I was corresponding with a well-known Internet writer a few weeks ago. Believe me, this "girl" really knows her stuff when it comes to how to game the Internet to create not only traffic, but more importantly a sense of authority when it comes to content. We exchanged a few emails, and I realized, however, that she and I have completely different opinions about one very important part of search engine optimization, or SEO. We differed greatly about the importance of backlinks.
Just in case, let's define "backlink." A backlink is a text link coming from another site that points to a page on your site. For instance, let's suppose you own Site A. A backlink is a link on Site B that sends the visitor to a page on Site A, when clicked.
The importance of backlinks is huge! They are one of the main ways that it seems Google decides how important your content is. The more links coming in, the more important your content, the more worthy of being ranked highly.
My writer friend seemed to downplay the importance of backlinks, however. Because she sees the Internet as more of a network of links that are followed by humans. Someone reads a post on a blog they like, it links to your site, and they click on that link, thus becoming traffic for your site. That's great! But if you can get specific pages on your site ranked highly for various keyword phrases, then you get the "human" traffic, but you also get the traffic from searches.
It seems that Google is in agreement with me, also. (Or at least I'll just assume they are! :) ) With the recent MayDay algorithm change, it seems that Google is relying more on off-page factors than on on-page factors for ranking. That might mean that backlinks are now more important than ever before!
Backlinks are a tricky subject, though. I don't have the time to write a treatise on them right now, but I promise you I'll write a few more posts about the nuances of proper backlinking.
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