"backlinks" take another big hit AGAIN. Time to give up weak services as a major ranking factor

[Mike Anthony]

Removed By OP

[noble]

I disagree. The best strategy is to have DIVERSE links. Profile links, articles, blog posts, blog comments, web 2.0 properties, sitewide links for other sites, etc. I would have to say that being diverse and appearing natural is always the best strategy.

[dvduval]

As long as people believe the hype they will keep buying it. Many services thrive on hype, not results. The secret to SEO is making a good website that people want to revisit. So often people thing they can just make some automated scheme and "bingo!". That may provide very short term success, but it is a failure in the long run, unless they too are purveyors of hype.

[paulgl]

What do you need diverse for?

I agree with the "diverse" part, if it means from a wide variety of sources.
But that list is low level. And getting lower. Diversity for the sake of diversity
is not a good way to spend your time. But profile links, blog comments, article
sites, etc. have long been going downhill.

High PR, relevant, authoritative links. Toss in contextual, and you are singing
my tune. That's my idea of diverse.

Paul

[evelyng]

It's hard to say though. I am currently being out-ranked on a keyword by a person who has 132 links (3/4 of them are Forum links). I can't figure this out because even though I supposedly have forum links, they are not counting as backlinks.

But I do agree, links from authority sites are best (because even some of my Web 2.0 properties are not registering a backlink), but how do you get other webmasters to give you a link for an article?

[4morereferrals]

Here we go again ...

[Fernando Veloso]

My strategy is NOT use backlinks at all. I just scream, bang my head on the wall and pray, I do lots of pray.

!!

Forum backlinks can NOW be dead BUT in next update (or next) they will come back strong - as usual with all Google updates...

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by noble

I disagree. The best strategy is to have DIVERSE links. Profile links, articles, blog posts, blog comments, web 2.0 properties, sitewide links for other sites, etc. I would have to say that being diverse and appearing natural is always the best strategy.

So you can't get diverse links from sites within contextual links? LOL. You do realize that few big companies and corporations do blog commenting and rank quit fine. Anyway I expected some backlink sellers to get upset and you sell one in your sig soooo........

But don't get me wrong I still will use a profile backlink in a weak competition term but the gist of my post is not to concentrate on those kinds of links. They are weak and getting weaker everyday. As you can see from the serps a number of backlink sellers have moved on to more powerful stuff.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by evelyng

It's hard to say though. I am currently being out-ranked on a keyword by a person who has 132 links (3/4 of them are Forum links).

Thats because they are not ranking based on the forum links. Look at the other quarter and you will find why they are beating you.

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

My strategy is NOT use backlinks at all. I just scream, bang my head on the wall and pray, I do lots of pray.

You are onto something. If you could get a video of that and I guarantee you would get alot of backlinks. Probably would go viral as well

Forum backlinks can NOW be dead BUT in next update (or next) they will come back strong - as usual with all Google updates...

you are confusing updates with dances. keyword stuffing did not come back strong, link farms did not come back strong. Changes to the algo do not come back strong later in the opposite direction.

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

You are onto something. If you could get a video of that and I guarantee you would get alot of backlinks. Probably would go viral as well

My head hurts already Mike...

you are confusing updates with dances. keyword stuffing did not come back strong, link farms did not come back strong. Changes to the algo do not come back strong later in the opposite direction.

But to be fair I have to remind you *some* (if not all) of these old school tricks are always coming back - at least to GPT. Told you before: they use us as a test ground. We are their monkeys.



But I understand your point and hopefully forum profiles will get dropped to stratosphere for good.

[claynekeegan]

When building backlinks, the key is to be consistent. Doing everything you can to gain backlinks regularly is important so that your website can maintain its rank. Backlink building does involve work and it's not entertaining, but is important.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

My head hurts already Mike...

Video please

[royljestr]

The reason people think forum profile backlinks are dead is because they really don't know what they are or how to use them!!

When you create a forum profile you are creating a NEW page on that domain name...hence NO PR and NO credibility!! Yeah the domain may have a good PR, but the page you just created doesn't!

When I build forum profiles for clients I generally do it as a pyramid (Links pointing to links pointing to your URL). This will give your second layer of profiles more credibility and therefore pass more to your main URL.

Ultimately you should diversify with some good do-follow backlinks on existing pages, PR backlinks and so on.

So are they worthless??? Not at all! But like anything, you gotta know how to use it!

[AgentHomes]

Originally Posted by paulgl

But profile links, blog comments, article
sites, etc. have long been going downhill.

