How important are the number of links to your site to search engines these days?

[djlebarron]

I haven't sought rankings for about 8 years. I had a site for my former business that consistantly had the top 7 out of 10 listings in Alta Vista (there was no google to speak of then) for quite a number of general keywords related to my business for four years. It seemed rather easy to achieve. The right keywords and description matched well with the content. I didn't have a whole lot of "real" links to my site at that time. I did post the link on hundreds of free "classifieds" sites, but some of the sites deleted the links when they were pushed too far "down the page". I assume the free "classifieds" method has probably been nixed by the major engines these days in favor of only advancing the rankings of those sites that have links to them from "real" sites. So how important is the number of links to your site to your search engine ranking?

[David Bowley]

I'm not an SEO expert, but I would say its very important. The more backlinks, the higher the ranking. It's one of the most important factors.