I have a website that has been online for about 5 years, and is known in the field as a very valuable source of information. The problem I have is the importance in google is 0/10.

The members on my small forum have posted projects and they talk about these projects in other forums creating backlinks to the content on my site. Using the tools in google toolbar, I see that I have 0 backlinks. I can see in the referrers log that I am getting about 60% of my traffic from backlinks from other forums and websites. There are a few members that are even back linking from youtube.

Are these links in the other forums and sites counted as genuine backlinks, or are they over looked? Its frusterating because I have yet to recieve a single approval for a web directory. I always thought that genuine back links generated naturally from word of mouth was the best type.

I have a one month old site that has an inportance of 2/10 and it has less than 20 posts. The reason its so important is because I asked a question in a google forum and posted the address in the forum when someone requested to take a look at an issue I had. This is odd.

Anyone know what I can do to get this resolved?

Thanks

I don’t understand what you want to say by “Backwards links”.

Does it means inbound links?

Originally Posted by gomango

Are these links in the other forums and sites counted as genuine backlinks, or are they over looked?

Most of the time, it is. Especially if your are posting to less reputable forums. You may search for top forums and start posting there. Alternatively, you can do social bookmarking and blog commenting. These two can be a good source of quality backlinks.

Originally Posted by gomango

Its frusterating because I have yet to recieve a single approval for a web directory.

You may have been submitting to inactive directories which is the reason why approval takes very very long. You may consider the list of free directories from directory crictic. It's updated and most of the directories approve sites within a week.

Notes:
- consider the directory guidelines before submitting. Follow it.
- use descriptive keywords for your title.
- don't submit site with spammy description. Make it simple yet very detailed.
- include useful keywords.
- valid email.

Originally Posted by gomango

I always thought that genuine back links generated naturally from word of mouth was the best type.

In a sense, yes. But it takes time. If you are impatient enough to wait for them to link to you (which may really take forever), you can join social bookmarking and networking sites and spread those words explaining your site.

Originally Posted by gomango

I have a one month old site that has an inportance of 2/10 and it has less than 20 posts. The reason its so important is because I asked a question in a google forum and posted the address in the forum when someone requested to take a look at an issue I had.

The way you measure "importance" is different to the way Google measures it. Google accumulates all the PR passed to a page by its inbound links to determine that page's PR. Each link passes a different amount.

I really wouldn't worry about what the little green bar says. It's just a distraction.

Indeed. It has distracted me since I installed it.

One more question. A couple users on my forum are in the works to create links to my site. One of them is outside of the country. Do these links from overseas help as well? It seems that I have more and more from outside the country every day. I am getting hit hard from a technical forum from Russia. I have blocked user registration from .ru domains due to the spam issues I received from .ru account holders so Im not seeing a lot of users from there, but the traffic is most welcome. I have a lot of registered users from the UK and Canada as well. These folks seem to be linking to me quite often.

I know I seem to be dwelling on unimportant things, but how this site has propigated facinates me. Im just trying to understand how it all works, and if I can drive a bit more traffic to the site, then this information is money. Thanks for all the feedback.

Dave

Originally Posted by baxy

I don’t understand what you want to say by “Backwards links”.

Does it means inbound links?

I mean links from other sites back to mine.

If the sites or forums are frequently updated there's a high possibility that google will indexed your links on that site.

Originally Posted by gomango

I mean links from other sites back to mine.

Its back links all right.. Also called as inbound links..

If Im reading my logs correctly, I am indexed about every third day and adsense hits me a couple times per day.