I'm beginning to notice that a lot of my sites appear to only have just the one backlink from the same page of a forum I'm on. It feels more apparent that backlinks are beginning to become less valuable? Due to one of my sites being 7th on Page One for the term "Apple Macbook" yet others are sitting much further down for terms that are equally competitive. What does google take into account now if backlinks are becoming less important. Is it that blog commenting, forum sigs etc are now dead and organic backlinks are beginning to take even more of a place in google.
contextual & organic links from same-niche or related niche websites have the most weight for google.
Now search engine gives value to quality sites with good PR and not from sites which are for links exchange purposes and are links farms and also links to your site.
Backlinks are still important in determining page rank. But, not all backlinks are equal. Googles' algorithm for determing page rank takes into consideration the kind of page that hosts the link (a forum, or a blog) and can also find out what kind of link it is based on its context in the page. That is, if the link is an advertisement, signature link, a link in the comments of a blog post, etc. From that information, and probably more data, the search engine places weight on the links on a page. I've heard by way of Matt Cutts that they can even determine if a link was more than likely paid for (which is against google's TOS).
No, I think search engines use backlinks as a great indicator of a site's value. After all, removing backlinks from the equation- what is left? Hardly anything that can be measured easily.
Backlinks are taken in account since 1996, I guess millions of working hours from 1000 geniusses results in something better by now...
I'm kind of in the same position you are right now. I'm waiting to get backlinks from web 2.0 props and see if the backlinks will really push my landing pages up in the SERPs. When you think about it, if you have quality, unique article content surrounding an anchor text that links to your landing page, you would assume that it will help your landing page out.
I read this alot and it makes sense. However, I would be interested to know exactly how Google can understand what type of site is linking to you - Do you think they can accurately do this?
What I still can't seem to wrap my head around is why on 1 site I can rank on the first page of google but can't even get on the first 25 of yahoo and vice verse. Drives me nuts.
Google and other search engines are becoming more and more sophisticated by the day. They are able to detect spam sites, paid for links etc The only way and best way to promote your site is ethically. Concentrate your efforts on promoting your site where it will be of interest to other people. I can see the day when SE bots will ignore article directories, link directories, signature links in forums and bad link exchanges. This will stop alot of spamming and create much better search results.
I think they could it already, but I don't think see why they would want to. Forum links are already given a low link value and article directories encourage the creation and distribution of unique content. I think the search engines would definitely like to tackle spun content as it adds no value to the internet other than enhancing link popularity, but it is difficult for them to detect this sort of practice. Regards, Anthony
I completely disagree. For example, if you were to create a web page with just one line of letters in the body eg. "asfojaslkfnlasjfaskn", this will probably be unique to Google. Submit said site to Google and I can guarantee it will be found in Google by searching "asfojaslkfnlasjfaskn", and thats with no backlinks.
backlinks are king, content is queen that's how it's always been, and how it will always be to the poster above, go ahead and make a new site with no links, and don't ping anyone letting them know about your post, you will NOT get indexed.. at least no time quickly
Okay, well this is just my opinion based on experience. I launched a very simple site for dressmaking 2 weeks ago. Without any promotion, this site ranks number 3 in Google for dressmaking +"location". Yes, the competition is low....agreed, however the point being you can rank well without back links.
True, offpage optimization would be better, though content is still important. There are some sites with good content that don't rank well because they lack back links.