Are links really THAT important?

OptWizard · 11-01-2004, 07:40 AM

Everyone keeps preaching links links links..the more links the better the ranking. Anchor text ...blah blah...I have been saying that this is not the be all end all to rankings and there has to be more to it.

Well here is what I found for a client of mine...
They are ranked 20 with a PR 6 and 2710 backlinks...NOW sites above them are as follows

ranking PR BL
2 5 1180
3 5 204
5 6 1150
9 6 219
11 6 252
17 5 161

20 6 2710 This is clients site

Before you ask BL on the sites are all mixed related and non related. Some of these top sites even link to casino and other "bad" sites.

I would love to here why the other sites rank higher?

Thank you

Jim · 11-01-2004, 07:44 AM

Google doesn't show all the backlinks pointed to a page. So, those are not the real backlink counts. They're just the ones that Google shows in a "link:" search.

OptWizard · 11-01-2004, 08:01 AM

well just did yahoo bacllinks which shows most of if not all you BL

and here is what I found, I did it for the same sites above

813 BL
1180 BL
12200 BL
484 BL
1520 BL
666 BL

and my clients

67,900 BL

so now what?! Why cant people admit BL are not as important as one thinks

Jim · 11-01-2004, 08:37 AM

I think, BL algorithm is not as simple as your "813 BL < 67,900 BL. So now what?" approach. Nor does the SERP algorithm.

If you want to convince people to something or prove that their POV is wrong, you should bring more than this forward.

OptWizard · 11-01-2004, 08:52 AM

>>>
If you want to convince people to something or prove that their POV is wrong, you should bring more than this forward<<<

Thank you JIM you just proved my point...What I have been saying all alonng is that there is more that just BL to the ALGO which is what you stated here

>>>I think, BL algorithm is not as simple as your "813 BL < 67,900 BL. So now what?" approach. Nor does the SERP algorithm.<<<

This is all that I am saying many people beleive that more links you have the higher ranking you are...I have been stating that there is more to the algo then just links and people keep preaching LINKS LINKS LINKS

awall19 · 11-01-2004, 09:09 AM

right. its mixing the right kind of links from the right kind of sites with the right anchor text. # of links alone means just about 0

OptWizard · 11-01-2004, 09:28 AM

Most of if not all the site link to same type of sites
So I am still going with links are not as important as one thinks

awall19 · 11-01-2004, 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OptWizard

Most of if not all the site link to same type of sites
So I am still going with links are not as important as one thinks

just because you can't effectively use links it does not mean that others can't use them either. the very line of thinking which states "I have links so I should rank good" shows that deep down inside somewhere you believe in the power of links.

also if you do not think they are that important why did you have the link to that affiliate site of yours and the I am selling text links logo?

arius · 11-01-2004, 10:55 AM

Optwizard,
You are right. All other factors being equal including, Title tags, Keyword density, Link Relevance, and all the other on/off page factors, number of back links are the tie breaker.

Don't forget that the PR of the sites giving the back links count too.

If your site is not ranking well for a certain keyword query maybe you world rank higher for others. Is that ranking a consistent average for a number of queries or just one?

OptWizard · 11-01-2004, 11:22 AM

>>>also if you do not think they are that important why did you have the link to that affiliate site of yours and the I am selling text links logo?<<<

Cause it make money...isnt that what we are all here for to make money.

alll I am saying is this i really dont think links are as important as people think.

ferret77 · 11-01-2004, 12:24 PM

optwizard you are like one of those japanese soldiers stranded on an island in the pacific who still think WWII is still going on

its been done to death, don't you get the "links arn't important" thing was a smoke screen some clever "ethical" seos came up with to fool people into thinking seo is much more difficult then it is.

The people who came up with it NEVER believed it

all you have to do is check their client sites to see

OptWizard · 11-01-2004, 12:53 PM

>>>don't you get the "links arn't important" thing was a smoke screen some clever "ethical" seos came up with to fool people into thinking seo is much more difficult then it is<<<

Do i even have to reply. If it was that easy to be number one with just links would we all be here discussing it? I think not

Rivux · 11-01-2004, 01:00 PM

Well there are only two ways to rank a site, onpage and links, everything else falls under one of those two categories. As been said a million times on here, onpage elements are so easy to manipulate that it would behoove google and other SEs to use links as a major ranking element. Not just the number of links, but the quality of those links (I would take a link on the homepage of ESPN over a 1000 geocities member pages), the topic of the link and even the location of the links (IP wise).

So does having 100 links mean you are going to rank higher then someone with 5 links, of course not because not all links are equal.

**John Scott** · 11-01-2004, 01:03 PM

Links are not the entire ranking algorithm, OptWizard. Links are not the end-all, be-all of SEO. Anchor text is much more important than the number of links.

OptWizard · 11-01-2004, 01:15 PM

I know that it is not the be all end all that is point I am trying to make...
My anchor text is spread between 2 key terms so that is done. I just think thtere is more and I know there is more to it that just links and anchor. Cause I once stated before if it was that easy we would not all be sitting here discusing it we would all be making millions

ferret77 · 11-01-2004, 01:23 PM

"not all be sitting here discusing it we would all be making millions"

In case you havn't checked most big money terms have sometimes tens of thousands of links, so it really isn't that simple

I, Brian · 11-01-2004, 01:38 PM

Not all links are created equal though - this is something that people continually fail to appreicate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OptWizard

My anchor text is spread between 2 key terms

You might want to look at varying the anchor text a little more - there have been various reports since April of Google devaluing links which have extremely unnatural anchor text patterns. All links showing exact same link text is an easy flag to pull, presuming such a flag exists.

Alan30 · 11-01-2004, 01:42 PM

Can you post the url and the search term?

OptWizard · 11-01-2004, 01:49 PM

I
this has not been proven yet

Pimpen 2010 · 11-01-2004, 01:50 PM

I dont know if this has been mentioned before or not but, "quality over quantity" probably kicks into play here. If those 67,900 BL's are on sites that have 50+ links on a page, whereas the site with 813 links might have good links on sites with a few links.

BL's aren't the only determination factor though when looking at rankings, there are other small things to look at.

For example: http://www.must-have-software.net/software.php?id=42

I rank pretty high for a search for that page that has only 5 BL's as opposed to other sites that have a lot more.