Have you seen the term backlinks bandied about in writing forums, especially where web content is concerned?  Have you wondered what they are and why they’re important?

Quite simply, backlinks are links that point back to your online web content from outside the domain of that content.  For example, I will often create directory lenses at Squidoo that point to other articles I’ve written on a niche topic at different sites.

The reason they’re important is that Google seems to be more impressed by sites that have other sites linking to them.  When Google likes your work, it’s ranked higher in search engines and more easily found by the web audience and drives more traffic your way.

There are differing opinions on whether these backlinks are more useful if they are part of content webs or not.  A content web is the interlinking of articles at different sites such as when I post links to HubPages on a Squidoo lens and vice versa.

There is the theory that Google recognizes that it’s you linking to yourself.  I’m not sure I buy that.  But I’ve started to experiment with sites you can get backlinks from while earning with Google AdSense, and I’m doing this without creating content webs to see how this works out.  I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

In the meantime, here are the sites I’ve started experimenting with or plan on starting soon.  I’m throwing you to the wolves here as this is a bit of a link roundup where you’ll have to browse around each site and see what you think.  I’ll do individual reviews of each one as I gain more experience with each.

Basically, you can post links to your web content with a short blurb.  You don’t have to have a Google AdSense account and can just use it strictly for backlinking (but why not sign up with Google and earn a few bucks?).  With most of them, you also have the opportunity to earn referral fees.  Some of them you can actually write content for just as you would elsewhere.

I’ve already started posting article links with these two, so these links will have my referral info.  If you are uncomfortable with that, then by all means just do a Google search for the company names and check them out that way.

Here are a few I plan on starting sometime after the holidays (so no referral links yet).

Disclaimer: As I said, this is a new experiment for me.  I’ve heard good things about these sites mainly from other HubPage authors.  But I can’t vouch for whether you will have a good experience with them (or me for that matter).  Enter at your own risk.