Sites with few backlinks, still high PR

[Luc]

I've seen a few sites appearing on the first pages of Google results when looking for general keywords such as "home organizing" or "proofreading". When checking, these sites had about 20-50 backlinks alltogether.

Still they show up on the first or first few pages. Also contentwise, one of these sites had only a few pages explaining the provided service.

What makes them rank so high then? Are backlinks really important?

[xYvesx]

Backlinks are most important - then Content then - Onpage SEO in my opinion

if you have strong backlinks, you dont need that much for most keys

[Nixies]

We would need links to the site to give you a better idea, but it could be age, really trusted links. Their are a number of factors. Links are still very important, but it's quality rather than quantity.

[coolamazer]

I guess the quality of links must be too high. Afterall you can get 1000's of links from spam sites and other ffa sites. Google looks at quality over quantity

[digitalextrememediagroup]

It could be domain age or the ratio of other site in competition, content uniqueness. Realistically in the first few page things can drop off fast. It’s like fishing off the East Coast. The first few listing or top in a serp is the goal.

[jacky8]

It is possible that all the above explanations are false. The site owner may have purchased that high PR domain recently.

[digitalextrememediagroup]

The site owner may have purchased that high PR domain recently. True in which case if he changes the content he may get a goose egg!

[seosapien]

Where did you get the report of the backlinks? If you got it from google than you are not seeing what is really happening. Try yahoo site explorer, it isn't exact but it will show a lot more links.

[mrboomboom]

There is always sites thank rank well but have very little back links, it just goes to show there is much more to it than sites linking to you.

[link_seller]

maybe the sites get high quality backlink...so because they only get few backlinks but they still powerfull

[jacky8]

an idea about how to get a few high quality backlinks like that???

[stevejeff]

Backlinks are one of the factors for getting high PR ,not the only reason for PR. Some factors like age of the site,trust & credibility,brand popularity etc will count

[jacky8]

And all these factors will be reviewed by Google's manual team

[dglas]

backlinks can be determine by quality as i know how google assign to it. better to have a lot of quality link to get good ranking. quantitiy not important.

[seokingdom07]

Quality backlinks with unique content really matters in position in SERPs.