Are back links really that important?

There are several factors that influence your ranking on google. One of the most important things you have to concider whe SE optimizing are getting backlinks.



Of course content is king, meta tags have become less important, and keyword density is still an important factor, but there is one more mathematical factor google uses to give your site a value, which is still the most important factor for the Page rank. We will talk about back links.

Back links or reciprocal links are the same thing, both of them tell a search engine robot, your site should get a better rank, because other people think your site is helpful or it meets their taste, and that's why they link back to you. But getting a back link alone isn't enough to attract the search engine, giving you a higher ranking. You have to close the loop and give those sites, who link back to you a back link too. That means that you are creating with the other sites a network, and google rewards your website for planning it this way.

Sometimes it happens, that sites who link to you get deleted or the back link which they give you becomes broken. So, when the google robot visits your site and follows the broken link, or google visits the affiliated site and finds there a broken link, it reduces your value and your PR drops down. It also depends on:

How many backlinks are you getting?
How many of these links are broken?

If you get for example 100 back links and 2 are broken, then it wouldn't be a big problem, because we are talking about 2% only. But if you are getting only 10 backlinks and 2 are broken, then we have 20% of broken backlinks.

Conclusion:

Always try to get working backlinks, visit the sites who link back to you and investigate the links to your site. Do they work? If not, send an e-mail to the webmaster. Also have a look at the links which leave your site. Do they work? If not repair them.