: How important are back links for SEO in 2017? In the past most SEO training promoted getting back links. There were plenty of article submission sites for that purpose. I have been away from

@Voss4911412

they are important, for example majestic tracks all backlinks to your site.

it is also important that the backlinks are from high quality websites (e.g: edu and gov domains are the ones with most importance) and that your site follows all google webmaster guidelines.

because the quality of backlinks matters, some people tried many techniques, like for example: to create a lot of low quality backlinks to the URLs of their competitors in order to decrease their ranking.

Google developed a software to detect spammy behaviors called: Google Penguin

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@Goswami781

I will just add few more points.

The way Google has been pushing for rich user experience and going very strong against poor SEO approach.

Backlinks was important and now also it plays very important role in ranking.

But if the approach would be completely based on backlink then it will be very hard to get sustainable ranking as backlinks decay over time.

Important: Relevant backlinks are far more important than just having more good or poor links.

So, the first priority should be building rich & interactive/engaging content. Make sure the content is well received on mobile and desktop.

After that you can use social media to promote content and expecting people will link naturally.

Any additional effort towards natural link building will boost the ranking greatly.

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@Alves908

Just as important as they have always been. However, artificial link creation or curation is very bad these days. Instead, search engines look for organically created links. Quite simply, people must be compelled to create links based upon your content. You can promote using social media, however stay away from link schemes, guest blogging, article marketing sites, PR sites, and any SEO crap method you will find. Let the links come to you and the value of the links will be better.

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