How Important Are Backlinks?

How Important Are Backlinks?

With the last two Google re-indexing in June and September, backlinks seem to play an important role in Google Page Rank and search results. For those who say that page rank means nothing - phooey. I see a definite correlation in my sites between page ranking and traffic. When one of my sites goes up in page rank, I see more traffic. If the page rank goes down, so does traffic. One think to keep in mind, however, is that this is only true for comparing a web site to itself. For instance, you may have a web site with a Google Page Rank (GPR) of 6 and I have a site with a GPR of 4, however, I appear higher in the search results. So saying "my page rank is higher than yours" means little, but saying "my page rank went up, so I will probably get more traffic" has been true with my own sites so far.

Backlinks In Celebrity Web Sites

When Google looks at backlinks, I think they look at links to each individual page. For instance in www.PopStarsPlus.com or www.BiographyPlus.com I try to get links to the individual artist or celebrity. So Lindsay Lohan pages link to other Lindsay Lohan pages, Zac Efron Pages link to other Zac Efron Pages, Michael Jordan pages link to Michael Jordan pages, etc. So when the Google spideers take a look at the home pages, they do not see most of the back links to the site, only the ones that go directly to the home page itself. Yes, the back links do help the internal celebrity pages which supposedly will help the home page it links to, but there are hundreds or thousands of backlinks that are not accounted for in the home page. Maybe Google needs to re-work its own algorithm to take this into consideration.

As a strategy, I could just have all reciprocal links go to the home page, but that would be a disservice to the individuals that want a specific celebrity. I guess I will probably keep on doing what I am doing and eventually Google will benefit websites that actually try to provide information and links to its users as opposed to sites that provide information and links that will obtain the best rankings. Hopefully I will win out in the end, but being right does not always mean success. Ultimately, when there is time, I will try to get some more "quality" backlinks, but for now, adding content and making my sites the best they can be is a priority.