High PR, relevant, authoritative links. Toss in contextual, and you are singing
my tune. That's my idea of diverse.

Paul

High PR, relevant, authoritative links are great because they are rare and very hard to get.

It's the profile links, blog comments etc that bind the internet together and they need to care some weight. I do not think that they can be completely devalued if anything the authoritative links will begin to carry more value.

[TryBPO]

That's probably right for aggressive search terms, but if I'm trying to rank for "blue wool socks" I might be alright with some lower-quality links to get me to the top and simply not require the higher-level seo you're suggesting is required.

Having high PR, dofollow, contextual links to my bluewoolsocks.org site might be a bit overkill, no? Of course, if I'm trying to get ranked for Lawyers NY it's going to take a bit more than profile links to get me there...but that doesn't mean there's not a market for low-level links to bluewoolsocks.org.

[abhibh]

I somehow agree that profile links might be loosing juice. I have 5 sites which i was working on for past 2 months. 2 are doing good as they have links from manual blog comments, articles and web 2.0. 2 sites have been hit majorly.

1. Profile links pointing to my site. Ranking dropped from 2nd page to 9th :S
2. Another site profile links pointing to web2.0 properties. Ranking is same as of now.
3. 3rd site profile links pointing to website / web2.0 properties. Ranking has dropped from page 1 and dancing between 3rd and 4th page.

[noble]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

So you can't get diverse links from sites within contextual links? LOL. You do realize that few big companies and corporations do blog commenting and rank quit fine. Anyway I expected some backlink sellers to get upset and you sell one in your sig soooo........

You misunderstand me. I was disagreeing that certain types of links should be dropped altogether. A link is a link and while some are certainly of higher authority I was merely saying you shouldn't focus on one type of link building

PS the backlinks I sell come a wide variety of platforms (including full blog posts, contextual links which you are talking about) so I'm not trying to misguide people to make my services sound better as you have so arrogantly accused me of.

I am simply saying that people should always be trying to get links, they are good for you. Saying something as general as profile links are no good is pretty much BS as far as I'm concerned.

I personally have great results with profile links as a PART of my overall campaign. Build one, you now have a page with your link as the only OBL on an authority domain. Blast some links to it and you'll have a PR2 page with your link as the only OBL on it coming from a site such as Adobe; how could you say that link has no value?

[Mike Grant]

TBH, I stopped reading when you said "and why xrummer users are not dominating all the competitive terms on Google".

You're trying to pass off opinion as fact while using a ton of logical fallacies in your arguments both in your OP and your replies.

Damn that Google sky! It's falling every day, now!

[InitialEffort]

The thing is people are missing about on the big picture. You need to have a bunch of different types of links. This is generally how I would break it down.

High PR Links - Blog Comments, Articles, Homepage, Sitewide
Low PR Links - Profile, Forum Post, Blog Comments, Articles, Social Bookmark, RSS

There is no magic bullet, but you want to have a diverse link building strategy to survive the different algo updates such as the recent Farmer and Panda changes.

Yes, paid links continue to dominate SERPs, but you have to realize some of these players are paying big $$$ for these links. More than what most people have in their average budget.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by noble

Blast some links to it and you'll have a PR2 page with your link as the only OBL on it coming from a site such as Adobe; how could you say that link has no value?

You need to learn how to read Noble. Please tell me where in this entire thread I said profile backlinks have zero value. Thats why you think its BS because you brought the "BS" in. I said they are weak and will ALWAYS have some effect.

read the thread title - says weak doesn't it? not no value. and if you are telling me that profile links are streong enough to be the major ranking factor in a good campaign I will tell you now you are the one raking in the garbage. They are weak and they are forever getting weaker.

Originally Posted by InitialEffort

The thing is people are missing about on the big picture. You need to have a bunch of different types of links. This is generally how I would break it down.

High PR Links - Blog Comments, Articles, Homepage, Sitewide
Low PR Links - Profile, Forum Post, Blog Comments, Articles, Social Bookmark, RSS

Sorry Initial I make my living full time doing SEO and SEO competitive analysis and there are COUNTLESS sites ranking in top high traffic serps that don't show a single forum profile backlink. nada. ZIP. Same goes for blog comments. You need links from a number of sites yes you do not NEED to have forum profile or blog comments. Thats false. Do a couple searches with a good backlink checker and you will see.

Like I said I still will use them but they are weak and they get weaker each year. Should not be a major focus.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Mike Grant

TBH, I stopped reading when you said "and why xrummer users are not dominating all the competitive terms on Google".

