Are backlinks the most important factor in SEO?
-
I have had an agency state that "Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO". That is how they are justifying their strategy of approaching bloggers. I believe there are a lot more factors than that including Target Market definition, Keyword identification an build content based on these factors. What's everyone's thoughts?
-
No. 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.
-
We have some good background information about search engines and SEO in general at http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo that can help you with the bigger picture, too.
-
HI,
Just to add my 2 cents. As already mentioned, links are THE most important factor in rankings. You only have to see who and what Google is after with penalties to make that conclusion or run your own tests. Having said that your SEO company is right but it also means that if they dont do it properly or abuse it or focus too much only on building links and doing nothing else, you will probably end up with a bunch of links from their netword (or some rented) and that wont do any good to you.
Hope it helps
-
Hi there,
If we look at what SEO is - its about optimizing your site for search engines and unfortunately search engines still use links as a large factor in determining whats worth ranking but whilst they may be the bigger factor its not the only one. Many people would argue that if you make a site for users. Make it so great that they want to share it and that its the best it can be. Creating thousands of links won't work any more (and if it does its only temporary) so be careful on your SEO strategy. If you're unsure you can always ask to see previous work and you can shop around but your right there is more to SEO than just links. .
Best of luck.
-
Hi Andy,
I would agree that GOOD backlinks are probably the most important factor in ranking your sites in competitive markets but to get there you really need to address all the other elements you mentioned of SEO as well. If they started 'link building' out of the blue there's probably not much idea behind it. Just my 2 cents!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Drop
Over the last few months my rank has dropped by around half and for the life of me I can’t see why. There are no warnings on Google Console. Am I missing something? Website: thespacecollective.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Creating a site search engine while keeping SEO factors in mind
I run and own my own travel photography business. (www.mickeyshannon.com) I've been looking into building a search archive of photos that don't necessarily need to be in the main galleries, as a lot of older photos are starting to really clutter up and take away the emphasis from the better work. However, I still want to keep these older photos around. My plan is to simplify my galleries, and pull out 50-75% of the lesser/older photos. All of these photos will still be reachable by a custom-build simple search engine that I'm building to house all these older photos. The photos will be searchable based on keywords that I attach to each photo as I add them to my website. The question I have is whether this will harm me for having duplicate content? Some of the keywords that would be used in the search archive would be similar or the same to the main gallery names. However, I'm also really trying to push my newer and better images out there to the front. I've read some articles that talk about noindexing search keyword results, but that would make it really difficult for search engines to even find the older photos, as searching for their keywords would be the only way to find them. Any thoughts on a way to work this out that benefits, or at least doesn't hurt me, SEO-wise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | msphotography0 -
SEO Effect of Outbound Links
Greetings MOZ community: What is best practices when it comes to creating outbound links to other websites? Will adding such links improve the MOZ domain authority of my site? How many outbound links should be added to each page? For example I run a commercial real estate web site in New York. About 20 pages are written about neighborhoods. If several outbound links are added to each neighborhood page, and these links point to pages that provide further information about that neighborhood, will my neighborhood pages where the links originates from see improved ranking (or ranking potential)? Are these outbound links a critical SEO factor? Thanks everyone!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Suggestions for a SEO Review
I think it would be beneficial to have a third party seo review of the network of sites my team and I manage and was wondering if any of you had suggestions for what sort of tests should be done or that we should expect to see done during one of these reviews. We are a small team who has varying seo experience and have been working hard to make improvements to our sites in the past year. Most of our sites have been completely overhauled in the last 12-16 months and seo work that had not been done in the past has been setup, along with some corrections that may have been harming seo. We believe we are on the right track and have learned a good amount about seo in that time, but it would be nice to have some "expert" feedback outside of our office to get a clearer picture on anything we may be missing or some suggested improvements. A sort of double check on the work we have done.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unikey0 -
Seo Hosting
Can anyone suggest me some seo hosting providers?But in better price like hostgator?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
Am I Doing This Wrong? Ecommerce SEO
I ran my site through the SEOMoz On-Page Optimization tool and one of the problems noted was "Keyword Self-Cannibalization" in this case, it was stating I was using the keyword "Board Games" too much. Site in question: http://theboardgamers.co.uk/ The problem being is that every product link contains the word "Board Game" - Which makes sense, but I guess it may look spammy to the SEO world. Would it be best to remove the "board game" part from each internal link and only leave it in the URL structure?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | REMOVE560 -
What are the best joomla seo plugins?
When optimizing a joomla site what is the best plugins etc for seo tweeking
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
Expiring URL seo
a buddy of mine is running a niche job board and is having issues with expiring URLs. we ruled it out cuz a 301 is meant to be used when the content has moved to another page, or the page was replaced. We were thinking that we'd be just stacking duplicate content on old urls that would never be 'replaced'. Rather they have been removed and will never come back. So 410 is appropriate but maybe we overlooked something. any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | malachiii0