Are backlinks absolutely crucial for good SEO

by 29 replies
33
I am so worried about spending weeks or even months searching for these backlinks only to find that Google change the goalposts or even worse, I get penalised for bad backlinks.

Can my site survive without them?
#search engine optimization #absolutely #backlinks #crucial #good #seo

  • Sure. Just rely on traffic methods that are not related to SEO.
    • [1] reply
    • So are you talking about paid for traffic?
      • [1] reply
  • Dont worry about the Backlinks mainly its better if you concentrate on traffic as yourtraffic increases then your site can be ranked at the better position then you have to take care about backlinks rite now there is no need to focus on backlinks.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Traffic does not increase rankings.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [2] replies
  • At the moment, I have a page rank of 2/10 carried over from the old site

    I am doing everything I can (it's a wordpress site) to optimise it perfectly. I'm not complaining, it's only been live for a week. I was just worried that it wouldn't make progress without new backlinks. I have backlinks from the old site but they are not much good.
  • 'Are backlinks absolutely crucial for good SEO?'

    They certainly are. Links are the key component of Google's algorithm.
  • Yes, except backlinks there is few more important things for good SEO.

    Here you have two good articles:

    SEO: The Free Beginner?s Guide From Moz

    What Is Link Building & Why Is It Important? - Beginner's Guide to Link Building - Moz
  • Hope that the URL redirection (one to one 301 permanent) has been properly done from the old pages website to new ones to pass PR and in the meantime eliminate the bad backlinks or spammy links. I would suggest that you go slowly, constant, and work on a short term strategy and a long-term one. Put regular new unique attractive niche contents, share, distribute,tweet, re-tweet add multimedia files to the posts, some tweaking ... you should find a natural increase in traffic, probably natural backlinks and +ve SEO also
    • [1] reply
    • Yes, I spent a lot of time re directing urls's there were 170 in all, thanks for the advice.
  • Yes Backlinks are good for SEO . also content quality is more important
  • Back links are the pinnacle of success in SEO, right now have been. I'm sure it will change at some point, but that's the fact.

    Proof I have 8 sites all with similar number of pages indexed all the same level of content in similar sub niches. Over 10,000 pages each. I put a lot of money into the content. All sites are over a year old. I have focused personally on quality no gimmick link building for just 3 of the sites over the last 8 months. Those sites are seeing 1,000s of visitors a day. The others are lucky to get a dozen visits a day.
    • [1] reply
    • True, it does not increase rankings directly. But if your site is properly set up for easy social sharing (provided you have quality, unique, useful content), this could indirectly lead to better rankings because it can help increase your backlinks and create social signals that Google is looking for.

      Thanks for the great insight pjman, I agree that backlinking does still have it's worth but as you pointed out it has to be 'quality no gimmick' link building and supported by a website with unique, non-thin content.

      But the best way that we can cover our bases is to diversify our traffic. The only thing we can say for sure about the future of Google and SEO is that it is content-driven. It's worth focusing some energy on building a social media following and other traffic streams so that if rankings ever did take a hit from the latest algorithm, the majority of our traffic would not be compromised.
      • [1] reply
  • Backlink with relevant site is good for SEO. And there are other methods in SEO to improve. You can try those.
  • If you depend on Google search for traffic, your traffic is likely to get decimated after a search engine algorithm update (such as Panda or Penguin or any variety there of that Google comes up with). Many sites have fallen prey to a search engine update. Count on social media sites such as Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook to find real visitors for your site. Get involved in these sites and engage fans in a real way and entice them to go to your site. You can even using Facebook advertising. All this is preferable to using Google search as a means to get traffic. As for surviving without backlinks, it can be done, just publish good content and ask others to link back to you.
  • If you have unique and viral content, more traffic to your website, you won't need backlink building.
  • Indeed the backlinks are the main factor yet but you can`t depend only on this source of traffic for sure. You can get traffic from Google easily without any backlinks on LT keyphrases, but there is one condition to make it happen - content. You must provide frequently high quality 100% unique content, SE traffic will come after 2-3 weeks of posting, but of course if you want to fight for big price you need strong backlinks from trusted sources.
    • [1] reply
    • No, we can not say like that.. but you should make quality links.
      As you said you redirect your site with new domain so I think before redirecting you should delete (disavow) your toxic links.. After this if you redirect your site then you definitely see the results.

      Because when Google Indexed your site it will be come top in SRP (Search Result Pages).

      Now you just active on Social media sites and make quality links (having Good PA, DA) by some activity (Social Media Submission, File Sharing, Social Bookmarking, Article, Blogging, Forum etc.)
  • Good quality backlinks are essential for SEO. The problem is that it takes a long time to be be effective. You need to also focus on other methods such as PPC to get noticed in the short term. cheers
  • Not backlinks but natural backlinks. Don't think that if you go and hunt links you will be safe. That's absolutely fake.
  • If you are advertising, then you can survive without search engines, if not or cant then you need to focus on getting decent and related back links and remove the back links that harm your website.
  • [DELETED]
  • Goodbacklinks are one of the most important factors, as they are a source of traffic to the site, and a souce for Google to validate your site's content.

    if you have a ton of good links, but the rest of the site is garbage, you probably wont get very good results. The algorithm looks at over 200 separate bits of information when determining where to rank a site. Are backlinks high on that list? Absolutely. Does that mean that you can have thin content, bad optimization and design? No.

    Stating that "Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO" sounds more like a marketing phrase used by that company to sell their services.
  • You can buy some good back links and can get good traffic.
  • You should try to get high quality DO follow backlinks from sites which can pass authority link juice. also try to make social bookmarks. they are very important in todays google algorithm.
Join the discussion

Next Topics on Trending Feed