a rough estimate of the number of links.

Remember that these links enhance your website’s rating with the search engines.

Another quick tip on backlinks ... The higher the page rank of the page where the backlink to your site is located, the more credible that link is considered by the search engines.

Some sites that have high page rank are selling the right to publish backlinks on the site. Google says that it does not allow this, but it has to prove that this is happening so the practice continues. If you want first hand proof, go to http://www.buy-selltextlinks.com.

Another site that has an interesting tool is

http://www.build-reciprocal-links.com/backlink_checker_tool.html

This tool will tell you the links, the page rank, and Alexa rank of each page containing your backlinks.

I have not found a way to use Google to find all the links to websites. However, you can find the links to a particular web page by going to Google and entering the following search term (replace "the-name-of-your-webpage.htm" with the exact name of the web page in question):

link:www.the-name-of-your-webpage.htm

(There are no spaces in the above search string).

With these tools, you can chart the growth of your backlink count and measure the success of your marketing plan for promoting your website.

About the Author: John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years and has recently started several web sites to assist Boomers (baby boomers) to become entrepreneurs when they retire. During his career, John has founded and managed several successful companies including computer services, plastic injection molding, and assembly operations. He is currently Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Kodiak Thermal Technologies, Inc.

John’s websites are www.boomer-ezine.com and www.retirement-jobs-online.com.

His hobbies include raising and training English pointers, quail hunting, and fly fishing