Shady Link Building Methods You Should Avoid
Building links is one of the important components of search engine optimization. Many marketers consider link building as a way to improve their websites ranking and drive traffic. There are many link building tactics out there. Some of them are aimed at building natural looking links that would produce long-term results. Other practices teach how to build many links in the shortest time and with fewer efforts. But such links can hurt a website in prospect.
When it comes to link building, not every link is counted as a vote for the website. Although the search engine is not a human, it uses the algorithm to discern good and bad backlinks. The search engine evaluates the websites links are coming from, anchor text, quantity of links appearing within a period of time and some other factors. If there is any doubt, the search engine can consider the links as spammy and lower the website in ranking.
So, whether you are just starting your link building campaign, or looking for new link building methods you've never used before, here is a good list of things Not To Do while optimizing your website:
Abusing Wikipedia
As you probably know Wikipedia has an enormous value for the users. This site provides accurate data based on facts and not on assumptions. Many Internet users search Wikipedia for quality articles and stories. That's why Wikipedia ranks high in search engines. Some webmasters think about editing an article on Wikipedia related to their market niche hoping to obtain a backlink. Not a bad idea. However, to get accepted, your article must be well written, quality, open-minded and it must not contain any promotional or sales material. With all that said, if you are not very skilled in writing, consider changing your mind towards Wikipedia.
Abusing Video Sites
The websites sharing video files may be a good teaser for webmasters looking for backlinks. People come to such websites, watch the video they are interested in and share their thoughts in comments. But be careful. People hate when somebody chucks in their conversation with an off-topic comment. If you suggest a website that has nothing in common with the discussed video, you may hurt yourself. Potential website visitors may hate it in advance if they find it on most video sharing sites.
Spamming Forums and Blogs
Forums and blogs are being created to unify people interested in the same topic where they can chat, share their thoughts and opinions. Unfortunately, forum and blog spam is not uncommon now. If you run a forum or blog, you are likely to get so-called posts and comments that give nothing to the readers but are full of pure links. To protect against spam, bloggers often use anti-spam plug-ins such as Akismet which detects suspicious comments and moves them to the Spam folder on the blog. Using this method to build links you create a bad reputation to your website and company. In addition, because of several spam posts or comments you may end by being banned on the specific forum or blog and you may not be allowed to submit good comments or posts.
Adding Pending or Low Quality Sites to Web Directories
Submitting the website to the appropriate category in popular web directories is one of the common link building tactics. However, one of reasons the website is rejected from the directory is a poor, low quality website content. Do not submit carelessly done websites in the hope to get a link. Take time to develop a quality website thinking primarily about the end user and not about a search engine. After all, it's not a search engine but human visitors who will browse the site, read the content, and click the links. Here you will find directory submission best practices
Spamming Other Webmasters
Contacting other websites owners for link exchange is not a bad idea. In fact, there is a good chance to get solid links this way if the link exchange is equivalent, the websites have a common theme and if you approach a website owner personally in a well written message. Sending an automatic email to random webmasters with irrelevant link exchange requests does no good for you or your website.
Creating Link Pages
Some time ago generic link pages were very popular. Those pages gave absolutely nothing to the users because they contained only pure links (often irrelevant) to other websites with no other content. The search engines consider link pages as an attempt to artificially build incoming links and increase the PageRank. So, if you were thinking about such a way of exchanging links, better forget it and consider placing links on web pages with content relevant to your niche.
The best results can be achieved with the links placed within the page content. Side-wide links and links placed in the page footer are not so valuable because they are mostly paid links. The search engines used to devalue a link if something would suggest that you have bought the link (the words like "advertisements", "sponsors", "supporters", etc. near your link). If you still decide to buy links, at least make sure you are not buying tons of links with the same anchor text. With all that said, I would recommend blog commenting, guest blogging and creation and submission of unique articles as good methods to get inbound links within the web page content.
Well, I described just a few shady link building methods that can hurt your website if they are not used properly. I just wanted you to know these tactics exist and might be used by your competitors. However, if you think they are ethically wrong, do not engage into such practices and focus on good link building methods that produce not quick but valuable long-term results.
Please, share your thoughts in comments.
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Tags: Guest Blogging, Link Building, Link Building Tutorials, New Link Building Methods, seo backlinks
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Filed under: Link Building Tutorials, New Link Building Methods
Great stuff! I like to think that commenting is way up there. I mean – just consider posting a new blog post at least every day and then search Google for your keyword + the word “commentluv” + the word “keywordluv”. Now check out the Google Search results to find one or two interesting blog posts and post a comment. Sometimes commentluv does not work but then still you get a free text link to your blog that currently runs a related blog post on the main page. Now I hope you have an attractive sticky blog signup box on your site to capture the traffic. You can give away free links to your Top Commenters as well as host a competition where you give the top commenter of the month a link on an article you write and submit to hundreds or thousands of directories and other blogs.
If you like the blog posts that much that you decided to comment on them – rate them. Most blogs (like this one) uses a button of their favorite rating service (web 2.0). Obviously you like the site so give them a thumbs up!
Or you can use the Facebook sharing system which is just rocking in the top ranks! I like this one best as it makes use of a real personal recommendation that is sent on the visitor’s behalf to (mostly) personal friends and I guess you did not know this: it gets delivered into facebook’s email inbox!
