Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Are backlinks the most important factor in SEO?
-
I have had an agency state that "Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO". That is how they are justifying their strategy of approaching bloggers. I believe there are a lot more factors than that including Target Market definition, Keyword identification an build content based on these factors. What's everyone's thoughts?
-
No. Goodbacklinks are one of the most important factors, as they are a source of traffic to the site, and a souce for Google to validate your site's content.
if you have a ton of good links, but the rest of the site is garbage, you probably wont get very good results. The algorithm looks at over 200 separate bits of information when determining where to rank a site. Are backlinks high on that list? Absolutely. Does that mean that you can have thin content, bad optimization and design? No.
Stating that "Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO" sounds more like a marketing phrase used by that company to sell their services.
-
We have some good background information about search engines and SEO in general at http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo that can help you with the bigger picture, too.
-
HI,
Just to add my 2 cents. As already mentioned, links are THE most important factor in rankings. You only have to see who and what Google is after with penalties to make that conclusion or run your own tests. Having said that your SEO company is right but it also means that if they dont do it properly or abuse it or focus too much only on building links and doing nothing else, you will probably end up with a bunch of links from their netword (or some rented) and that wont do any good to you.
Hope it helps
-
Hi there,
If we look at what SEO is - its about optimizing your site for search engines and unfortunately search engines still use links as a large factor in determining whats worth ranking but whilst they may be the bigger factor its not the only one. Many people would argue that if you make a site for users. Make it so great that they want to share it and that its the best it can be. Creating thousands of links won't work any more (and if it does its only temporary) so be careful on your SEO strategy. If you're unsure you can always ask to see previous work and you can shop around but your right there is more to SEO than just links. .
Best of luck.
-
Hi Andy,
I would agree that GOOD backlinks are probably the most important factor in ranking your sites in competitive markets but to get there you really need to address all the other elements you mentioned of SEO as well. If they started 'link building' out of the blue there's probably not much idea behind it. Just my 2 cents!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I need help in doing Local SEO
Hey guys I hope everyone is doing well. I am new to SEO world and I want to do local SEO for one of my clients. The issue is I do not know how to do Local SEO at all or where to even start. I would appreciate it if anyone could help me or give me an article or a course to learn how to do it. Main question The thing that I want to do is that, I want my website to show up in top 3 google map results for different locations(which there is one actual location). For example I want to show up for
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopack.org.ofici3
online clothing store in new york
online clothing store in los angeles or... Let's assume that we can ship our product to every other cities. So I hope I could deliver what I mean. I'd appreciate it if you could answer me with practical solutions.0 -
Are these URL hashtags an SEO issue?
Hi guys - I'm looking at a website which uses hashtags to reveal the relevant content So there's page intro text which stays the same... then you can click a button and the text below that changes So this is www.blablabla.com/packages is the main page - and www.blablabla.com/packages#firstpackage reveals first package text on this page - www.blablabla.com/packages#secondpackage reveals second package text on this same page - and so on. What's the best way to deal with this? My understanding is the URLs after # will not be indexed very easily/atall by Google - what is best practice in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?
I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish1 -
Domain Alias SEO
We have 5 domain alias of our existing sites
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unibiz
All 5 domain alias are domain alias of our main site. It means, all domain alias will have exactly same site and contents
Like Main domain: www.mywebsite.com
DomainAlias: www.myproduct.com, www.myproduct2.com, www.myproduc3.com
And if anybody will open our site www.myproduct.com, it will open same website which I have in primary site what can i do to rank all website without any penalty....i s there any way? This is domain alias of in hosting industry Thanks0 -
How important are sitemap errors?
If there aren't any crawling / indexing issues with your site, how important do thing sitemap errors are? Do you work to always fix all errors? I know here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bings-duane-forrester-on-webmaster-tools-metrics-and-sitemap-quality-thresholds Duane Forrester mentions that sites with many 302's 301's will be punished--does any one know Googe's take on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
301 Redirect - What happens to backlinks
Hello... One of my sites is losing rankings in G. I received the webmaster notification of unnatural links... My question is, should i do a 301 redirect of every page on my site to a new domain? If so, do the backlinks (which i believe are causing my rankings to drop) carry over? How about the good backlinks? Also, what would happen to the rankings i currently have on page 1? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prime850 -
Subdomains and SEO - Should we redirect to subfolder?
A new client has mainsite.com and a large numer of city specific sub domains i.e. albany.mainsite.com. I think that these subdomains would actually work better as subfolders i.e mainsite.com/albany rather than albany.mainsite.com. The majority of links on the subdomains link to the main site anyway i.e. mainsite.com/contactus rather than albany.mainsite.com/contactus. Having mostly main domain links on a subdomain doesnt seem like clever link architecture to me and maybe even spammy. Im not overly familiar with redirecting subdomains to subfolders. If we go the route of 301'ing subdomains to subfolders any advice/warnings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Link Age as SEO factor?
Hi Guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VividLime
I have a client who ranks well within a competitive sector of the travel industry. They are planning CMS move which will involve changing from .cfm to .aspx We will be doing the standard redirects etc However Matt's statement here on 301 redirects got me thinking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5UL3lzBOA&t=0m24s He says that basically you loose a bit of page rank when you do a 301 redirect. Now, we will be potentially redirecting 1000s of links and my thinking is 'a lot of a little, adds up to a lot' In other words, 1000s of redirects may have a big enough impact to loose some rankings in a very competitive and aggressive space. So recommended that we contact the sites who has the link highest value and ask them to manually change the links from cfm to aspx. This will then mean that there are no loss value as with a 301 redirect. -But now I have another dilemma which I'm unsure about. So the main question:
Is link age factor in rankings ? If I update any links, this will make said link new to Google, so if link age is a factor, would this also lessen the value passed initially?0