Is link building still importent?

Yes, What is link building means actually... process of increasing your link amount on internet... But one thing which we don't need to forget, i.e. Relevancy.

Submissions of a website in the relevant category in a web directory AND link exchanging with the relevant websites will always help and important too.

 

Link building is important especially if you want your site to be recognize or gain visibility, improve site traffic, and sales conversion.

 

Yup! Ever care to analyze the top serps result. You will find that many top position websites got 1000's of backlinks. You can too increase your backlinks by simple ways of getting links. I have post 3 articles on getting free links without requesting to someone for link. YOu can read it in my blog(in signature). Go to blog and search links vault, link exchange or edu link and you will find a treasure of links waiting for you.

 

Many directories went down in PR, and lots now have PR0 on inside pages.

As a generalisation I would say that directory submission is now less effective than before.

I also suspect many directories have lost the ability to pass PR and anchor text.

Still some good ones about though

 

Links from Directories are still important. Just last month I submitted a site to 500 free directories and saw improvement in its SERPs for the targeted KWs.

 

I'd agree free directories are fine, what have you got to lose?

Just eveluate the paid ones a lot more carefully than before - to ensure you are not wasting your money

FWIW I have stopped submitting to paid directories several months ago

 

of course link building still important, see my signature!

 

Yes, I think Google is giving more importance to the relevancy of the link.

 

Link building is very important and accounts for about 40% of the total SEO picture

 

well it seems to me that it's about 90%

 

I was wondering if directory submission is worth a try, you gave me the answer, thanks!

 

70% of SEO is link building

 

Your linking has to be NATURAL - all directory links will trigger a penalty (particularly if the diretories are low quality). Get links from other websites,blogs, links in articles (submit to article directories) and a few RELEVANT niche directories.

 

I think it's tricky and not a straight shot to the top. Too many links too fast, or with identical text, may look unnatural. This is bad.

 

I have serveral sites listed in directories, but these links never seem to actually count. I've never seen them effect my SERPS and the links don't show up in Google Webmaster tools. Blogs on the other hand seem to make all the difference in the world, especially if they have high PR.

 

I agree. It seems that blog links are where it's at.

Which is odd, because blogs tend to have a -ton- of outgoing links in comparison to their incoming links (due to blogrolls and the nature of a blog) so you'd think they'd be the least effective links - well, next to directories.

 

If you can come up with something newsworthy, funny or controvertial, write a press release and email it to bloggers who write about simalar topics.

I got my press release covered at mashable.com once and received hundreds of backlinks because their blog gets syndicated all over the Internet.

I went from not showing up in Google at all to being in the top 10 for my keywords within days.

 

Another way to get backlinks is to submit your press release to Digg

 

Make sure that you have a balanced link profile.

 

I'd say yes , building links is really important if you want your site to get visitors.