How important are links after Panda

[diogenes]

I have noticed that the sites in my niche that were at the top of the SERP's are still at the top of the SERP's after panda. I have also heard people theorizing that links are no longer important, its now all about bounce rates, time on site, etc. Is there any consensus about how important links are after Panda?

thx

Paul

[SeattleOrganicSEO]

Backlinks are the foundation of the original algorithm.  Check out the first paragraph in "Design Goals" section 1.3.1 in Brin's and Page's original paper on google: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html  The last couple of lines point to how backlinks are what guide's google to figure out relevance to a significant degree.

However, as people have both witnessed and experienced, google's punishing specific types of links like blog networks right now and also probably taking into consideration notions like what Geoff Kenyon wrote back at the end of January before a lot of the sh*t hit the fan: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization

I think the key is to keep the ratio more heavily weighted towards the brand and the urls of the original website and definitely not having too much of one specific anchor text.  However, some companies still seem to be "under google's radar" like this one I noticed recently: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.autson.com.  I guess if you "make it appear natural", you can still make it under their radar.  At the same time, I would HIGHLY encourage a larger proportion being more naturally built links despite the pain and time it takes.

Google's going to constantly disrupt the business though...how else can they keep their stock price going up by pumping it with all the adwords spends?  

[Sean_Dawes]

Links are still very important. Not quantity but quality of sites linking to you.  There has been some recent talk on google's statements on anchor text and debate around whether they still consider it or how much relevancy anchor text plays. But at the end of the day links from good sites are very important.

[NakulGoyal]

I like what "Optimize and Monetize" said. Links is like Oxygen. Think of them as Website Food. That's the nature of the internet. Social signals, internet citations, activity on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and local / niche directories, yellow pages, forums etc based on the nature of your website/business, it all adds up. Panda is just trying to find and discount the effects of the "manipulations" per se. I hope that helps :). Good content, Good links - Works.

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

How important is oxygen to you?

Very important. Links still have value....Panda just created a way to discount and penalize certain types of links. Good for you that you weren't affected. Keep building strong solid manual links and you will continue to see value.

Hope this helps.