what is more important Incoming links or just SEO?

[Arrogantlace545]

I work for a small non profit and we are trying to gain ranks in search engines. From the SEO firms we shopped around some tell me that the page just needs optimization and some maintenance and one firm tells me that the page is optimized enough and what I really need is a lot of incoming links to gain ranks.

What is the best route to take? What is the mos effective way?
The incoming links would be coming from articles, so says the SEO firm encouraging the links

[Jake Birdem]

Backlinks are at least as important as content, true authority sites with quality content, like the NY Times automatically gets backlinks from other sites, many other lesser sites have to encourage backlinks.

Only on site SEO methods are approved by search engines, most of the link getting strategies employed violate search guidelines, usually detection/suspicion causes the links to be disregarded, extreme cases of mis-behavior gets a site de-listed.

A non profit would want to tread lightly, some paid link getting services may link from inappropriate, reputation damaging sites.

[booze]

It really depends on your site needs. If your site is already ethically optimized, then what you just need is to building quality links for it. (preferably from relevant sites with high domain authority)

[Pearl Simpson]

Search engine works all with back links. Most of the SEO activities are done to acquire backlinks so I think this is really typical to get the idea which one is important. But one thing that is important is to remember we are doing SEO activities to grab backlinks. Thanks!

[eddie]

I am not sure if I get your question right. but will do my best to answer them.

SEO has to primary segments. On page SEO and Off page SEO.

When you are talking about Off page SEO then you are primarily referring to inbound links.

To rank well on search engines you need to take care of both these factors.

[pushpendra singh]

Well its tough to answer without analyzing the site.

There are lots of activities which are to be done like sitemap.xml, robots.txt prefectly using different tags on every page and so on then comes the Link Building part.
Please provide your URL so that we can answer in a more better way.

[lalalove619]

On page SEO is just as important, if not more so, as off page SEO.

Off page SEO is simply backlinks, however, the method of obtaining those backlinks vary and can be incredibly beneficially if done properly and can hurt you in the worst way (by having your site deindexed) if done improperly. You can encourage backlinks without being black hat or grey hat (I hope you're familiar with these terms.)

It is untrue that ONLY on page SEO is approved by search engines. However, it is true that you should know what the SEO company promoting backlinks is trying to get you into. What type of links do they build? Where are the links placed, get a report of every backlink they've placed. If they are article marketing, ask which directories they submit to and who is generating the content and how the content will be relevant to your niche.

There's nothing wrong with article marketing and article marketing through directories can help with SEO but doesn't get you in front of an audience. There are ways of generating backlinks that will do both.

Do you know where your natural, organic traffic is coming from presently? If not, install google analytics and monitor that for a week to get an understanding of how people are finding your site. This can also be found in awstats which is located in most hosting company cpanels.

The first step you want to take in getting more traffic is to optimize your on page SEO by optimizing your site for keywords most relevant to your non-profit niche.

Ask yourself and your coworkers this question: What would someone type into google to find your service? Those are the keywords you want to optimize for.

Once you're optimized and getting natural traffic, consult your analytics to find more keywords you're being found for and continue to optimize for those.

Then begin your backlinking campaign with a company that specializes in white hat methods and has signed the SEO pledge to first do not harm.

I hope this was helpful.

[Nexgen Tech]

I think links are more improtant

for more information

http://www.nexgenforum.com/Forum-Link-Development

[Cameron Provan]

If the page is well seo optimized,than you need just backlinks. Now the backlinks from articles are not so powerful after recent Panda update,because this links were devalued a little bit. I recommend you to get backlinks from all the sources (web directories,article directories,forum profiles, comments on high page rank pages,press releases,etc).

[Josie Kates]

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They are an awesome marketing and SEO firm.

Stellar results, and they have clients like VOLKSWAGEN

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