5 Things to remember about back-links

Back-links are one of the most important factors when trying to attain a higher ranking for your selected keywords in the search engines. My experience teaches me that if we don’t have a specific amount of in-bound links to our site, then it very complicated to get high rankings for selected keywords.
You don’t simply need back-links; you need quality back-links. 10 in-bound from relevant and high page rank websites are far better than 200 back-links from irrelevant and poorly ranked websites
Read on below to see what sets high quality and poor quality back-links apart from one another.
1. Selected keyword/key-phrase in the link text
Say we want to rank higher for a search query such as "cheap properties" then the links pointing back to our site ought to draw on precisely them words. The words that are used to link to our site influence the way search engines rank our sites.
Ensure that the words used to link back to your site are the words that you want to attain a higher position in the search engines for.
2. Links from relevant pages are best
In-bound links from a high page-ranked and relevant website are far superior to in-bound links from low page-ranked and irrelevant websites. Incoming links from low page-ranked and irrelevant websites do not actually harm your website and do actually carry a little weight; however Google prefers back-links related to your site more.
3. The link should go to a relevant page on your site
Although it's not bad to receive inbound-links to the home page it’s far more beneficial to have the in-bound links pointing to the page that is most applicable to the selected link text. If "cheap properties" is to be the link text, then you ensure that the back-link points to a page that has the words “cheap shoes” on it.
If the keywords in the back-link correspond with the content of the page they are pointing back to then it's more probable that you will rank higher for those keywords.
4. Authority site links are best
Websites with high Page-Ranks have a much more valuable link than one from a website with nil page-rank positive effect on the rankings of your own site.
The affect of these links is so positive that it even helps your sites page-rank improve as well as push your selected keywords up the organic search rankings.
Sadly, no one other than Google themselves know what page-rank they actually use, the Google Page-Rank indicator that we see in the Google toolbar just provides us with a guesstimate of how highly Google ranks your site.
There are many who would say that the page-rank indicator is nothing but a gimmick, however in my humble opinion it’s nice to get a small idea of what Google thinks of my site.
The simple fact here is that even just to have a page rank of 1 or 2 is difficult, and you can forget about seeing a page rank of 8 or 9 unless you’re Google, Yahoo!, MSN, or a Government Organization. So don’t pay no attention to those people who say that page rank is irrelevant.
5. No-follow attributes are a hindrance
The no-follow element in html tags tells search engines that they should not follow a link. Back-links with that feature attached to them are not in the least bit helpful to your search engine positioning.
Adversely, to find out if your link partners are using a no-follow attribute you need to check the HTML code of the page from where you should partners they use a no-follow attribute to link to your site.