Linking To Your Own Site is JUST FINE

[CDarklock]

I am sick to death of this garbage.

Originally Posted by jatchue

When you think about it any backlink you create yourself pointing back at a website you own is a false backlink and probably breaks Goolge's TOS.

This is a complete and total load of hooey.

Posting links to your own site is just like telling people about your car. When you get a new car, you run around telling everyone about it. After a while, you stop telling everyone, and only tell people who are specifically interested. And that's perfectly fine. This doesn't violate anyone's TOS.

What violates people's TOS is when you own a car dealership, and go around telling every single person you meet about one or more of the cars on your lot all the freakin' time.

But even then, you can jump and dance around all damn day posting backlinks to your site - and it doesn't violate Google's TOS unless you are thinking the wrong thing when you do it.

When you really look at Google's terms, they don't say not to do specific things at all. They say not to use those specific things to manipulate and alter search rankings.

If you're not using it for that, you're fine!

So when you go out and post links all over the internet because you want people to follow them, you are not violating Google's TOS.

But if you go out to the same sites and post the same links in the same places because you want a higher search ranking, you are violating Google's TOS.

The same goes for submitting your own sites for social bookmarking. When you go to these social bookmarking sites, most of them expect that you are going to submit your own sites or your friends' sites. Not only is it not against the TOS, it's actively encouraged... if you're doing it to tell people about your site. If you're doing it to get a free advertisement, they start to frown on this practice. The difference is subtle.

The fundamental issue with most TOS is what you are thinking when you use the services in question - and in general, it revolves around why you are using the service.

It's not against the TOS every time you post a backlink. Only when you're thinking "I should post a backlink to improve my search ranking" when you do it.

[jasonmorgan]

I'm trying to tell as many people about my car as I can.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

Google absolutely only cares about people trying to artificially manipulate their search algorithms. Linking to your own site is not manipulation unless you are placing links where they are not welcome. It's just that simple.

Matt Cutts himself has talked about this over and over. Ethical linking is ethical linking it doesn't matter who does it or where it comes from.

[bigcat1967]

totally agree w/ y'all. If I make a wordpress site and link it back to my own site - I'm sharing relevant information with visitors.

[GeorgR.]

MAN DL!

You just answered my question i just posted on webmaster forums, wonderful explanation and makes a lot of sense!

G.

[techwarrior]

This makes a lot of sense.

At least my own doubts about this is now cleared.

Thanks for this information.

[wangxiurong]

Thanks for this share. You answered my questions ...