Is backlink still important for SEO?

[johnandme]

Even though Matt Cutts said backlink would become a little less important in SEO, but I myself don't believe that

The question is how Google ranks websites? it relies on content? I'm sure any Seach Engines likes a lovely content. But how can search engines distinguish a good content from another? I don't think search engines are so emotional enough to realize better, exellent or worse content

Search Engines are just a machine, they're not a human, so I think it doesn't have a feeling about content.

In fact, Google owns some instruments, that helps google understand how visitors think about sites. Google Analytics can determine users' behavior on sites. But I think google may not know satisfaction exactly. This is the difference between human reading and Google search engine reading.


What happens if so many sites contain equivalent quality content, equivalent bounce rate, time on site, pageviews...? So what is crucial factor to keyword ranking? that's backlink


Another question! why did Matt Cutts try to lower the role of backlink in SEO? Because he wanted to prevent spammers who are getting spammy and spammy everywhere to get backlinks


I don't think the role of baclink would be lowered, it's always valuable for SEO , no matter how google's algorism changes.


I hope you can share your viewpoints to me.

 

[fisicx]

You have misunderstood how the Google algorithm works. There are over 200 ranking signals each of which has a value in the overall ranking score. If you have two pages with similar content, structure and other ranking signals equalised then the inbound links will have greater importance. If you have a site that is popular and authoriative in comparison to your competition then the inbound linlks may well have less importance.

It's not one thing or the other, it's a balance. Great content is rewarded with increased visitor interaction, google uses a range of signals to measure this and will rank accordingly.

 

[Mystro]

Just look at the top 10 in any Niche, I see sites sitting top and some with very few backlinks, if backlinks were as strong as they were these sites would never be sitting where they are.

You will never know how google ranks a website, you may know what helps and good backlinks will help as will great content and popularity, google is complexed but if man can make it, man can break it, and some people do understand the mechanics better than others which i suppose makes for a good SEO, In my Niche the site dominating has 179 backlinks where 2 years ago that would not have got them past page 5

 

[loganseth]

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said that backlinks, over time, will become a little less important.Matt explained that Google is focusing a lot now on working on ways to determine if a web page is meets the expectations of an expert user. They do this currently by looking at the links to the page, the reputation of the site and pages and the quality of the content on that particular page.

 

[CraigGriffiths]

Links are still an incredibly important ranking factor. Anything that Google tell you not to do (link building) is because it's effective. Now it's more fashionable to just call it "outreach" and "content marketing". If you're contacting people in regards to content that you have created and the reason is to get them to share or link to it....you're link building!

SEO seems to be becoming unfashionable, yet when i talk to people that want "content marketing" what their KPIs are, they often say rankings. When i ask them what they want to achieve with it, they say links. So basically they want SEO, right?!

It's getting pretty funny!

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Links have always been the major factor in ranking. Until someone comes up with something better, it will remain so.
Matt Cutts is a propagandist, he says what he'd like google to be capable of, don't believe anything he says. Google does manual reviews for a reason...

 

[SBurdett]

Mystro - you can't just count the links and be surprised that a site ranks well with only 179 backlinks - what are they, where are they from? They could be 179 top quality links from within relevant content on well-known sites - a competitor could have 10,000 links but they might be from worthless places like article directories, forum profiles or comments.

It's all about the quality but backlinks do still count towards that high ranking spot

 

[CraigGriffiths]

Listen to the head of Google's web spam team tell you the importance of links:

 

[Mayur Mistry]

The answer to your question is yes!

Your backlinks should be naturally developed though and should be incorporated in your SEO strategy. You should see backlinks as a form of PR. If you can a get a backlink from a highly reputable website, whether it may be a well known news website or on a well known blog which relates to your industry then that will be boost your SEO rankings.

I hope that answers your question. Feel free to send me a message.

Regards,

Mayur

 

[lulu1979]

that video is more than a year old...

 

[CraigGriffiths]

that video is more than a year old...

Yet is still just as relevant then as it is now.

Google "seo myths" and check out the Moz blog post by Cyrus Shepard titled "10 SEO Myths that Friggin' Tick Me Off". Sadly i can't post links yet!

Automated link building isn't a good strategy any more (never has been, in my opinion), but link building is still as worthwhile as it has ever been.

 

[TomRoberts]

I've seen plenty of awful websites rank in competitive keywords on links alone. I've never seen a website rank with good content alone.

Links are probably, still, the strongest ranking factor. You can get better links with better content, absolutely. And you're links are likely to remain 'good', for longer, if you have put the effort into your content.

When it comes down to it, though, it's all about links. Differs slightly when it comes to local, arguably a lot more level with the other ranking factors there.

