How important are backlinks?

[rigaconnect]

Excuse me for such topic (many times discussed).
But at http://ahrefs.com checked one competitor. The competitor is in good positions for some related keywords.
There is some level of competition for these keywords. I myself tried to get at better positions. But no success.
And at ahrefs.com I see that the competitor has only 5 backlinks....
The competitor website has ~ 900 google indexed pages and average pagerank is 2

What does it mean? ahrefs.com does not show most of backlinks? For other websites I see much more backlinks.
Or may be backlinks are not so important?

Please, explain, if possible with some examples.
It would not be useful if you simple write: backlinks are (are not) important

[aruldave]

Could you please tell me which version you are using? Free or Paid?

[rigaconnect]

Free version. It seems that the version does not display all backlinks.

[allay]

Yes back links are more important because you can easily generate website traffic.

[Joomla_Web_Developer]

Backlinks will be less and less important in the future and in some cases can hurt you if not done perfectly according to Google TOS.

The future is social signals.

[aruldave]

Originally Posted by rigaconnect

Free version. It seems that the version does not display all backlinks.

Just upgrade your membership and try however, you can't get the complete report of the competitor website backlinks. Yahoo Site Explorer was a only reliable free service which showed more than 1000 back links of a URL unfortunately the service has been moved to Bing for some reasons but still the software for competitor back links analysis is available in the market. Try a little research and opt for the good one which worth your money.

[Cole001]

Backlinks are bone of the website.

It is not much important how many links get from different different domains, but important thing is on which domain do you get the links.

[virtueinfo11]

there are many way to get backlinks, like article marketing, forum discussion, blog commenting etc...

[snakeair]

Originally Posted by virtueinfo11

there are many way to get backlinks, like article marketing, forum discussion, blog commenting etc...

Any thoughts on the thread creators opening post?

[lethal0r]

Originally Posted by rigaconnect

And at ahrefs.com I see that the competitor has only 5 backlinks....

are they from good quality sites? they may also be doing a 301 redirect or two from an old site which has a lot of links.

backlinks from good quality, popular sites are important and will be for years.

[akasheg]

Can't say anything unless I can get some more info. Please provide the the site address and also the keywords you are mentioning about.

[LukaB]

Backlinks are important, but you should build them wisely and make it look as natural as possible, add keywords like "Click Here" as your anchor, do social signals, make it look 100% natural in the eyes of Google

[henrykconrad]

Backlinks are important for they are the ones that google count once certain online user typed in a search keyword. Backlinks are the ones that indicates if google should put you in his search list answers and direct the searcher to your website. The number of backlinks and other factors signals google for the autority of your website on certain keywords and it might place you on the first page in the top ten search result list or in the succeeding pages. That's how important natural looking backlinks are.

[mycarhelpline]

They are the lifeline support system
See - if you are all alone in a crowd and there is one gentleman who is supported by 1000 of people

Same happens in link building also. If you have backlinks - you are going to get rank high in SERP

[tracy1983]

Some Check BACKLINK tool, such as. backlinkwatch,majesticseo,opensiteexplorer, and so on, but I think the best is majesticseo.

[LeoIndia]

Building quality backlinks is extremely important to Search Engine Optimization.
You should not be content on getting backlinks from any website, it is the quality of the backlink that matters.
A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the quality of a backlink.
The higher the relevance of backlinks, the greater their quality.

[sujatakohli]

Backlinks will provide a heavy traffic to the site and increase page rank in search engines. Get quality links through these activities directory submission, forum posting and social bookmarking.

[weblaunch]

In addition to driving traffic to your site through direct referrals, web directories provide one-way links to your site, increasing your search engine rankings.

[spiderswatch]

Back links really very important for websites. Back link help to increase website value and help to promote keywords in search engine. if we have good back links from good website it helps to increase our website Page Rank.

[seosaroj]

We should not forget that it is not only about the backlinks its should be about the good and quality back links from your niche.