Backlinks are ‘hyperlinks’ from other websites that point towards your own. Good SEO requires you to build as many of these as possible. They basically count as a ‘vote’, the more people that link to your website the more votes you get. However, it is vital that the links generated are relevant and are from good quality websites – building hundreds of poor quality links will be of no benefit and may well result in your website being penalised by Google for ‘spamming’.