Essentially, backlinks are hyperlinks located on another page that directs the searcher to your page. Evidently, backlinks are critical to SEO success especially when it demands the reliability of others for one’s own success. However, this categorically does not mean that no control whatsoever can be administered on backlinks; but there are some facets one can employ and/or negotiate to successfully make backlinks work:

1. Searchers on the internet always appreciate quality. Content must be informative, accurate, well written and interesting. Other more popular websites will then link your site to theirs, increasing crawls and indirectly the regard in search engine indexing. Off course, this being the most ordinary approach to building backlinks, its not easy to gauge a website’s authenticity and one must resort to alternate approaches to attain backlinks.
2. Softwares like Backlink Builder help locate appropriate sites where one can post articles, blogs or backlinks towards your own site. This process is quite symbiotic in nature as in exchange your backlink indirectly expands the content on their site.
3. It’s imperative for backlink success to be listed in essential directories like Yahoo or DMOZ. It’s a boon to have freely-listed backlinks from such popular websites in addition to be noticed really quickly. Even article directories (blogs) and forums must be given due considerations while posting useful information about one’s website. One aspect, however that must be measured is the popularity of the blog itself in search engines.
4. Content exchange programs are also a nice way to improve backlinks. By offer concerned websites with free RSS feeds in exchange for the same from their side, crawls can be improved manifold. A slightly more expensive approach could be Affiliate programs on account of high percentages of commission, and is advised when a site has one of its own.
5. It isn’t a daily approach off course, but news and press announcements and publishing also doesn’t escape the notice of keen searchers. Albeit, it must be kept in mind that one must mention something newsworthy to attract surfers and not use it as a commodity to build backlinks.

In appendage to knowing how to build backlinks, here are some points to note how NOT to build backlinks:

1. Link exchange being quite important must be monitored. Outbound links outnumbering inbound links is unreasonable and senseless.
2. Link partners must not be link farms that unreasonably spread their word by spam. This reduces its credibility substantially and will eventually lead your website to be banned by search engines.
3. Bad and suspicious neighborhoods must be avoided as well. Even though the search engine need not recognize this, it would amount to over optimization and unsuitable online associations.