Who cares? We've never agreed on anything SEO related and you have always been out of step with professional SEOs. I certainly don't read your stuff so you shouldn't even start reading mine. Fact is the serp is looking at you right in the face. Its in the OP.

"Backlinks" once had sites ranking high in it with just profile links. Now they have fallen way down and some off the front page. Put your head in the sand for all I care. . I got the proof you have the rhetoric

Whereas Last year this time I knew people were going wild with profile backlinks now those same people have moved on to add contextual high pr links more and more. You can pretend that isn't the case but the serps prove it. I've yet to see any of you backlink sellers and fanboys come up with any truly competitive serp ranking on the power of profile links alone. . You harp on it for one good reason - you make money selling blasts to other people. You were in the other thread mentioned too claiming it was all smoke. So what happenend man. get tback on the front page and rank in the top three for for "backlinks". Prove me wrong. You certainly have been proven wrong since then. and frankly thats a pretty weak term anyway. Doesn't even make my cut for truly competitive.

or you can go ahead and do the IM SEO industry standard shell game and show some weak old Serps where you are dominating the top spot. Only place where those are sill effective by themselves without other links doing the real heavy lifting is with serps where the sites that don't have good SEO people on them

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Who cares? We've never agreed on anything SEO related and you have always been out of step with professional SEOs. I certainly don't read your stuff so you shouldn't even start reading mine. Fact is the serp is looking at you right in the face. Its in the OP.

"Backlinks" once had sites ranking high in it with just profile links. Now they have fallen way down and some off the front page. Put your head in the sand for all I care. . I go thte proof you have the rhetoric

Whereas Last year this time I knew people were going wild with profile backlinks now those same people have moved on to add contexttual high pr links more and more. You can pretend that isn't the case but the serps prove it. I've yet to see any of you backlink sellers and fanboys come up with any truly compettive serp ranking on the power of profile links alone. . You harp on it for one good reason - you make money selling blasts to other people.

I'm out of step with professional SEOs? Huge LOLs at that one.

You should study the adult niche. Or how about the uproar with "shoes", "mens shoes", "womens shoes" when a site literally blasted millions of links with xrumer, was #1 for over 2 months before G manually removed the site?

But sure, if it makes you feel better that profile links are becoming devalued, keep doing what you're doing, though I've not the slightest clue what it is that you do.

edit - but yes, you're right. In the past month and a half, I've done over $30k with my WSO and yet it's still only supplemental income.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

or you can go ahead and do the IM SEO industry standard game and show some weak old Serps where you are dominating the top spot.

Had you been worth your salt, you'd be in the weekly Skype SEO meetups. Those of us ranking for make money online, weight loss, mortgages, and loans will continue to do our thing while you peddle your inferiority complex on WF.

edit - I forgot, there's also one of us ranking for affiliate marketing.

[noble]

All you do is post out theories. I highly doubt SEO is your full time income and if it is then you probably are in low competition niches. I have been doing this for almost 12 years now.

At the end of the day there are a ton of factors that come into place for each link including but not limited to:

OBLs on the page
authority of the page/site
niche/relevancy
anchor text
nofollow/dofollow

You can achieve many of these things with profile links and they are included in every SEO campaign that I run and they do have value. Of course all of my eggs are not in one basket but to call them "weak" is probably because you:

A) take Angela or Paul's spammed forum lists and just drop your link, maybe ping it
B) just plug profiles on random forums and do nothing else.

Consider these a part of a linkwheel, you're getting a dofollow anchor texted link with no other OBLs on an authority site. Build some links to it and it will pass good juice.

So please stop insulting me here, all I did was try to voice my opinion (someone who actually does this for a living instead of sitting there coming up with non real world theories) and you attacked me for trying to make a sales pitch or something. If you can't handle criticism then don't post your opinion and if you don't know what you're talking about please expect to receive some back.

You make it sound like the only way to rank is to have a paid contextual link in your OP, that's false. And also how do you know the top people are not using xrumer? Only a fool would do xrumer blasts to their real page. It is the same theory here you create other pages on other domains and class C IPs that link to or are doorway pages for your main page and this is what you xrumer blast.

Anyways I'm done with this thread, I tried to just voice my opinion but you have personally attacked me both times so right back at you. Learn what you're talking about instead of just reading what other people tell you because they're trying to find something to blog about to keep you coming back and maybe you'll make some money in this business.