 

[fisicx]

I've never seen a website rank with good content alone.

There are millions of pages that rank on the quality of the content. Agree there needs to be at least one link to the page but that could be internal. Not everyone needs to be #1 for 'car insurance'. A lot of people do just fine on a few long tails.

 

[E-Liquid UK Store]

Anyone who says links aren't important don't rank for anything remotely competitive.

Simple as that. I'd love someone to prove me wrong with examples, though.

 

[StevePoster]

Backlink consider as one of the most important metrics in rankings but not the basis.

 

[SearchEngineOptimisation]

Our best advice would be not to treat backlinks in isolation. It's like expecting to compete in professional sport by simply training without changing your diet, it's a combination of factors that will help you to achieve your send result, there's no magic combination. It's all about quality, you put quality work in then as a result you'll get an improvement in website performance. Links are still relevant though if they are easy to obtain then it's likely you aren't trying hard enough, there may be a few quick wins, but if it's easy for you then it's also easy for your competitors and thus your SEO campaign isn't very good after all.

Focus on the quality of your website and it's likely that your website will start to gain links as a result. Focusing on building links is like trying to cheat your way to the top.

 

[Karl B]

backlinks are still very important! They may not count as much in terms of ranking factors but if you're building links to rank then I'm surprised you've still got an indexed website! A link from an authoritative source with a valued readership is going to be extremely valuable because it has the potential to result in traffic.

 

[Elliottc26]

However, what kind of traffic are you after? Those who are conducting research, those who are looking to buy a service or product, or both?

This is why a website with a blog adds value to your domain. So the website captures leads to make sales, where a blog will capture the researchers using useful and informative content in and around your business.

E.G. You sell washing machines, so, you create blog content like: Top 5 washing machines tried and tested, How to choose the right machine for you, The difference between 1000 spin and 1200 spin, etc..,.

Thereby, your site becomes an authoritative site that others will link to as a reference, and share over social media. Your blog posts then point to the relevant product/service pages on your website using calls to action to help move people further along the sales funnel = researchers > leads > prospects > customers.

Helping people along the buying process will help you as a business make money. You can send a leaflet to your target market entitled: How to know when you need a new washing machine. The call to action points them to your blog.

 

[Paul Featherstone]

I have spoken to many search agencies over the years on this subject - I do think that Google have played down the on-going importance of back links over the years. The search industry has seemed so reliant on this factor that it always seemed likely that this was the case ie they are more important than google says. However, in recent years it is clear that there have been some major shifts away e.g. social, mobile, etc.

 

[jameswilliam723]

Back links are the most effective factor in SEO. Back links that should come from high authorized and theme related websites are only effective. Doing OFF page SEO techniques are the way to build back links to a website by following white hat SEO strategies.

 

[fisicx]

Back links are the most effective factor in SEO.

Not any more they aren't.

 

[tk-hassan]

It seem that the importance of backlinks is somewhat decreased in recent times but it is more with the quantity of them, you still need to have quality backlinks to get good search engine rankings.

 

[Kevin James]

yes back link is important because it helps to increase organic traffic to your website/ business. To get safe back link, you should submit blog/articles only high page rank sites. this will help you to boost your SEO rankings.

 

[fisicx]

Do people really still think this is a good link building strategy? After everything Google has published I'd suggest this is somethng to be avoided.

 

[Karl B]

backlinks for ranking purposes = FAIL
backlinks for branding awareness and direct traffic = WIN

 

[boring-friday]

links are obviously the most important source. I'd love someone to find me a a website ranked 1st in a tough niche without strong links, theres plenty ranked high with sloppy on site (hi amazon,ebay).
Makes me laugh that so many people take what google say as gospel, nearly their entire income comes from ppc, why would they want to encourage you to spend money on links?

 

[altonroot]

You have asked many pertinent questions and so my answer will also be in little more detail.

First,

But how can search engines distinguish a good content from another? I don't think search engines are so emotional enough to realize better, exellent or worse content

Yes search engines has developed many machine learning algorithms to discriminate the good content vs bad content. Of-course, copy-paste is first signal. Apart from that Panda is algorithm is also for the same. I have written a blog post about real world Panda optimization and have explained how to write good content. You can read it here, Real world Panda optimization.

In fact, Google owns some instruments, that helps google understand how visitors think about sites. Google Analytics can determine users' behavior on sites. But I think google may not know satisfaction exactly.

Google categorically denies the use of analytics data in ranking algorithm. And they reiterate same thing regularly. There are many arguments against and in favour of this claim. For example, here is one good thread for bounce rate. One can argue same way for other data as well. So this one is up-to you, how you conclude.

