Getting backlinks - quality over quantity?

Hi guys,

So I've set up some sites with a business partner and he knows hardly anything about SEO/computers/the web. I'm a web designer and know an OK amount, but I'd class myself as a SEO newbie.

Anyway, these sites have been optimised onsite - title tags, meta, h1, h2, etc. and without backlinks we rank at the top of the second page for .co.uk for our keyword. Competition is hardly anything - our competition have NO backlinks (or if they do, they're from themselves).

Now, this has made it a tiny bit harder for me. I have ScrapeBox and I've been using it a bit and it's great, but as I say competition has hardly any backlinks so I can't take theirs. Now, my business partner is wanting to just keep getting crappy links from directories... most of these directories want a reciprocal link - is it worth bothering?

There aren't many sites or blogs relating to our keywords, but there are broader topics that are similar. So my question is, should be target relevant sites that want reciprocal backlinking, or irrelevant sites that don't? I really don't want to be linking to these other sites, as they're probably full of crap and I don't want them to hurt us.

Would appreciate some help.

Quality backlinks make a huge different I know a guy who got no.1 1 on google for a pretty competetive term with only 44 backlinks.

What you want to do is to make your backlink structure look natural and that would include quality, nofollow, article back links, forum back links, directory (I know they suck) backlinks etc.

For short term you can slap some quality backlinks up but if you are playing the game for a long term basis you want to mix it up pretty good.

Think "Random Chaos".

It seems like for Google you want quality backlinks over quantity but the opposite is true for Bing.

Thanks for your replies. I've decided we'll just do a bunch of things and make it random like you said backtrackerboats, with articles, directories, nofollow blogs, forums, etc. Seems we moved up in the SERPS already. Our competition sucks.

I would add relevance into the mix as well.

I'm certain that you will rank higher if your backlinks are all relevant to your topic

OK, thanks. How relevant do they have to be? I mean, let's say my site is about BMW cars. If I get a backlink from a site related to BMWs then that would be great. What about if it's a backlink from a site about Fords? They are still in the same topic of 'cars' - any good?

Hire some 1 for High PR blog commenting service. Around 25 links. You'll get ranked for your keyword

yesterday when i want to index my profile backlink to google than i follow this thread how-get-your-backlinks-indexed-fast by Yukinari84 but when i checked my webmaster account today than suddenly my links is 300 please answers me what i did wrong.my sit link on google only 3

Someone who is good in SEO told me that he prefers 100 High PR links rather than 10k bullshits low PR links. I am 100% agree with him. I saw some website only has 400 backlinks and it has PR5! I saw some blog have >10k links, but only PR2.