Is Backlinking Still Required?

I know that for some websites they are ranking perfectly fine without a single backlink. However, I have seen other websites that are ranking for super competitive keywords with thousands of backlinks. What is the consensus on this. Is backlinking still relevant?

 

Backlinking is still relevant, it's just that it has gotten harder over the years with Panda etc. I also suspect that these sites have a huge social media presence and gain their visitors that way.

 

I wondered how that is possible. I'm pretty new to SEO and as far as I heard backlinks are the only option to improve your rankings. Are there actually other ways to improve your sites rankings?

 

Genuine backlinks still have SEO value but if Google identifies hundreds of backlinks from what are considered to be no more than 'link farms' the site that is linked will be penalized.

A genuine backlink is one that is featured in related content when, for example, a blogger or a forum user recommends a useful article . A harmful backlink is one that appears in a list of links that have nothing in common.

Quality is definitely better than quantity. I've had an article linked back from a dictionary site as an example of how a word should be used, and other backlinks were recommended as further reading or followed a quote taken from one of my articles. These are the ones that raised my ranking and increased my page views.

 

Yes it is possible. I have a site ranking for multiple terms and keywords on page one of google.com/uk and I have not built a single backlink. Please note the site has links to it from social media profiles and forum discussions and questions and answers boards. The website provides a service and the service is good. I'm guessing someone must have found the site and recommended it on a popular forum somewhere and google picked the website up as THE AUTHORITY site for that service. If your website is an authority site, IT WILL RANK with or without a link pointing to it except in exceptional cases where a manual slap is being applied

 

Yes , You can check with without backlinks website Social media promotion , Once promote your website to social media websites you can get more traffic and engagement .

 

Yes, Still back links required. Because back links are backbone of SEO. Without back links we can popular our website in search engine.

 

They are pretty much required. The SEO doesn't work properly without.

 

In a very broad sense, yes. Theoretically, if your site was popular people would naturally be referring to it from time to time via backlinks. Having none at all would not be a good sign imo, especially for a competitive niche. The sites that are ranking without any backlinks may simply be ranking high for terms that had no competition in the first place. I have a unique name for example, so it's a piece of cake for anyone to rank high for it if they wanted to since there are no other sites out there using it in any capacity.

Spammy mass backlinks from low quality sources are definitely on the way out. Google has been more aggressive in recent years in determining quality backlinks from low quality ones. That said, there are still many people using a lot of the popular automated backlinking programs such as XRumer or SENuke or GSA SER. The main key is that you have to really know what you are doing in the settings for those programs otherwise you can shoot yourself in the foot and create tons of majorly spammy backlinks which will cause your site to get penalized. They are still technically generating "spam" backlinks, but there are ways to make those links look less spammy and avoid getting caught.

 

Backlinks are very important but one should keep in mind that Google is strictly checking our links. Bad links creates a bad impact.

 

Backlinking is still required. Some sites don't need to backlink, because they are an authority and will be powerful enough on their own, and other sites may rank easily because the competition is extremely low, but all in all, it's always a good idea to backlink, unless it is being done naturally, of course.

 

What do you guys use for backlinks? I mostly use social medias and forums but that's practically it.

 

I agree with missbishi. It's probably not as necessary nowadays as it was back then prior to social media and other proper sites used for marketing but these days you can get enough attention from just being regularly present online and having a good following on social sites.

 

That's true. But honestly backlinks can increase traffic on your website too, and it's a big chance that this can be your main source of traffic. People are sharing links from time to time, especially at communities like eforum. For example someone added my website to one of french forums saying that he likes my site and want to share with others because it provides a really good and quality content. At first it was like a wave - people came, people left. But then there was chain reaction - someone posted in on another board, then in some comment, etc..

 

I agree too. Social media plays a big part in driving traffic to a website nowadays. And it helps with SEO which helps with rankings.

I was unaware that it was possible to get a good ranking website with no backlinks though. Do you think it depends on the niche and/or keywords? Personally, I still believe that good quality backlinks are important and essential to getting a good ranking. It builds credibility for your own site.

 

Of course, backlinking will always be relevant. You can't talk about SEO without talking about backlinking as this method was the one that spawned the birth of SEO to begin with. In fact, experts would tell you, if you have to choose between optimizing your own site and placing links to as many external sources as possible, they would tell you to go for the latter if you don't have any choice left. There are so many things that backlinks can do for your website as long as you vary the places where you place the links.

 

Quality backlinks are still very important. Sites that are able to rank without backlinks have little or no competition Also sites with fresh consistent content rank very well without backlinks.

My favorite types of backlinks are social networking sites and web 2.0 sites.

 

If you want to optimize your content and promote your site to gather traffic, then creating links back to your website is still relevant. I still utilize this strategy in my optimization efforts.

 

yes, i think backlink is still important things.