What is more important Incoming links or just SEO?

Question

 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.

 

Answer 1

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.)