Third,

Another question! why did Matt Cutts try to lower the role of backlink in SEO? Because he wanted to prevent spammers who are getting spammy and spammy everywhere to get backlinks

I think Matt hasn't said they are lowering importance of back-links. He said we are adding more factors and also working on filtering bad vs good back-links. Once Matt also said that they ran an experiment by removing back-links and said the result was much worse than it is today. Russian search engine Yandex had dropped back-links from ranking algorithm. And exactly after one year and one month they brought it back. Their justification was, use of social signals for ranking is not good idea because it is way easy to manipulate than the link factor is. So back-links are still important as it was but Google is getting better to find bad vs good so we need to focus on quality vs quantity.

 

[altonroot]

Yes, Creating backlinks is still important in seo, but most important is creating backlinks on high pr sites with unique contents.

What that " high pr" means?

 

[Parcelhub]

I'd focus just as much on user experience, site speed, url structure, those kind of things.

 

[HandSon]

Recently Search Engine Land published The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors 2015 Edition. They say the quality and the quantity of backlinks are still play role in conquering the TOP.

 

[Lenka Pollak]

Sure, backlinks are still important. However they need to be naturally gained. According to MOZ, links are still the most important part of the algorithm. (yet very low, as the algorithm consists of hundreds of signals)

 

[Audrey Wright]

I think you don't really understand the role of backlinks within the ranking algorithms that search engines use - primarily Google.

Backlinks are something like a democratic vote system inside the Internet, where a web page is the voter.

In the real world, if you have the votes / support of many, and, authoritative people, you'd be recognized as authoritative and trusted in your niche.
In the web, if you have editorial links (meaning they are placed within content), coming from already established brands / authoritative websites / websites related to your niche, Google counts those as votes of support that the information in your website is legitimate and helpful to human users.

Probably the strongest ranking factor right now and in the future is User Experience (UX). This is how a user interacts with your site and whether they can find the information they are looking (the query they enter into Google) fast, easy, and it's a definite answer with a factological core.
Because UX is hard to control, it's hard to establish and it's dependent on large amounts of traffic that need to get first.

Links are easier to control to an extent easier to obtain. That is why people often just focus on those, since they are still one of the biggest ranking signals in google.

 

[Mayur Mistry]

Backlinks are crucial for your SEO.

The best way to look at obtaining backlinks is looking at it from a PR/promotion point-of-view.

You can get backlinks through writing press releases on various news website, the more prestigious the news website the better. And another effective way of getting backlinks is through guest posting on different blogs. The best way to do this is to build a good relationship with the blogger and coming up with a really good pitch.

 

[Stevie C]

Hi,

I totally agree, backlinks are always going to give a website more recognition because like you say, it's impossible for a search engine (machine) to know what is better content compared to others.

Maybe Matt Cutts says this stuff to fend off the spammers but in reality he knows it's impossible to solely rely on content! The web results would be a mess if this is all they relied upon!!

 

[altonroot]

High PR means the page rank of the domain in which an individual want to create backlinks should be more than 3.

Do you know when last time PR updated?

 

[Bartholomew Hearn]

I have read a lot of controversial answers here and I am a bit confused. I work with a small to medium sized London company and I wonder if we should hire a professional to do SEO or should us employees handle facebook, twitter and maybe any of the other social media websites? I know that A LOT of our competitors rely on Google and there's been quite a buzz, so if "backlinks" are so important do you think regular employees could handle such task? Links do not sound that hard imo,
thank you

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Google tells you what to do "create content that people will link to" So create content, and get people to link to it.

Not really rocket science is it?

Many backlinking problems exist when a site that has been around for a while suddenly starts getting backlinks. Google can check trending terms, and if that site isn't in a trending niche then get ready for a flag to be raised and get trawled by a sub algorithm for spamming.

I have a site that is related to the rugby world cup. Every 4 years it sees a massive spike in traffic and backlinks. Never had an issue with it as the spike in backlinks co-insides with a trending topic.

Step back and ask yourself the following question 'does this look natural'? if the answer is no, then you are going down the wrong road.

Oh and one last thing. by 'look natural' I mean what is the REASON for the sudden rush of backlinks!

 

[Piter]

Good link Building with the smart page optimization is the most important thing when it comes to SEO. The whole secret lies in the fact that not everyone is able to optimize the well, and not everyone can adopt appropriate strategies for gaining links. The key is to test and draw conclusions from statistics. If you perform analysis top pages in Google you will see

 

[E-Liquid UK Store]

Not any more they aren't.

https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-google-study

 

[fisicx]

https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-google-study

I didn't suggest backlinks weren't important. I was was just responding to the comment that backlinks were the most important thing. They aren't.

And there isn't anything new in that article, it just confirms what most people already knew.