How Important Are Backlinks?

your going to hear many opinions. some will say if you get backlink from a similar site (low pr) then your site will get a vote from google. Some will say if you you get a backlinks from Ezinearticles then you still get a vote because it's PR is high (i think it's 6 or 7)

The important think is go get lots of backlinks from as many high PR sites.

Get all the backlinks you can from high pr sites. Of course relevant sites are great to get links from in the eyes of google, but unrelated links count as well.

All I know is that I do what I am supposed to and many of my pages get PR magically...

Get great content written
Submit to directories using a service
Submit to article sites using a service
Get freelancers to comment on blog posts
Submit RSS to directories
Etc.

I just have a plan in which I do a little of everything.

Google is sneaky at hiding where the PR comes from. I have one PR 5 blog that Google says I have no backlinks for. No sense at all, and they know exactly what they are doing by not allowing you to know exactly how to get page rank!

I agree with what pretty much every one else said, any back link is good if you ask me, unless it's from a "bad" site. For sure, links from related content are better. I don't think you can ever have enough.

Good advice all around here. I'll add to beware getting a ton of links as soon as a new domain/site goes live. That's the temptation and Google is on on the lookout for it. Sandbox sucks. I've been there many times. Resist the temptation and build links slowly at first. A few here, a few there. Increase the numbers over a couple of months. Once you see that your pages are consistently showing up in the SERPs and not suddenly vanishing, then you can really open things up. I've found that 3-4 months for a new domain/site is the key timeframe. Be careful in those first 90-120 days. Then you can ramp things up and really go to town.

NOTE: I am just another website builder. I'm not any kind of expert. Don't take my experience and advice as gospel here. I'm just reporting my own experience.

John

I've had great success lately getting sites ranked well by commenting (good comments) on do follow blogs. Links are everything in google's eyes, so get as many as you can from many different sources. ezine articles and youtube are easy links, but spread them around and over time you'll rank for your keywords if there is not ridiculous competition.

Great info, iv been commenting on high pr blogs, ill let you know how it goes. Also been using bookmarks, one question, when you get sand boxed do you just drop to like the 300 range in Google or disappear all together?? I ask because i did a lot of bookmarking on a new domain and I seem to be stuck in the 250 - 320 spots in Google kinda just dancing around there.

The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.

When search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they consider the number of QUALITY inbound links to that site. So we should not be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, it is the quality of the inbound link that matters.

Every backlink helps, but not all backlinks are equal. Google emphasizes relevancy, so a link from a website on the same topic as yours counts more.

Also do not look at the PageRank of the overall domain of the page the backlink is from, but that particular page the link is on. So EzineArticles.com might have a high PR, but the actual value of the backlink is the PR of your article page.

Having your backlinks in an unrelated niche is one of the most misunderstood myths out there about SEO. I assure you that all of the major sites (CNN.com, Youtube.com, Adobe.com, Microsoft.com, etc) have hundreds if not thousands of unrelated backlinks. If you were to write a very controversial article (like the Clinton scandal), you would get hundreds of bloggers talking about you and linking back to your article. Natural link building isn't all about having your keyword on a related niche site, because this wouldn't be very natural. People link to things that are interesting and something they can talk about. Take Angela V. Edwards article on backlinks for example, if you were to do a search in Google for keyword "backlinks" you will notice that she's holding the 2nd position on the first page out of over 13 million sites. She has used nothing but backlinks on unrelated High Page Rank sites, I have a number of websites as well, that are sitting on the number one spot in Google by using this same method. So no, leaving your backlinks on unrelated sites does not matter.

I dont think relevant site matters. what matters most is the pr of the site you are getting backlinks from.

Relevance is more important than PR. For example if there is a site which is not related but has a PR3, another site which has PR1 but is related, I'd go with the PR1 site.

In my experience you cannot compete without a strong complement of backlinks behind you. Many is definately better than few.

This is an interesting debate going on..let me put my .2

If you look at this video on G official Webmaster Central Blog, the third one. You will notice it talks about two things 'Relevance' and 'Importance'.

As stated, Sites listings are prioritized algorithmically according to pages' :

1) Relevance
This includes:

(a) Matching the search on the page (onsite optimization)
(b) Taking into account geography (personalized search)
(c) In some cases, considering user's web history.

2) Importance
It is all about PR which is calculated by 200 factors but the links with better quality are preferred over links quantity.

Link Quality is dependent on:
(a) PR of the linked page
(b) Duration of the link
(c) Anchor Text of the link
(d) Is that page is stale or not
(e) Link from .gov, .edu are preferred
(f) Domain Age of the linked page
(g) Whois Data of the linked page (and also yours Whois Data)

So, one needs to look for both 'relevance' and 'importance' to improve its ranking in SERPs.

Also, the results fluctuations are expected from time to time.

In connection to what I have stated above, one can look at the Google Search Patent dated Dec 3, 2003 to better understand the backend working of the G Search algorithm.

The importance of backlinks to your online success cannot be overmephasized. You need it to survive just liek you need the air.

Backlinks could help you have a good pr ,and you can build quantity and quality links.I think the relevant is better.

My experience is that it is only as important as your on site optimization. If your web page is perfect with on site optimization then back links will take you to the top. But if it is bad with on site optimization then back links won't take you beyond a point.

Backlinks drives more traffic to your site. The more you have backlinks, the better for your site.

Backlinks are important..

Try not to have them all coming from one place/blog comments etc. Try and have as many as you can relating to your niche

Backlinks are very neccessary... they improve authority of your site.. gives u high PR

If you like traffic... Backlinks are a key! Especially dofollow.

My point of view is that backlinks are way more important than the content (unique is a plus, but not necessary to get good rankings)

that is my personal opinion
backlinks are very important to get higher rank in search engines
and it is very important to get backlinks from your niche with site have high pagerank

i applied that for my site and my site now in 2nd page of google for the most competitors keyword

" Earn money at home "

thanks
MBeshr

If its from your niche or not but done properly, ie the link title and description accurately and completely describe the site being linked to, then its not an irrelevant link

Backlinks are very very important....Google counts all your backlinks in favour of your website/blog. The more backlinks you have, the more important it is in the eyes of the Google and even other search engines.

A backlink is a vote. A vote from one website to another. The more votes you have from relevant sites within your nice or sub niche, the higher your site will rank in the search engines... providing that you have decent relevant content.

I am newbie in internet marketing, i know that backlink is very most important to get rank, i need to know is directory web is way to get backlink?
Give me advice guru....