Michael Martinez has an interesting post today over at SEOmoz:
Quote: Any time someone feels compelled to ask for help in an SEO forum, there are two major red flags which tell me they have been reading way too many SEO forum posts: they tell people what their PR is and how many backlinks they have. If it were really that simple, you wouldn't be asking for help in an SEO forum. And while you're reading SEO forums, why haven't you picked up on the fact that the people asking for help aren't benefitting from that PR and backlinkage?
He goes on to say that "Your Internet marketing objective should be to build a market for your Web site. You need links to do that, but more importantly you need visibility. "
What do you think? Do you think webmasters should stop focussing on backlinks and look for other ways to promote their sites?
I generally believe that some of these extreme attempts to manipulate search engine results is an exercise in futility. Google could decide tomorrow that backlinks really aren't that important and drop them altogether. They seem to be continulally adding more functionality to negate the importance of unnatural links. We're #1 for our search term without doing any of that! (for now, anyway....)
I am looking forward to Michael's articles on visibility. I generally like what this guy has to say - he even had some good arguments in favour of using tables for layout awhile back 
Megan
My web design blog
teammatt3 posted this at 22:03 — 26th May 2006.
He has: 1,907 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Not necessarily. For some people, the only way they make money is by selling text links. In general, the higher the pagerank, the higher the price and the more money they will make. The only thing they need to focus on is getting a higher PR which requires more backlinks.
My Site | Regular Expression Tester
thesocialx posted this at 00:34 — 27th May 2006.
They have: 14 posts
Joined: May 2006
I think one also has to consider their content. You have to figure out where your potential users / customers are browsing and make your website visible in that area. If you offer information then your potential user is probably looking for that information in a search engine and you should be concentrating efforts on building SEO.
However, If you offer a retail product then it is more likely that your customer is on ebay or some kind of online mall rather than using a search engine to find what they need. So in that case you need to develope an online distributor chain to offer your product.
~Ryan
http://www.thesocialexperiment.com
remindme posted this at 16:44 — 8th June 2006.
They have: 53 posts
Joined: Apr 2006
Have you purchased text links?? does the advertiser win??
Frankly I believe it is way to costly for what you get...
For small business owners, buying text links could close your business..
similiar to PPC... It is tough to advertise your sites...
Takes allot of time, effort and money...
and BTW, more links do not necessarily mean higher PR...
Higher PR links do...
Web Site Owners Rely On Our eCommerce Marekting Tools
to Help Them Build Data Driven Marketing Opportunities.
We Are Auctioning ALL our Home Page Visitors
Read our BLOG and see if we are successful or NOT
robbluther posted this at 13:52 — 1st June 2006.
He has: 73 posts
Joined: Jan 2006
I have more backlinks on MSN than on Google and I have almost twice the number of page one listings on MSN than Google. That is someting that drives me nuts... How come they are registering different backlink numbers... Man, I wish MSN were the #1 Search Engine...
mrgrimes posted this at 16:40 — 1st June 2006.
He has: 9 posts
Joined: Jun 2006
This is a very naiive question, but here goes: how do you find out how many backlinks you have in a search engine?
Azam.net posted this at 23:09 — 9th June 2006.
He has: 73 posts
Joined: Sep 2005
Good points remindme.
Try these:
http://www.linkpopularity.com/
http://www.freewho.com/linkpop/index.php
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Janet posted this at 05:40 — 14th June 2006.
She has: 133 posts
Joined: Jan 2006
How come there is so much of a difference in links between the above site and the 'links' command in yahoo search? I get 805 with the above site and about 300 with the 'links' command.
Image Hosting | Everything Photography
Novelty Gifts
[url=http://www.squidoo.com/birthdaypartiesforkids/"]Theme Birthday Parties for Kids[/url]
alleonna posted this at 14:42 — 5th July 2006.
