New Google ranking study shows links are incredibly important to the ranking algorithm

A new ranking study on links published today by the Stone Temple Consulting team shows that links may be even more important than other studies have shown in the past.

Many of the previous studies released by Moz and Search Metrics show that links are incredibly important, but the Stone Temple Consulting study says they are more important, at least statistically, than those studies have shown.

The new study says there is a “near-perfect correlation” between ranking highly in Google and the links pointing to that page. This study aggregated the count of links by ranking position for the top 50 results across 6,000 search results pages, and it showed a near-perfect correlation between links and ranking. They used three different statistical models when analyzing the results.

So while some may have felt links may have been a declining ranking signal, this study shows the opposite.

Eric Enge, CEO of Stone Temple Consulting, told Search Engine Land, “If your content isn’t competitive in relevance and quality, links won’t help. If it is, links will make the difference.”

The study is pretty interesting to read, and I recommend you check it out over here.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.