Google says links not important - what do you think?

I think this is just a psychological approach taken by Google to publisher, so publisher pay more attention to the quality of their content rather than focusing on building back links.

In my point of view, back links is still important, but it should be balanced with quality of the content.

 

Update your blog with good quality content regularly and watch the links come it own. Let them come naturally !
The more better content you will post, more people would want to link with you. They will give credit to your blog for nice info.

 

To my opinion links are one if not the most important reason to get high rankings, social sharing is also very important but for example, i got website in one of the most competitive niches in my country and with a few high pr links i jumped from 115 to 34 without the social/viral sharing

 

Common sense would suggest links are still important. Popular sites with quality content would get natural links.

 

I think the majority of people in this thread are misunderstanding. Google is becoming more share-based and like-based when it comes to ranking websites, as opposed to link-based like it previously focused on. Links are becoming less important because literally ANYBODY can pay the right price to gain a valuable link from a reputable website and unnaturally increase their popularity. There's nothing there that can say the website receiving the link is actually worthwhile or a holder of valuable information. I have first-hand experience of websites that didn't participate in ANY off-page SEO or link building, yet I found my pages at the top of the rankings for their keywords. Content and social popularity is where it's at now.

 

Lol yeah good luck ranking for anything remotely competitive without doing any off-page SEO.

 

Make sure to understand the seo tactics highlighted by Google.

 

Links are actually not important. I ranked one of my sites to first page for several keywords without any links and pr0. If your site is useful links are not needed as google ranks you based on user interaction. Here is the actual method to rank without links > http://www.paisa400.com/paisa/10/

 

Google lies to SEOs guys. It's in their best commercial interest that SEOs fail and businesses advertise with Adwords. This whole 'holistic' SEO approach of 'great content' will rank only works if you already have an audience that will rank the content for you with social signals and linking to it for you. Only the biggest authority sites in the world command that kind of audience. For small businesses, it's always going to be necessary to 'game' Google's system, which means distrusting the official line.

 

links are a vital component of any website’s traffic plan. Without links, a website will have a difficult time ranking for their most important keywords.

 

Funny how Google is making it's own site a top priority for ranking. As if to say, if you want high rankings in Google Search, use our social network. Though I've always loved Google+. I know so many others that hate the site. Those people are short changing themselves. Anyway, always good to be involved in social media, whatever site it is.

 

wow, google full of surprises

 

Well people need to be encouraged to use Google +, they need not just a facebook replacement (their friends are not all there) so the backlink benefit is a plus than any other social network.

 

If Google says, links are not important. Then why Google gives good results who build link?