Common Sense And Backlinks

[packerfan]

First I'm not a link expert, but I do consider myself a pretty logical guy, so lately I've been thinking about links. Here's what I'm thinking through, and would love some other people to chime in.

First: I'm not questioning if any of these methods do or do not work, I'm simply thinking through why they would or would not.

In full disclosure I either currently or have in the past used most of these methods with varying degrees of success. Anyway...

Profile Links: Why in the world would Google give any kind of weight to a link in someone's profile? Even if it's legit it's simply self promotion, no one is going to put their "favorite" site in their forum profile. If I was Google I wouldn't consider these for anything.

Blog Comments: The link you get from entering your website on the comment field is another link I think should be useless. Again, nothing more than self promotion. If a real person is commenting on a blog and they want to share a site, they're going to paste a link in their comment. And chances are it's not going to use anchor text. If I was google I would give more weight to these types of blog comment links.

Article Directory Links: Same story. Nothing but self promotion. If I was Google I wouldn't count these for anything.

Blogroll Links/home page links: While these are easy to buy, I think if their natural they do show that a webmaster thinks another site is worth seeing. I can see how these have some value.

In Context Links: Obviously this is where the magic happens. I'm pretty sure I'm going to focus almost all of my linking efforts here and a couple other places. Things like guest blogging are great for this, but even better if you can get some link bait out there.

Social Bookmarks: If you can figure out what's spam and what's legit, these should factor heavily into a site's "ranking". Trouble is there's a lot of spam. I'm sure the smart people at Google can figure this out somehow. But if we take these for face value by definition they're a vote for a site.

Facebook/Twitter: Similar to social bookmarks. I think retweeted links should carry more weight, but again this is how popular sites are shared. Going forward surely this gets more important.

I'm sure I left out a bunch of stuff. Just my thoughts on links in general.

[packerfan]

Originally Posted by simonbuzz

What a funny post??????

Then you have a strange sense of humor...

Just trying to start a conversation about why a certain type of link would matter. Just using profile links as an example. There's absolutely no reason they should make your site rank higher. Obviously they do, but it makes no sense to me.

[LooseChange]

What I don't understand is if you view profile links, blog comment links and article directory links as self-promotion, how can it even be thought that Twitter or Facebook links should have any value?

I've seen numerous black hat SEO's brag about having 100+ Twitter and Facebook accounts they use to like and retweet anything they're paid to promote. If you want proof, go look on eBay for these cheap services.

I do agree that in context links should bevalued heavily, however, once again you have a lot of bloggers with PR5-PR7 sites selling in context links via paid posts.

In my opinion, the whole concept of Google valuing a site based on backlinks is a scenario only made to be gamed.

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by LooseChange

In my opinion, the whole concept of Google valuing a site based on backlinks is a scenario only made to be gamed.

That's been my point for years now, too. Google had to have seen this coming way back then. I think they're making a concerted effort now to slowly back away from the weight they give links. Panda seems to be moving in that direction. At the very least, they should be focusing on links that have the least chance of being manufactured for ranking purposes. The OP makes some excellent points in that regard.

[gulfhosting]

Great Thanks for sharing it

[markowe]

Agree with most of your points in theory, but Google painted themselves into a corner relying so heavily on backlinks. MOST backlinks could be devalued on some grounds or other but then they'd have no algo left! I suppose the reason a blog comment should have weight, or a profile link, is that they are still "hosted" on someone's site, so that someone has at least implicitly allowed the link to be there and therefore lent their authority to the site being linked to in some passive sense. At least, there is no way for the Google algo to judge that intent (nofollow was a failed attempt) so all backlinks have to count, or none! No idea how they get themselves out of that one...

I do think, though, that if they were going to totally devalue any kind of BL, they COULD start with profile links, especially where a site is seen to have a great number of them in its BL profile, since there is no rational explanation for this other than SEO.

[kiddoman]

I still think the forum links and directory webs links are the most important and they do can bring fame or traffic in a direct way!

[arttse]

No doubt, contextual links from RELEVANT authority sites are the best.

I reckon if you focus on these you will definitely rank well. The trick is to acquire these links slowly over many months so they appear natural.


It's also good to get lower quality links (again acquired slowly).

Self promotion is not unethical - as long as it's not abused. Dont all businesses promote themselves? That is natural.

[businesswarrior121]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

That's been my point for years now, too. Google had to have seen this coming way back then. I think they're making a concerted effort now to slowly back away from the weight they give links. Panda seems to be moving in that direction. At the very least, they should be focusing on links that have the least chance of being manufactured for ranking purposes. The OP makes some excellent points in that regard.

i agree with him. google panda is extremely smart and punishing sites with low quality contents.

[markowe]

Originally Posted by businesswarrior121

i agree with him. google panda is extremely smart and punishing sites with low quality contents.

But that's just not true

[divahotcouture]

thanks for sharing all this information about backlinks