Backlinks are an often-discussed, but rarely fully understood topic. Your site's reputation and Page Rank depend very greatly on backlinks, so knowing what makes your backlink reputation for your site more important and have more value is the next logical step.

So, you might ask then what things affect how much a given backlink is worth towards your reputation, and what can you do to maximize your backlink value.

While there are many things that affect how much a backlink is worth to your website, many are unknown to the world that search engines, especially Google, take into account. Thankfully, we know the 5 main things that make up most of your backlink score.

Page Rank.

The page rank, or reputation, of the webpage that links to you giving you a backlink is the biggest factor. Page is ranked per page, not per website, and page rank is spread through outgoing links.

Anchor text.

This is the text showing as the link text, the underlined text you click on (not always underlined, but you get the point). This text can have a very large impact on your backlinks. Google expects to see varied link texts in a normal situation, and it has been said that Google will only count a certain number of backlinks with the same exact text. Optimally, you want your keywords are you aiming for on your website to be in your backlink text if you can help it.

Relevant sites.

Especially with Google's Jagger update, backlinks from relevant-themed websites is worth more than from unrelated websites. This means if you have a website about cars, backlinks from other car-type sites will give you more value than backlinks from a cooking website. This makes sense, as each backlink is a recommendation or a vote, and related recommendations have more authority or hold more importance.

Location.

The location of the backlink to your website also makes a difference. The farther towards the top of the page, the more the backlink is weighed.

Age.

The age of a backlink makes a difference. It may take up to 6 months to see the full effect of a backlink. This makes it a great reason to exchange backlinks with sites whose PR has not yet gotten to where it will, as you will get even greater advantage once they do reach that level.

So, the question of the day is what stuff can you help in reality.

Page Rank may or may not be an issue, as getting in a backlink while a website is newer will gain you a good advantage in the age category once they have grown to their potential. The main to remember here is to make sure they are a website that you would want to trade links with regardless of page rank.

Location you usually do not have much of a say in, and the age is out of your hands. So, the best concept is to concentrate on trading with websites whose content compliments your own, or is at least similar in theme for the best gain. If you can, try to get your target keywords into the anchor text if at all possible. Google definitely looks at the anchor text and takes this into consideration. Varied link text has been proven to give an added edge to a website and put it over the top into the lead.

Tony Kristovich is the owner of EZLinkSystem.com, a link exchange service where you can register for free to exchange links the easy way with other sites.