Off-page Backlinks – How Effective are They?

A while back, Matt Cutts, Head of Google Webspam mentioned that backlinks within a press release wouldn’t play any significance in Google search rankings. Last week, Daniel Tan conducted a mini-experiment to put this to the test.

Daniel published a release using the keyword ‘leasreepressmm’ through MarketersMedia and that keyword term was anchored to Matt Cutts’ blog. To be honest, I was somewhat sceptical but Daniel reassured that if all went well, Matt Cutt’s blog would turn up in about 5 days time if we searched for the keyword term ‘leasreepressmm’.

Here were the results prior to submitting the press release.

Surely enough, I personally went back to check after a couple of days and I actually found Matt Cutt’s blog fourth in line on Google’s search listings:

In other words, the experiment was a success – backlinks do matter in helping content rank on Google.

However, at the end of the day it also depends on what kind of keyword you’re using, which is why keyword research is so important. We can rank any keywords, including nonsensical ones such as ‘leasreepressmm’ but who would actually search for a term like that?

Exactly.

So take SEOPressor’s advice to always work on your on-page SEO first, as well as keyword research before actually moving on to off-page backlinking.