The Power of Backlinks

There was a time not too long ago when on-page content was the primary factor for search engine optimization.  These days, I will argue that backlinks make up about 70%, if not more, of the algorithm search engines use to rank results.  It makes me wonder how effective SEOs will be in the future, since link building is more about who you know then what you know.  Granted, excellent content on a fairly popular site should garnish its fair share of backlinks depending on the audience and topic, but what about smaller sites, or new sites, that need to establish themselves in the internet world?  Without significant link juice pumping back to their site, their only hope is to target long-tail keyword phrases that have at least 3 or more keywords, or to pick less targeted uncommon single keywords. 

I did a test with a new domain that had zero branding.  The new domain (which I can not share) was live for over six months, and had a unique single word URL containing less than 10 characters.   This site had little to no backlinks, yet very good on-page SEO.  Bing and Yahoo, who give more rank to domains that contain the search keyword in the URL, displayed this site on the first page of search results when searching for just the domain name (no www and no .com).   The highest Google ranked for the same term varied from 15-19 which is a second page result.  Considering Google has about 90% market share for search, something had to be done.

I set out to find a decent site that could provide some relevant link juice back to this domain.  It took a little effort to establish a relationship with the would-be backlink provider, but I managed to get a link (white-hat of course, not purchased, and not on an FFA site) back to the domain.  Within a day of the backlink going live, the new domain immediately jumped to the first or second result on ALL search engines when I searched for the domain keyword.

I am convinced more than ever that while the search engine algorithms may change daily over time, solid backlinks will continue to be the most important factor of search engine optimization.