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

You need to learn how to read Noble. Please tell me where in this entire thread I said profile backlinks have zero value. Thats why you think its BS because you brought the "BS" in. I said they are weak and will ALWAYS have some effect.

read the thread title - says weak doesn't it? not no value. and if you are telling me that profile links are streong enough to be the major ranking factor in a good campaign I will tell you now you rthe one raking in the garbage. they are weak and they are forever getting weaker.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by noble

All you do is post out theories. I highly doubt SEO is your full time income and if it is then you probably are in low competition niches. I have been doing this for almost 12 years now.

At the end of the day there are a ton of factors that come into place for each link including but not limited to:

OBLs on the page
authority of the page/site
niche/relevancy
anchor text
nofollow/dofollow

You can achieve many of these things with profile links and they are included in every SEO campaign that I run and they do have value. Of course all of my eggs are not in one basket but to call them "weak" is probably because you:

A) take Angela or Paul's spammed forum lists and just drop your link, maybe ping it
B) just plug profiles on random forums and do nothing else.

Consider these a part of a linkwheel, you're getting a dofollow anchor texted link with no other OBLs on an authority site. Build some links to it and it will pass good juice.

So please stop insulting me here, all I did was try to voice my opinion (someone who actually does this for a living instead of sitting there coming up with non real world theories) and you attacked me for trying to make a sales pitch or something. If you can't handle criticism then don't post your opinion and if you don't know what you're talking about please expect to receive some back.

You make it sound like the only way to rank is to have a paid contextual link in your OP, that's false. And also how do you know the top people are not using xrumer? Only a fool would do xrumer blasts to their real page. It is the same theory here you create other pages on other domains and class C IPs that link to or are doorway pages for your main page and this is what you xrumer blast.

Anyways I'm done with this thread, I tried to just voice my opinion but you have personally attacked me both times so right back at you. Learn what you're talking about instead of just reading what other people tell and maybe you'll make some money in this business.

I'll +1 this.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Mike Grant

though I've not the slightest clue what it is that you do.

He he he. I could tell that you don't. you are generally lost on real SEO as I remember it. Always spurting some thing about this or that ranking and never putting up any proof. Sure Jcpenney got up there too with some scuzzy links but if you actually looked at their serps you would have seen that they had High PR links as well. My point exactly. Meanwhile ranking for two months and getting torpedoed is your idea of good SEO? You are lost.

Who gives a rip about the adult market. It doesn't surprise me that thats your key example. Maybe one day you will realize that google doesn't give a rip who ranks number one for certain serps because it doesn't consider any of them quality.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

He he he. I could tell that you don't. you are generally lost on real SEO as I remember it. Always spurting some thing about this or that ranking and never putting up any proof. Sure Jcpenney got up there too with some scuzzy links but if you actually looked at their serps you would have seen that they had High PR links as well. My point exactly. Meanwhile ranking for two months and getting torpedoed is your idea of good SEO? You are lost.

Your point exactly? I never once mentioned JC Penney. I also never said ranking for two months before being nuked is "good seo". Any other straws you'd like to grasp at?

Also, point out an example of me being "lost on real SEO".

And you truly believe that Google thinks all adult sites are not "quality" or are you simply just trolling now?

First, define "quality".
Second, reason why G would segregate entire niches deeming them not "quality".
Third, explain why if G did not care about the adult niche, why would it manually remove certain sites from the index rather than the entire niche?
Fourth, if G didn't think any of the adult niche sites weren't "quality" then why are the major adult sites using Adwords and have been for years?

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by noble

All you do is post out theories. I highly doubt SEO is your full time income and if it is then you probably are in low competition niches.

You couldn't survive a week doing what I do with your profile heavy services but just curious - your doubt is based on what? My sig (I have none at the moment)? Because I question profile links and you sell them? really now. Lets bring it down a notch. Yes I stated you would be biased considering that you sell a backlink package. Besides that who was the first one to call the others position BS. You come in to this thread claiming that I said things I never did call it BS and you don't expect me to answer. Your initial comment was rude. You won't find a single post anywhere on Warriors where I call anyones position BS to escape the language filter.

I don't give a rip about what you think based on zero information. I don't even have a sig for you to look at for you to know what my clientele is and you certainly are not one of my clients. So give it a rest. Profile links are considered weak by almost all professional SEOs. Fact. Sell how important it is because its your product but you either haven't done your research or just don't wan tot admit it. Again I use them and will continue to use them and they ARE weak and should not be a major part of a campaign. period.