I think a good strategy with wikipedia is to find a unique link on your website that you can add to an existing article. I have had good traffic results from the few links I have been able to add there.
connors last blog post.. U.B. Funkeys – Vroom
Are Wikipedia links not no follow? I found a message to that effect when I added one a few days ago.
@ June Campbell, some Wikipedia links are dofollow, it depends on the page. If you use Firefox there are addons that highlight dofollow links.
I thought that all outbound wikipedia links are no follow now. The only ones with dofollow are internal links to other entries.
I hope your article on the spam link building efforts is read by as many people. Spam comments on the blog has become an epidemic. Comments like ‘nice blog’ ‘excellent article’ have become the order of the day and it takes much time and effort to delete such comments.
Srinivasans last blog post.. e-book Writing As a Home Business
Agree about spam comments – they’re useless to both the reader and the site admin, and they end up spoiling it for everyone when whole comment systems get removed, or become “nofollow”. “Nofollow” kills off the interest in commenting for a lot of people, even though they DO have something useful to say. I think it’s no problem if there’s a kind of symbiotic relationship between the blog owner and commenter (both have reasons why commenter should comment, though they are different reasons!) – as long as the commenter contributes a meaningful, useful comment.
Shady link building providers to avoid. Just to share some personal experience with link building services, in particular directory submissions service providers. Beware of claims of high PR and reporting provided. A provider I’d engaged irresponsibly submitted to high PR (no qualms here) sites that are local ONLY directories, ie accepting only local sites, e.g Egypt, Poland, Cleveland, etc, and to several reciprocal directories. While technically, a manual submission service has been ‘provided’, we know it’s of no use to building links since they would be rejected by the reviewers upfront.
I have come to believe that the links that ‘really’ count now are the ones inside articles (‘inside’ not under). So I support guest blogging as probably the best way to get links.
Articles are good too, but unfortunately links are at the bottom.
I think link pages are dead. Goog would look at a link page, and easily figure it for what it is.
You could build on the point regarding web directories – Google, and the other search engines, seem to giving junk directories less weigthing in terms of their link influence. If a directory is prepared to accept a poor quality site that you submit then you can pretty much rest assured that the engines will give very little to value to links coming out of them.
@Steve:
I agree with you on your #1 and #2. But on #3 I disagree. Why should google devalue a site just because I choose to link to that site in my links section?
@James:
Just because a directory accepts poor quality sites doesn’t necessarily mean that all sites in the directory stinks – and what do you actually mean by “poor quality” in this context?
I agree that google is not giving those junk directories as much weight now, though i don’t know if linking to one of them would devalue your own site. and blog commenting definitely seems like a good way to build links but as you guys said it’s probably much better to be a guest blogger and get links from within the article itself.
I think it’s important to mix up your link building a little. Do not focus too much on one aspect. For example, I hear of people submitting only to link directories, or article directories. Spread it around a little and do not put all your eggs in one basket.
Andy
I like the idea of comments but it takes me a long time to even enter simple comments. My success is putting some videos on you tube. Lately I’m getting very good results and I noticed other bloggers using my videos on their sites which result in getting the credit the backlinks. If you have a software that can help writing comments I’ll purchase it in no time. I understand that I still need to write the comments in order for it to serve the purpose of being a comment but let’s face it, most of us doing it only for the business with some social pretense of being interested. without trying to offend anyone my own limited observation is that 95% of the comments are only camouflaging the desire to have a link back. Maybe it less sincere than simply entering your website address? It is some kind of social maneuver like buying a girl a drink without the intention of spending the rest of your life together. maybe nothing wrong with it after all it is only a game in the first place and the rules are the rules created by new god Goog
I disagree with your comments about video – not only to these have the ability to pass PR, they also rank well in search engines.
Your on the money regarding Wikipedia, the amount of time people waste to insert a article with a link only for it to be taken down the next day! Even if it stays it’s a ‘nofollow’
I have found that it is a good policy to restrict your blog-searching to just those topics in which you have a genuine interest because then it is relatively easy to write a comment which is adds something worthwhile to the discussion. When I have strayed from this rule, I just sit there for a long time with no usable ideas coming to me.
Hi;
I am embarrassed to say, but I just now found your site and your blogging software, which by the way, I am enjoying tremendously. It amazes me every single time that people just don’t want to follow the rules anymore. I reckon we have become so dependent on “instant” results that some of us are willing to risk loosing it all just to get a few extra links. I’ve been online for about 8 years total and I can tell you, I’ve done it all (just being honest here). Yet time and again I found that if internet marketing is what you want to use to make your living with then you owe it to yourself to (1) take your business serious and (2) practice only ethical methods. Yeah, they may take a bit longer to produce the results you want. At least you go to bed at night knowing your business will still be there in the morning and isn’t banned because of spamming or other illicit practices. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. If people take to heart what you put in your blog, many will be surprised to find they actually can own a real money producing internet business that will survive hell and high water because it was build on solid ground.
There’s some interesting points made there, I think a lot of it is to do with respect, and appreciating the fact you need to give some to get some. We’ve built links successfully from blogs and forum posts before, however – we’ve also added some decent content or taken away some knowledge ourselves. Often we’ve actually discovered new websites while looking to build links.
You have to be respectful and you have to have time to contribute something worthwhile. No point writing a load of gibberish!
Great post..