She has: 6 posts
Joined: Jun 2006
Just wondering, how come search engines don't have the same number of backlinks to your site? Got 3200 links in MSN ,1280 links in yahoo, and only 87 for google.
http://www.bullfrogspas.com
teammatt3 posted this at 15:39 — 10th June 2006.
He has: 1,907 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Yes. I don't quite understand what "win" means in that context. I don't believe it is too costly for what you get. For the people that spend hours writing articles, press releases, submitting to directories and other ways of backlinks, that takes a ton of time – if you make $50 an hour and it takes you 6 hours to create all that content, it costs you $300 in valuable time. I could get the same PR as them just by buying one authority backlink for a few hundred bucks.
How can it close your business? If you are smart about it, you can find great deals on text links.
Not as much as link building via PRs, articles, directory submissions etc. It may cost more money, however.
I disagree, if you have a hundred PR1 links, I think you will have a high pagerank just like you would if you have 5 PR5 links.
My Site | Regular Expression Tester
remindme posted this at 15:51 — 10th June 2006.
They have: 53 posts
Joined: Apr 2006
Teammatt3,
Great we are saying the same thing..
All I am saying is that working soooo hard (time & money) to build links in order to increase PR, you might as well go after higher ranking sites to build it quickly with less time and effort..
Web Site Owners Rely On Our eCommerce Marekting Tools
to Help Them Build Data Driven Marketing Opportunities.
We Are Auctioning ALL our Home Page Visitors
Read our BLOG and see if we are successful or NOT
5meodmt posted this at 01:01 — 19th June 2006.
He has: 36 posts
Joined: Jun 2005
Do you think webmasters should stop focussing on backlinks and look for other ways to promote their sites?
I think backlinks will always be a consideration as it is the very nature of the "inter"- Net. But other ways of promotion should never be overlooked, i think a balance of all promotion techniques is the best solution. Anything in an extreme can be harmful. As we know...smoking too much, drinking too much can kill.... over doing it on SEO can kill your website to.
**ecomatrix.eu - FREE Eco friendly Web Hosting**
Web Hosting|Shoutcast Hosting|Broadband
Janet posted this at 20:13 — 19th June 2006.
She has: 133 posts
Joined: Jan 2006
How can over doing seo hurt your site? Can you give examples? thanks.
Image Hosting | Everything Photography
Novelty Gifts
[url=http://www.squidoo.com/birthdaypartiesforkids/"]Theme Birthday Parties for Kids[/url]
mikehannon posted this at 05:02 — 20th June 2006.
They have: 64 posts
Joined: Oct 2005
One example of over optimisation would be to "over saturate" your site with your keywords... say you have a site selling "widgets"; if every second word on your site happens to be "widget" the search engines think "hmm something fishy going on here..." so the search engine might drop your site down in their results for searchs for the keyword "widgets" cos they think you are trying to cheat... there is no precise rule as to how much you can saturate your site before the search engines give you trouble but i hear the general rule is no more than 10% (ish) but i would say 5% is safer...
also a webmaster might spend all their time searching for every single directory they can submit their site to for easy backlinks, though this will probably not help their site very much if at all... time should be spent finding RELEVANT sites to exchange links with that might actually bring some direct traffic to your site... again, if your selling widgets, find other widget websites to exchange links with... even if there are only 10 other sites like yours the search engine will respect links from them far more than a hundred random web directory links...
Mike Hannon
-----------------------------
ICHOR Gallery : Fine Art Prints
Janet posted this at 05:08 — 21st June 2006.
She has: 133 posts
Joined: Jan 2006
thanks for the info.
Image Hosting | Everything Photography
Novelty Gifts
[url=http://www.squidoo.com/birthdaypartiesforkids/"]Theme Birthday Parties for Kids[/url]
robfenn posted this at 15:59 — 22nd June 2006.
He has: 472 posts
Joined: Jun 2005
Yes, agree with Mike. I have seen many high rankings sites that must scare off customers when it comes the most important stage, buying!
Web Based CRM | ISO 9001 & ISO 14001