Quickly to your other many errors.

no wrong again never bought Paula and angela's links. Actually have taught people how to find their own. too easy.

and no wrong again you don't have to buy contextual links you can get them without buying them. Sheesh. Whose showing they only deal in weak serps now?.

and no wrong again plenty people sell forum links to others and blast them straight to the site the customer gives them.

anyway good luck to you.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Mike Grant

one of us ranking for affiliate marketing

Good then perhaps that one person can teach you how to rank for a competitive term because a quick search of that serp proves my point. The top rankers (top three) HAVE high PR backlinks as the major ranking factor not weak profile links - PROVING MY POINT yet once again.

Go ahead and ignore another serp that proves you wrong even though you were the one that gave it..

Also, point out an example of me being "lost on real SEO"

See above.

And you truly believe that Google thinks all adult sites are not "quality" or are you simply just trolling now?

Oh good grief. Are you trolling? the general public does not consider Porn as quality and you think a major corporation does have you never read any studies on bad neighborhoods and thier affect on SEO? Crickets!

first, define "quality".

First you define a quality porn site for me

Second, reason why G would segregate entire niches deeming them not "quality".

Who said anything about segregation. Did Panda segregate any niche? No but by reason of the algo change it affected some more than others as an expression of what google determines as quality. This is easy stuff.

Third, explain why if G did not care about the adult niche, why would it manually remove certain sites from the index rather than the entire niche?

Stop making up strawmen. No one said anything about Google removing sites in that context. You first brought that up with your shoes example and I mentioned JC penney there was never anything about removing other sites based on niche or any thing else. I said Google could care less about ranking or not ranking sites (which has nothing to do with deletion You just made that up)that aren't considered quality by them (as an extension of what the public considers quality). Google doesn't even remove ten percent of sites that they consider low quality and drop to page 12 so why would they delete a site just for that reason?

Fourth, if G didn't think any of the adult niche sites weren't "quality" then why are the major adult sites using Adwords and have been for years?

LOL. You've never seen sites relegated to 980 in results running adwords? talk about clutching at straws. Whatever man have fun and check out the guy that ranks for affiliate marketing with his High PR and not Profile backlinks. He may teach you a thing or two (if in fact you even know him/her).

[Mike Grant]

Oh look, nothing but circular reasoning and a strawman argument. Just more of the logical fallacies as noted in my first post.

But, all I have to say about you knowing anything on seo is the following:

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Okay I am going with Home audio. Three reasons

A) its a real challenge because its a niche that is dominated by a lot of competition for the base keywords. Lot of amazon and product page results on the front page.
B) its kind of mainstream enough so that I think more people can relate to it.
C) sufficiently wide to test another strategy and build out to multiple targeted keywords.

I will post the base keywords I come up with and the lateral ones that I find give most of the gems. They will be in CSV or excel format. Too many to list out here and I want this to be wide open so everyone can see whats going on. We're under way! (OP updated)

TIL that amazon product pages and product page results are "real competition".

Good luck with your logic, Mike. I'm done with this thread. Let me know when you're able to surpass Amazon product pages.

[noble]

Last post here about to head out for lunch. I just re-read your first paragraph in the OP and I see where this confusion is. You were saying the backlink/SEO companies that are ranking for selling profile links are doing so via paid links; I thought you were trying to say that paid links were the only were to go (not for these type of sites but for sites in general). This, I admit, was my fault for reading too quickly.

That being said I do offer some profile links but for the most part they're bonuses what I really sell on the site you're talking about and what is the real value is that I offer blog posts on real .EDU and .GOV high authority blogs (these are PR7-PR9 sites and you'd know the name of each and everyone if mentioned; most of my customers buy every list because these are powerful and they see the results quickly). Which means contextual links like you were talking about so no, I am not simply trying to defend that particular site and its sales.

Further more that is something I started doing on the side perhaps 2-3 months ago, it is not even near my main income source.

I do, in fact, agree that just dumping profile links on random forums is probably one of lowest quality links you can get; but again anyone with any SEO knowledge is not taking that approach.

And finally I stand by the fact that profiles can certainly be valuable if you use them correctly. Create a profile on an authority site and do a blast to that profile, put a 250 word niche relevant post in your about/or sig area. You now have a page that is contextually relevant with 1 outbound dofollow anchor text link to your site coming from high authority sites that would otherwise not allow you to place links.

