Does google consider backlinks to be number 1

Hi,

I have spent the last month updating my site, with content etc.
I optimized my site for keywords using overture etc. Next i submitted to multiple directories and got listed some pr5 etc.

Now when i check in future page rank checker it still predicts a pr3. What am i doing wrong. i know all my pages do not have a page rank. You dont submit all your pages to search engines as they spider them.

Please help want to drive my PR up. Have spent $50 already linking to 4 pr5 websites but no look.

Please help. Please help. Yahoo costs $299.

On the verge off giving up at this stage. Even to move to a PR 4.
I know PR is not relevant but i still would like to start moving up.

I heard someone mention that you need over 1000 backlinks to get a pr4.

is this true.

help
Fergal.

You are really to early in the game to give up. You need to stop concentrating on Pagerank. It is not that big of a deal and don't listen to Pagerank Predictors.

I have a few clients making over a million dollars per year in competitive markets strictly through organic and only have PR4's and PR5's.

You don't need any sort of number of backlinks to get to a Pagerank of 4. It could take 1, it could take none!...your internal pages could do it for you!

Search engines usually take (in my experience) 4-6 weeks for backlinks to really matter, so if you just did them, it's going to take more time. Pagerank is not going to get you visitors/sales, good positioning in the search engines are.

And yes, I would recommend spending the $299.00 for Yahoo and make sure you try your best to get into DMOZ.

Hi vetofunk,

thanks for the help. I am going to pay the $299 and get on the yahoo directory.

My next question is about anchor text. My site is http://www.learningsteps.com - Online computer training | distance learning tutorials. Do you think this is correct use of anchor text. I was told that if you use your title as anchor text it really helps.

i also have these in my keywords.

thanks for your help.
much appreciated.
Fergal.

Before spending the $299.00, make sure you do some research to see what categories are coming up in Yahoo search and where your competitors are listed. Make sure to give a keyword rich description, but don't make it to keyword spammy or they will rewrite it.

Keywords in anchor text will help, it's just another part of onsite SEO. Just don't over do it.

Well as the Grapevine goes yes it is correct to say that Google gives more priority to good quality relelvant backlinks than other alogos for ranking a website on a particular keyword / keyphase.

Hey its only normal, who would you trust more a company that has 1000 customers per day reviewing it or someone with 1 per week ?

Backlinks are always #1.

google gives priority to high page rank back links. but also contents of your site is important.

My oppinion is that the quality and the unique content implies a high number of IBLs... and "Time" is the only problem for that.

Before starting building up IBLs manually, you must think first why all the visitors will visit your website and secondly which should be the reason to come back on your site again!

It's no use to count on the number of IBLs if your website is a blank page... or something similiar (no offence intended... I really like all the pages I've visited on this forum).

Two of my websites http://www.6pack.co.za and http://www.getafirmbutt.com had a pagerank of 0 for months.

I did not have a lot of backlinks and all of a sudden a couple of months ago, both websites shot to a PR ranking of 4.

I believe that my internal page linking that helped my PR ranking to climb and not the amount of sites linking to mine.

As content is KING in SEO. Mainly for google you need to have a fresh and unique content.

Try to get a good number of quality backlinks from relevant sites. Backlinks will help in getting good PR. But as of now do not expect much for higher PR.

Content is important but along side you must do link building also

you dont need so much backlink for a pagerank 4.if i am not wrong.i seen site before with minimal backlink but somehow they got a pagerank 4-5!some sites have over 10000+ backlink and yet it still loses out on the pagerank.

Yes, back links are the most important, but also having a fresh content all the time.
If you cant get good renking at google, so maybe try to change your meta tags a bit, maybe now they are good for yahoo and msn, but we all know that google is the real player here...