Hi Emily,

They don't work, they just sit there doing nothing! :-)

Seriously though, a backlink is a link from another website which points to your website. Google values these backlinks from relevant websites very highly, as they are a pointer to your website's popularity and relevance. They also look at the anchor text, which is the text which highlights the link.

Practical example -- if I put a link in this article like this -- for great acupuncture treatment, try Cosm Natural Health -- that is a backlink to your website, and the anchor text is "acupuncture treatment" which is obviously relevant to the topic of acupuncture. But Google probably won't take too much notice of it because this site isn't relevant to acupuncture treatment.

So try to get backlinks to your website from as many different relevant websites as possible, with as many different anchor text variations as possible, and don't just use your home page as the backlink. Make sure your website is registered in every local directory that you can, as well as as many relevant alternative treatment directories as possible. Register your website with all relevant authority websites as well, I know that there are a few related to alternative health as a mate of mine has an acupuncture/Chinese medicine clinic up here.

But don't try to do this all at once, treat it as an ongoing task, and try to get one or two new backlinks a week, they quickly add up, and Google will start taking notice of your website and ranking you higher in the search engines.