I will also repeat for like the 5th time this is nowhere near my only SEO strategy but I do use it along with everything else I do on every site. Most of what occured here was me misunderstanding that first part where I thought you were saying that you have to purchase contextual links to rank and then when you accused me of trying to make up facts to sell profile links which is absolutely false.

And last but not least I was plenty polite in my first post, the only thing that could be considered offensive is when I said

I disagree.

at which point you started with the baseless personal attacks which are totally uncalled for.

If you understood how to properly utilize a profile for SEO benefits them I'm sure you'd see they work well, do some testing yourself or continue to believe what others tell you but please stop making personal accusations towards me as though you're 14 years old.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Mike Grant

TIL that amazon product pages and product page results are "real competition"..

LOl. More. More. You are just showing how much you don't know. thats not a product page I was referring to. Look at a serps for once. And no never said it was really competitive because I was going to use a brand new domain without exact match and wasn't going to use any of my existing infrastructure. Kinda left that out didn't you? Was never able to go forward because I got a number of big projects and didn't have the time.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by noble

Last post here about to head out for lunch. I just re-read your first paragraph in the OP and I see where this confusion is. You were saying the backlink/SEO companies that are ranking for selling profile links are doing so via paid links; I thought you were trying to say that paid links were the only were to go (not for these type of sites but for sites in general). This, I admit, was my fault for reading too quickly.

Yes you admit it but still are maintaining that you were perfectly in order to call a position BS that you didn't even understand. I am quite fine with that being your last post. I have no apologies. You misunderstood made up statement I never made and are trying to side step it like it was the proper thing to do.

at which point you started with the baseless personal attacks which are totally uncalled for.

You had it pointed out to you that you were a backlink seller and therefore for obvious reasons could not claim to be objective. that is all. Your next post made up things I never said and then claimed my position was BS which you now admit you didn't even understand. Still despite realizing you misread you are now sidestepping the responsibility of that and your totally changing what I said to make your point. .

Don't need to communicate further. Again good luck to you man.

[clickbumped]

OP, I agree with what you're saying. Contextual linking has driven every page I've worked on to the top of the results, where they remained even through the massive amounts of algo updates. Contextual links are what people do when they like your content...they are natural. Other people don't create profile links in forums for your website...lol. Blog comments work, but in moderation and on the right pages. Home page links = BIG YES. Diversification is good, but it comes with contextual linking and article marketing.

Just a point. My sites and pages all rank high, and outrank massively authoritative sites...so I must be doing something right.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

LOl. More. More. You are just showing how much you don't know. thats not a product page I was referring to. Look at a serps for once. And no never said it was really competitive because I was going to use a brand new domain without exact match and wasn't going to use any of my existing infrastructure. Kinda left that out didn't ya? Was never able to go forward because I got a number of big projects and didn't have the time.

Again, that's not difficult competition. I left nothing out, it was a copy/paste of your entire post. You didn't say it was really competitive?

A) its a real challenge because its a niche that is dominated by a lot of competition for the base keywords. Lot of amazon and product page results on the front page.

So, a niche dominated by a lot of competition is not competitive? If you read again, you'll notice I didn't say "really competitive". I quoted you saying "real competition".

If you were worth a darn in SEO, you'd laugh at that competition. Hell, even Jan Roos's WSO was teaching newbies how to outrank such competition with ease for amazon affiliate sites.

[Mike Grant]

Really have to head out now. Have a good night.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Mike Grant

Again, that's not difficult competition. I left nothing out,

Oh stop the dishonesty man.

A) Here said in the same exact thread and you chose to leave it out

Now I know a few SEO types might be thinking that they couldn't be bothered with keywords with less than 10-20,000 + searches but I think thats a mistake for most newbies. When I was starting out I'd rather have gone after ten terms that had a thousand searches each. You need some success sometimes to go on and many times the work reward ratio is just plain better ranking for a number of low competition.search phrases than going after the home run.

Could it possible be more better spelled out for you indicating that the chosen serps were not in my mind ultra competitive? No but in your desperation to try and find a chink in the armor you took that quote right out of the context of the thread and skipped that quote.

B) Home audio was the NICHE not the keyword serps
(you seemingly didn't even bother to read the thread to see what Home audio referred to) and yes Amazon has some CATEGORY pages in that NICHE that ARE strong - not product pages as you allege. and that was not the keyword serps.

the whole point of the test was to pick a general niche first and then pick a keyword serp. In your desperation to find an error you clean missed that it was not a reference merely to a serp.

Now can we get back on topic? Because if you were worth as much as you think on Seo you would have known better than to make all kinds of false assumptions out of context. Nothing you said has panned out as true.

