By now there is no doubt that backlinking is important as one of your search engine optimization strategies. However, are all backlinks the same? What kind of should you acquire? Does having the most backlinks to your website necessarily boost your website’s ranking?
There is a long-standing argument from 2 schools of thought on the matter of backlinks. One school of thought says, “all backlinks are still links, so it doesn’t matter if the link comes from a high PR site or not.” Another school of thought says, “Not all backlinks are the same. It does matter where your backlinks come from “.
There are merits in both arguments. Take for instance, a brand new website. Without any backlinks, it is nearly impossible to rank for any keywords, let alone the competitive ones. On the other hand, an established site trying to outrank the competition is going to need a lot more than just any backlinks to rank higher.
It is important to note one established fact: that links from “nofollow” tags (what “nofollow” and “dofollow” tags are will be discussed in the future) DO NOT improve your ranking in Google. So, does that mean that you should not get links from sites with “nofollow” tags turned on? Nope. For although these links do not improve your search ranking, they bring traffic to your site. Many people make the mistake of being so focused on improving their website ranking in Google that they forget that fundamental to getting more business (precisely why people do SEOs in the first place) is getting traffic.
We are not saying that ranking high in the search engine is not important. But using backlinking as the only strategy in getting traffic completely misses the point of website promotion.
On the other hand, if you manage to get links from high PR websites that allow the “dofollow” tags, then of course these links will help improve your ranking in the search engines. Note, however, that if the page that allows the “dofollow” tags is linking to a million other websites, then benefits being passed to your website’s ranking is negligible.
In conclusion, let us give a spin on an old line by George Orwell: “All backlinks are important, but some backlinks are more important than others”.
This just about sums up whether a backlink is of any worth to your website.
