Before I get to the meat of this topic, I'll briefly explain to you what backlinks are. They are not "linkbacks", as they are sometimes called. Backlinks are inbound links to your website and I don't know why they aren't just called inbound links.

I don't how to do it with other search engines right now, but with Google you can use the toolbar to display all the backlinks to your blog or to a particular page. You just have to be on that page before clicking the option. If you don't use the toolbar, just enter the query in the search box like this: link:http://www.untwistedvortex.com/ (no spaces).

You want to make sure you only have to do this once. It's much easier to monitor who's linking to you by going to Google Alerts and setting up links to watch for. Here are the link formats I watch for:

link:http://untwistedvortex.com
link:http://www.untwistedvortex.com
Untwisted Vortex
UntwistedVortex
untwistedvortex.com
www.untwistedvortex.com

It might seem like overkill, but this will catch any mention of my blog, even if it isn't a link.

In order to do it right, you have to visit each link in the results presented by Google at least once. Some of the backlinks are going to be the result of making comments on particular blogs that have the rel="nofollow" link attributes removed from the comment headers, some are because your blog is on their blogrolls, and some are going to be the result of some other plugin (like "Top Commentators"). What you're looking for are mentions of your blog in the text of an article/post.

The people that mention your blog, for whatever reason, deserve reciprocal treatment even though it isn't required. It shows two things: 1) You appreciate what they have to say about you or your blog, and 2) That you're paying attention. If you do decide to reciprocate, please be creative and don't just create a list of links.

To go through hundreds, possibly thousands of links is going to take some time. Set aside a full day for it if you can. If you click each link, each link will get that "visited link" color. Don't clear your cache before you're done and you can use that to "remember" where you left off. Although I've been using the Google Alerts method for a couple of months or so, I'm sure I missed someone. I've already started going through my "list".

You may want to ask me why you should go to all this trouble. The answer is simple. If you link to others, those links will find their way back to you in the form of visitor traffic. Something as simple as a comment on someone else's blog will get you visitors. How many more do you think linking will provide?

Check those backlinks. You'll be surprised where some of them come from.