Originally Posted by Mike Grant

Really have to head out now. Have a good night.

You too man. keep safe and prosperous. Wish you the best.

[noble]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Yes you admit it but still are maintaining that you were perfectly in order to call a position BS that you didn't even understand. I am quite fine with that being your last post. I have no apologies. You misunderstood made up statement I never made and are trying to side step it like it was the proper thing to do.



You had it pointed out to you that you were a backlink seller and therefore for obvious reasons could not claim to be objective. that is all. Your next post made up things I never said and then claimed my position was BS which you now admit you didn't even understand. Still despite realizing you misread you are now sidestepping the responsibility of that and your totally changing what I said to make your point. .

Don't need to communicate further. Again good luck to you man.

Ya, basically I'm saying I was in the wrong. I misunderstood the point you were trying to make. Was only trying to defend the fact that you were dismissing my other (valid) points as a ploy to sell a product which they were not. I Obviously value my WF customers but they are far from what pays my bills; I wouldn't intentionally spread disinformation on the off chance one or two of them would read this thread.

Anyways lunch was tasty and no hard feelings; I think this whole thread was a big misunderstanding due to to me not comprehending your very first sentence properly.

Best of luck to you and have a beautiful day

[SEOguymike]

It is absolutely wrong to pay for profile links, however, a small amount of them spread evenly across your secondary layers of backlinks would do very well. By secondary backlinks I mean the links linking back to your website.

BUT the big issue with this is that social bookmarking is essentially better to link back to your backlinks AS well as wordpress blogs that had been bookmarked and had their rss feeds submitted to a FEW rss submission sites. NOT to mention you'll need article submissions to article directories, which CAN be used to backlink your secondary layers. Sorry if you don't use my terms, as I like to create my own terms on certain topics.

When doing internet marketing, never spam, do it in small steps.

[noble]

Originally Posted by SEOguymike

It is absolutely wrong to pay for profile links, however, a small amount of them spread evenly across your secondary layers of backlinks would do very well. By secondary backlinks I mean the links linking back to your website.

BUT the big issue with this is that social bookmarking is essentially better to link back to your backlinks AS well as wordpress blogs that had been bookmarked and had their rss feeds submitted to a FEW rss submission sites. NOT to mention you'll need article submissions to article directories, which CAN be used to backlink your secondary layers. Sorry if you don't use my terms, as I like to create my own terms on certain topics.

When doing internet marketing, never spam, do it in small steps.

Agreed which is what I've been trying to explain. Dropping a profile link to your site and forgetting about it is about as low quality as it gets. They should be used as a stepping stone in a link wheel/pyramid which they work quite well for.

[SEOEnlightenment]

Originally Posted by noble

I disagree. The best strategy is to have DIVERSE links. Profile links, articles, blog posts, blog comments, web 2.0 properties, sitewide links for other sites, etc. I would have to say that being diverse and appearing natural is always the best strategy.

I would agree with Noble and the OP in fact (a little)...

The forum profiles alone or predominance is a clear footprint for manipulation but they can help if you use the power of Xrumer to create profiles to diverse pages on the same domain or blog.

The keyword here though is "diverse" and success will only be found in many different types of linking as a whole.

Velocity and inexorable tenacity also have a role to play if the competition is strong.

[Kurt]

Google recently filed a patent for a method of determining the value of links in different parts of the pages. I wish I could find the link, but I can't and apologize.

And I agree with Mike Anthony as far as if I were a betting man (and I am), I'd bet that contextual links will increase in value as time goes on and that profile/comment-type links will decrease in value in the future.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by noble

I wouldn't intentionally spread disinformation on the off chance one or two of them would read this thread.

I never said anything about intentionally either in that first post. You misunderstood that as well. You may be newer to this debate but a few other people in this thread know I used to sell a profile backlink package. I still have a few customers I provide for. I am transitioning all of them over to different things. I used to see great value in them but times and things changed and the more I looked at competitive serps the more I couldn't find many serps that didn't have high PR contextual backlinks in competitive niches.

So I know that selling these services does make you see the virtues of them and not as much the downside. Thats natural not sinister Frankly it took WF temporarily banning the offers to make me sit down and look at it objectively. I was never into mass profile backlinks and not thousands of Forum profiles (and despite what you say there are PLENTY services that are blasting direct to customer sites) and I always told my customers profile backlinks were a starting place not a big part of a great campaign but I moved even my recommendation even for smaller operations further away from that. I always condemned mass spamming and got lots of sellers mad even when I used to be one. They would have none of any restraint. but I then moved even further away after stopping and looking at the serps.

