Links provide only 5-15% of Ranking Factors?

google rankings r so random at times... they tend to fluctuate

 

we can not generalize it. There are just way too many permutations possible here but 5-15% is low (though sound alright for no competition keywords)

 

Sorry guys but im in the minority. My seo friend has been getting sites ranked high for years solely on the strength of his link building. He claims its closer to 80 to 85% importance for link building, and judging from the results i have seen from him i 100% agree.

 

One of the niches our site is in is super competitive, and you can definately see that there aren't singular ranking factors in Google at least. Out of the top 3 sites competing, you have:
One site with an incredible amount of indexed pages and good content, not too many backlinks.
One site that's basically plain affiliate, loads of sneaky and quality link buying.
Our site which suprisingly ranks, probably a good mix of backlinks and good content, but terrible content/url structure.

 

You are very correct... But you can actually prove things like Page Titles and updated content do have an effect.

 

Content 40%, Links 30% are ok but what is Trustrank????
plz send answer ??????

 

It is true that it is not possible to get links without genuinely good content, but then black hates thrive on Links.

Links is more than 90%...

If you can get Links.... Quality or quantity(massive), then content and everything else are secondary.
I am talking from an algorithm point of view.

Logically, if you have poor content, noone will link to you naturally, but if you can manage to get links to your crappy site, you can outrank any site...

Link is king....

Want example? Search for "buy viagra"

 

Content has nothing to do with serp in google. search do not know which content is better, only human know.

 

That stat would be more believable the other way around.

I think backlinks account for the largest proportion of your ranking but hopefully in the future (and it is already starting) it won't count for as much. Content quality in relation to those baclinks should be the most important factor.

 

I doubt with those stats... i have seen a number of PR4-7 sites and blogs.. which haardly have any backlinks... then how are they ranked sooo high...

I believe: Its not the links that play the imp factor... its the traffic which plays the key role.. and traffic comes from good and quality content... links are just ways to advertise the content...

 

Good content is brough up a lot, but how does one define good content? Amount of keywords in body of copy? Grammer, Spelling, Amount of copy. How can googlebots determine quality?

 

"good quality" content letting you rank well is a myth. If that same good content can pick up links then yes it will help you rank.

Links are the most important thing in seo, by a mile. You can rank in a competitive term with terrible content as long as you have links. A lot of people won't want to admit it, but you can buy your way to the top of the serps in almost every niche, with almost zero on-page seo.

 

As all of us SEOs know SEO is trial and error in terms of what works and what doesn't since the metrics behind SEO are never truly revealed in full. I think knowing exactly what percentage of what SEO metric that makes you rank better is just too secretive to know for sure. Most SEOs know what ranks based on trail and error and common sense. I am sure that there are many SEO experts who have just posted on this thread. Just take a look all the various suggestions. All these suggestions have varied and I am sure that everyone who has posted to this thread has ranked before.

 

what I believe is that having good and a lot of content with a good site structure
will let google see that you are definitely worth to come to the top for a certain
niche. Of course, content is not enough, but I am sure that you won't need so
many backlinks if you have a solid base of good content and structure.

And I don't think that google cannot see if a content is related to a certain topic,
or in simple words: Google can detect if you talk about a certain topic or not.

You will definitely need lesser backlinks if you have a lot of well structured content.
But on the other hand you can also outrank a well structured content full site with
a one page site if you get a massive amount of backlinks.

Try to think like Google:
You can get high amounts of backlinks but getting a good structured site with
full of unique content is not so easy. Thats why I think, especially in the future,
onpage factors will outweigh offpage optimization.

 

SEO is a mixture of onpage and offpage techniques. How much work involved is dependent on the competition and the current state of your site.

Here's what Google says about improving search engine positions:

Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34432&topic=8524

 

Links plays a great factor in ranking.. Since links are SEs food...

We know that contents and links go hand and hand... but linking is more crucial to build.. It takes time to build links.. I can see many duplicate contents online which only they build links and it is ranking...

 

Links are very important in highly competitive markets, but much less so in niche markets or local markets where the competition isn't likely to have much links at all. In these niche markets fresh content rules but links don't hurt.