Are Backlinks Over-Rated?

I don’t think that you necessarily need a lot of back links to drive traffic. You could have only 1 link on a site and receive more traffic from that link then if you had 10 links somewhere else.

I think it really comes down to how much traffic your link is potentially being viewed by and of course, how relevant the link is to text on the page being viewed.

I would say that 99% of the time a back link is just for a search engine because honestly, do you really care how many links a site has pointing to it? I bet you would still read the site even if you knew it had no links.

Not to say that links don’t help though, the more links you have out there, the more chances you have of somebody seeing it and clicking through to your site. I guess I would sit in the middle as well in that back links are over-rated to a point, but that they can be a great way to drive traffic.

Honestly, before anythings like PageRank is that influential, backlinks are not one of the top priorities for online business owners.

I’ve seen some bloggers with PR0 made over $100 and few bloggers with PR2 and 3 still stuck around $30 a month.

It is definitely overrated.

I like your site and the information you share about back links. Great information. I look forward to more future postings and educational insight. Thanks so much
Ryan
Maine
http://www.thepoweroffreedom.ws/spiderweb

My experiment with backlink is in progress, more backlink=more traffic

Excellent points, Garry. Prior to the beginning of this year, I didn’t focus on anything at all really, other than general backlinks to my main blog. After spending quite a bit of time experimenting with different techniques since then, I’m convinced that there are two ways to go and you pointed them out.

The biggest boost to my traffic started on July 14th when I started targeting the long tail keywords. I still go after the holy grail and main keyword, but it’s a long building process because the competition is extremely tough. My traffic doubled and will continue to grow as I mine the long tail.

I’m also convinced that more than a few quality backlinks to a specific page are a complete waste of time. I would gestimate between 5 and 10 will do the trick, I generally go with 5 targeted backlinks and let evolution as well as the good feed scrapers take care of the rest.

The goal is really to rank on the first page of every search engine for multiple long tail keywords. I think it pays off better in the long run.

Check out RT Cunningham | Philippines’s last blog post..One Bad Scraper Foiled - Success with Google

Both are important. Especially as more people target the same long-tail terms. And if you spend sometime on the more targeted terms eventually you will get traffic from those as well. On some sites I’ve noticed that after I began ranking for the general terms, it made it much easier to rank for long-tail.

I think, like anything else…backlinks are part of the solution. They are a tool in any blogger/marketer’s toolbox, but not THE tool. I think you can get great organic traffic without them, but backlinks are more about targeted traffic.

Such as…the traffic I get from the backlinks on this site. They aren’t very keyword targeted, just my name, or alias. But these links bring people to my site, no matter if they are follow or nofollow links, the people that click on them art targeted readers of your site.

On the other hand, I get articles ranked pretty quickly in the search engines lately, and they are more longtail based. I actually don’t really target for any major keywords, mostly longtail phrases.

So, I think both are useful and compliment each other by serving different purposes.

Check out JK Swopes’s last blog post..Normal Joe blows the horn on more bloggers

It is true that traffic is equal to money and in this sense getting Backlinks to your site is good, but there are few other important factors that should be considered for driving targeted traffic.

It is definitely overrated, as you need not just traffic, but it must be targeted traffic.

I think that backlinks play an important roll in getting traffic & ranked but are not necessarily needed to make money online. I have not paid for a single link in my life - and don’t plan on it, yet I seem to get a considerable amount of traffic without them. The way I see it is if I have a backlink, it means that somebody liked my blog and linked to me. I wouldn’t say they were overrated because its always nice to have backlinks
Check out Owen’s last blog post..Linux Performance Boosting - Graphics

I think backlinks are important to an extent but tons and tons does no good. They need to be targeted backlinks that are coming from sites in your niche or good paid directories. Page Rank is not a great indicator of how much money a site will generate.

Check out wisdom’s last blog post..Organized Wisodm