Links don't count for SERPs anymore.

Before you jump all over my a** for saying this, I have been doing SEO for more than 15 years and my last campaigns scored 100% page one listings.

Let's look at a little history.
Google was founded with the idea of links influencing search positions.

The first 2 years after inception saw constant tweaks spaced about a month apart.

Links have always been a problem for Google and as more and more schemes to use links to influence results became apparent, the less they counted for ranking.

As a result, last year Google declared links a dead metric with the removal of PageRank from their webmaster's tools. Their spokesman even told the public that links were not worth worrying about.

When Google brought in the Mayday update few commented on their statement that Mayday affected ranking and not crawling or indexing.

"Ranking" is PageRank, "Crawling" is when their spider visits your site, and "indexing" is SERPs.

The reason the update affected ranking is that it made a major change in the PR algorithm.
No longer is PR judged by taking a % of the linking page's PR divided by the out-bound links, but by the relevance between linking and linked pages.

I built a new PR0 site to PR4 with 115 links.
113 links placed on PR0, 1 on PR3, and 1 on PR5

This same site with ONE link placed in #1 position for it's targeted KW phrase upon publishing, beating out the #2 and #3 sites who had 58,000 and 277,000 inbound links, respectively.
You can find this kind of thing in almost every search. Low PR sites beat high PR.

If Google placed ANY weight on links this could not happen.

best
Reg

I don't understand this part:

I built a new PR0 site to PR4 with 115 links.
113 links placed on PR0, 1 on PR3, and 1 on PR5

Could you rephrase it?

If links didn't count... then why do i hear thousands of servers running Xrumer as we speak?

So are you saying scrapebox is useless now and it is all about on-page SEO?

If so, what is the best way to rank now?

No offense but I disagree with you Unless I don't understand what you're saying which could be the case. Could you elaborate more when you are talking about the sites you built, because it's kind of confusing to read. If links didn't matter, there would be no way to rank sites properly at all...

Laughing because kinda reminds me of this one thread where the guy said don't worry about backlinks and only use social bookmarks

millhugz said:

I don't understand this part:

I built a new PR0 site to PR4 with 115 links.
113 links placed on PR0, 1 on PR3, and 1 on PR5

Could you rephrase it?

Click to expand...

he has a new site that he only built 115 links...113 links are on pr0 sites...1 link is on pr3 site and 1 link is on pr5 site for a total of 115 links and a ranking of pr4 for his site

The type of link now is crucial to getting position now.
Also the place you put your link is important too.
Putting a link on a web page is not the only type of link

Reg-nbs-seo said:

As a result, last year Google declared links a dead metric with the removal of PageRank from their webmaster's tools. Their spokesman even told the public that links were not worth worrying about.

Click to expand...

Do you have a citation/link to back up this statement?

Do you have any examples you can show of where a few backlinks is outranking sites with tens of thousands of links, like you state in your post?

Can you elaborate?

Strangely enough I have heard this theory in other places in the past 2 weeks. My take on it is that it's simply not true.

But let's presume it is. Even if what you wrote is real, you still did not give us an explanation on what gets counted/ does work.

It is not a "dead metric" HOWEVER, other things are given importance as well. Links will never be "dead". They will always count in one form or another, however, as it has been for the past few years, content and onpage is very important. Just my $.02

Yeah, I have been hearing this around for the past couple of weeks, but nobody has provided "evidence". It is all just hearsay and speculation. What else could the SERPS use for ranking besides on page SEO without Backlinks?

how does some guy rank #1 for a kw with only spammed links on blogs with viagra and cialis and forum postings with totally unrelated topics? maybe the incest,celebrity sex tapes and viagra links in the forums are related?

Google is just playing tricks with us, smart ones, that's what I think. Who is smart enough can figure out their games, I was not so much in seo so I'm not able to do this.

I just read this morning on a webmaster forum that even keywords at the beginning of the meta title does not count too much and could even be a penalty factor, some webmaster told that they should be placed in the middle of the title..

I don't really know what you're talking about. Either way, from my experience, more links (with proper timing) = better serps. I don't even do fancy link structures either. I just spam my money sites. Google loves links.

I will still continue to build links - targeted and non targeted ....

I think google just switched around their priority.

This is based on my experiences and doesn't have anything to back it up. What I think is going on is that google has added a lot more weight to domain/page age and link age. A link has to be in their index for a period of time before it is even counted.

I also think this can be negated if your page, or the page linking to you, has a certain amount of trust rank. I also think google is doing more to discount links that don't appear natural. Such as links produced by article marketing, comment posting, and forum profiles. Remember, this doesn't mean that any of these strategies are no longer effective.

IMHO, if search engines don't consider links in their ranking consideration, especially relevant links, what's left?

Linking is only one part of the process to achieving good PR....for you to state that "it doesn't count for SERPS anymore" is incorrect.

Hopefully it won't take you another fifteen years to realize this.

Good luck.

taskmaster said:

IMHO, if search engines don't consider links in their ranking consideration, especially relevant links, what's left?

Click to expand...

Exactly