Some of the ways you use them I can see with and may surprise you as I said STILL USE. but I still maintain they are weak and growing weaker. I can see the value in feeding second level pumper sites with some and certainly some bookmarking and I'd send some through an article site which depending does help with indexing but they are nowhere near what they used to be and the "backlinks" serps that every one is running from looking at shows this. CLEARLY.

So we are not THAT far off only I see them as weak and you claim they are not and I see them getting weaker and you probably don't. I wouldn't recommend a single newbie not getting better links from the get go now Yet I see people selling software for $150 a month to newbies to get these kinds of backlinks. Its nonsense to me. If anything they should go and concentrate on getting some contextual backlinks and run the profile links to them not chew up nearly two thousand dollars in a year placing the weak stuff.

Finally I should balance this out and say that some profile backlinks are stronger than others. Perhaps some of yours are like that but we have to be honest this is not where the profile backlink industry aims. It aims at finding tens of thousands of forum backlinks etc because the numbers sound sexier. It takes much more time to find profile backlinks that have more steam (usually due to better page rank flow with navigation to the profile) and customers don't want to hear about small packages anymore. Its a numbers game

[noble]

I agree with what you're saying in that post. If you look at where I actually offer the profile links they are never just profile packs the main selling point is the established blogs you can write posts on and with the customer feedback I got basically they're just filler to make the package look nicer, I've had more than a few say they don't even bother to use them but over-delivery is the name of the game right. Most people purchase because they want to have a blog on harvard.edu where they can write their own posts, etc.

Further more my profile backlinks come from sites you'd be suprised have forums, US Govt departments and schools such as stanford, harvard, yale, etc.; a little backlinking to your profile and these can bring some juice.

I'm in no way saying profile links should be your approach to dominating Google but as of yet I still get good results with them as part of my link pyramids; largely because you can get them on great domains and get your link up in 30 seconds if you use robofill.

Anyways I'm off to do stuff for a while, sorry about it getting a little heated earlier you seem like a good enough dude; who knows maybe we'll cross paths and do a JV some years down the road

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by noble

Anyways I'm off to do stuff for a while, sorry about it getting a little heated earlier you seem like a good enough dude; who knows maybe we'll cross paths and do a JV some years down the road

No problem Noble. As for JVs don't do much of that anymore. Do very little IM outside of SEO these days . Thanks though

[mmsearch]

Recommendation: Switch almost all your activities to getting contextual backlinks (which usually means link within the content/post of a page but also can be slightly extended to links after content such as blog comments and articles etc)

Soooo.... How/where do we go about getting getting these types of links?

[dagaul101]

Nicely put, Google has always mentioned it is constantly in a battle about automation, and it comes as no surprise that these services are being sold to unsuspecting newbies who don't realise they no longer have an edge

[Jeremy S]

It is always tempting to automate things because of how efficient it is.

But nothing beats hard manual labor. This is true in the online and offline world. Google realizes this. They want to reward those individuals and companies who build themselves up legitimately, and dont rely on link blasts and other methods to obtain high rankings.

I suggest if you are worried about Google penalizing these backlink strategies that you make sure to begin adding backlinks steadily and manually. Eventually you will see results far greater than any of these cheap blast services.

[Andre Slater]

This is a real heated battle of SEO Geniuses... I think the reason why people are still doing profile links and such, is because they don't know how to do proper SEO. The SEO field is so massive that it's quickly becoming a topic that there are more theories than facts. It's so big it has it's own language.

Most people who buy these links don't really know how to get their sites ranked high and the people who know how to get their sites ranked high either:

1. Have extensive training on it.
2. Have a ton of money to invest in high quality list.
3. Or hire SEO people like some of you guys to do it for them.

I wish someone who knows how to get sites to the 1-3 slots of Google for highly searched keywords would share it with everybody else on the bottom by either:

1. Make a inexpensive course on the proper way to do it and get results. Key = RESULTS
2. Break it down in a simple language where everyone can understand it.
3. Make a software that does it right and don't charge a gazillion dollars.

I think that if someone did one of those three, then that would not only kill profile links and such, but will kill the SEO marketers that charge a bunch of money to companies to do it for them...

[presidentleaf]

I've been reading your threads and they've always been very heated and exciting. Who needs Jersey Shore? Thanks for sharing your opinions/insights and I look forward to your future threads.