Backlinks are important to search engines and wandering web traffic. Think of it like high school, if two people think you are cool and say it, you are not necessarily as cool as if you had 200 people thinking you are cool and saying it. It also matters who says it. If half of the people that say you are cool are your brothers and sisters or your teacher (someone who is traditionally uncool) then you are less cool than say the all star players on the team.
So in essence its important to get links from the cool cats if you can. A link from CNN or Foxnews.com can get you hundreds of thousands of clicks back to your website obviously, but you don’t have to land a top tier link to get that level of traffic, thats where a tool like the Free Backlink Checker can help. It helps you analyze where you are getting your back links from and how to try and get more from the same sources. If say website A already links to your website, send them an email and suggest yet another page they might be interested in. Remember if someone is already linking to your website they already think you are “cool”.
You do need to remember not to get greedy with coolness and backlinks. I get constant emails from people who want me to link to this or that and being a pest definetally reduces their cool factor and backlinks (at least from me). The point is you need to look at credibility of sources that link to you and strive to get “cooler” websites to link to you. Check out the Free Backlink Checker and see where your backlinks come from and discover how you might be able to make yourself …cooler.