All SEO experts know that having back links to your website is probably one of the single biggest indicators to Google for how good your website is. And how good your website is, directly reflects how well it shows up in Google's search results. The theory is, if lots of websites point to yours, you must have content worth sharing.

Links originating from your website to other websites isn't much of a ranking factor. However, it you have links that point to respected websites, that does count for something. Though not nearly as much as vice versa.

Having a good website is step 1

If you've been paying attention, you'd have noticed marketing experts and bloggers talking about "Content Marketing" and "Content is King."

If you have good stuff on your website, meaning good "content," it's akin to saying "If you build it they will come." Of course, that's only true in the movies, because no matter how good content you have, it may not be found.

Getting the word out is step 2

Lets say you have lots of good information on your website. Now you have to let people who might find that information of interest, that it's there.

How do you do that? Social media is one way. Posting on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn would let people know your expertise is available for them to be better at their jobs. Or make their lives easier.

Guest speaking or writing articles in magazines in your industry will help get the word out you're an expert in your field.

Step 3 requires a professional's help

"Just getting back links" is way more difficult than you might think. People specialize in doing it because not all links are created equally.

Remember those website that let you post article's that had links back to your website? They're called "link farms" because anyone could post an article, and there was no quality control. The sites weren't "curated," so all kinds of people cheated, posted crappy articles and lots of links back to their websites. Google caught onto that, and now having links on those sites actually hurt your ranking in Google's eyes.

In addition to just getting back links, there are other pieces to the puzzle Google looks at:

• what the words that are a link say. If you have 50 back links and they all say "Visit our website here," that wouldn't  be seen as a "natural, organic" way that 50 different people would create a back link to your site. It looks like one person (you) created all the back links.
• where the links go: if all links go to your homepage, that's suspicious. Links should go to a variety of different pages on your site, depending on where the link is coming from, what the subject of the copy around the link says,
• what the landing pages the links take someone to say. Does the content on that landing page relate to the links words and the subject the site the link originated from is about?
• what the Page Titles and Meta Descriptions are for the pages that people are linked to on your site. If there's a disconnect between those and the page's content and the wording the original link used, that's counted against you.

To read a more in-depth article about link building, check out this article the group Moz, blogged about. There's more detail and are acknowledged experts in the industry.