Common Backlinking Myths

[ConnorMcCreesh]

Hey Fellow Warriors,

Recently I have been finding a lot of conflicting information where people are for or against certain backlinking methods. Lots of these methods are being debunked by a few of the forums more knowledgable members (I personally think).

Now personally I am not a SEO guy, I do not rank sites, but I am a product creator and I do write a very large amount about all aspects of backlinking and SEO. Over that time I have come across lots of myths and legends so I figured I would get them up and see if anyone else has more myths to add to the group

Now by all means, these are strictly "as far as I know", but hopefully these and those submitted by others will help dispell some misinformation!



1. Duplicate content is not bad for backlinking - Lots of people fear duplicate content and this is the main reason that spinning software is so popular. In actual fact it doesn't matter if your content is duplicated in terms of the links you get from each, the only problem with duplicate content is that search engines do not link to index it. The solution to this is to just make sure you post the content on your site first and wait for it to be indexed before submitting it in other places.



2. Link wheels are unstable - Yes link wheels can be a very powerful structure to use for your backlinks but they are also very easy to trace by search engines.
(Link wheels are basically when you have lots of web 2.0 blog type sites that all link to eachother, and all also link to a central site that you are trying to rank)
In essence there would not be any point of a link wheel unless you were using it for SEO purposes would there? Search engines hate SEO because it essentially is the practise of trying to trick them into thinking your content is more relevant then it is with smartly places keywords and other tricks. Because of this they are likely to quickly disregard your link wheels once they discover them (which is not very hard).

To combat this you need to make sure each of the outer sites of your link wheel (the web 2.0 ones) are all good sites in themselves. You need to spend time on those sites making them relevant and authoritative (well to a degree) then it would be much more natural for them to link to the other sites in the wheel as they would all be large-ish, relevant sites in the same niche.



3. PR is important - well yes PR is a virtual construct created by Google, so outside Googles results it really has no bearing, but Google is after all the largest search engine around, so PR is a pretty good estimate of authority.

Saying that, it is much wiser for you to spend a lot of time trying to get one high PR backlink, then lots of low PR links because PR works on an exponential scale.

This mean that if PR0 had a link value of 1, PR1 would have a value of 10 (this is not the actual value used, but it is good for an idea). Following this on a PR 5 link would have a value of 100,000, so getting one PR link would be worth 100,000 PR0 links. Think about comparing this to a directory article, it is quite likely that this submitted article will have a PR of 0 or 1 at best, so creating one high quality article and guest posting on a PR 5 blog would be worth 10,000 to 100,000 articles submitted. Now once again these are not exact numbers, or maybe even to close, but from what I have learned they are a good estimate.



4. Just creating backlinks is not enough - This goes to say that you should not just submit your backlinks and leave them. They are going to be much more effective if the search engines can find them to index them or at least take not of their existance if they were duplicate content for example.

To do this you need to spend a little extra time on your backlinks so they are more obvious to the search engines. A simple way to do this is to ping them with a service like pingoat which sends out notifications to various directories about the link.

Also featuring the backlinks in RSS feeds is a good way to get more exposure to the search engines.

There is no point submitting 1000 backlinks if the search engines only find half of those so it is important to spend a little extra time to save yourself a lot of extra work.


5. It is important to Drip Feed. Drip feeding is when you slowly add content and backlinks to your website. Though this can be done by giving Google more incentive to find your backlinks at a drip fed level. By this I mean pushing to get them indexed at a slow and more natural rate by pinging them, making RSS feeds to submit to directories or social bookmarking them.

You have to let the search engines notice your links at a rate relevant to the size of your site. If your site is PR8 then they can expect to index thousands of links a day to it, but if it is a new PR0 or PR1 site it would be normal to assume you wouldn't naturally have that many links going there. I stress the word naturally because SEO is in a sense unnatural and it is trying to trick the search engines into ranking your site.

You need them to believe your site is any other normal, interesting website that is not trying to get artifically ranked.


6. .edu and .gov backlinks. Now this is a bit of a hard subject and one of the myths that I personally am least sure about (so if anyone thinks different and has a valid argument then I am more then happy to change things).

To the best of my knowledge the search engines give no preference what so ever to .edu and .gov backlinks. Really as far as I know they rate most of the suffixes of websites the same (well at least the usual .com .co.uk .info .org etc.).

But I also know that search engines like Google have methods of placing sites in order of preference beyond PR. Site carry an authority and if they are a .gov or .edu site the chances are that they are a respected establishment.

Because of this I think that perhaps getting links from here is better then the majority of sites at the same PR, but not necessarily because the site is a .gov or .edu, just because it is a respected authoritative site. This would be the same story for any niche authority site regardless of it's web suffix.



Well guys those are the ones that spring to mind off the top of my head. Once again these are to the best of my knowledge so please no yelling at me if anything is incorrect !

Hopefully others will contribute to this and it will be a valuable resource to newcomers.

Cheers for reading people,
Kind Regards,
Connor

[VladWorks]

I think this is a very good summary of backlink myths. Everyone in SEO should be reading this if they didn't already know it.

PR is still a bit iffy but the way you talk about it makes sense SEO wise.

Good work!

[lexilexi]

Connor, I absolutely agree with all of what you have said.

[MIRENGE]

This is very good information, thank you for sharing i have learnt something that i was not aware of.

[charu.seo]

thnx a ton 4 sharing...

[ConnorMcCreesh]

No problem guys

If anyone has anything to add, myths they hear a lot that are not true it would be brilliant to build them up in this. I could even add them to the main post if the thread grows.

Cheers,
Connor

[Justinpage]

I also agree, specially with number 4. Though it is believed that building links to your site is one of the major factors in acquiring better ranking. But remember that there are still methods that will move your site's ranking higher without using other's links.

[ConnorMcCreesh]

Originally Posted by Justinpage

I also agree, specially with number 4. Though it is believed that building links to your site is one of the major factors in acquiring better ranking. But remember that there are still methods that will move your site's ranking higher without using other's links.

Thanks for your support buddy,

Kind regards,
Connor

[markowe]

No. 1, totally agreed, spinning is vastly overrated. And I often get HUNDREDS of identical articles indexed, no problem. But I don't care if people don't believe this. Just keep on spinning Less work for me!

[ConnorMcCreesh]

Originally Posted by markowe

No. 1, totally agreed, spinning is vastly overrated. And I often get HUNDREDS of identical articles indexed, no problem. But I don't care if people don't believe this. Just keep on spinning Less work for me!

I just find it amazing that spinning is such a big thing with regard to article marketing. Personally I wouldn't be surprized if some "Gurus" (I hate to use that word, they seem to be imaginary figures to dislike) were just saying they used spinning at it is brilliant just to be able to keep selling spinning software to people that do not need it!

[markowe]

Originally Posted by ConnorMcCreesh

I just find it amazing that spinning is such a big thing with regard to article marketing. Personally I wouldn't be surprized if some "Gurus" (I hate to use that word, they seem to be imaginary figures to dislike) were just saying they used spinning at it is brilliant just to be able to keep selling spinning software to people that do not need it!

Ha, it might well have been a "guru" at some point, but the belief in spinning is SO pervasive that you really wonder. There are people spending DAYS manually spinning articles to 1000% uniqueness, whatever that means.

I mean, maybe there is some truth to it - maybe I would be ranking within 1 month instead of 3 months if I did heavy spinning, never tested to be honest, but I have also NEVER heard anyone testing the theory. I sleep easier at night knowing I am not filling the Internet with junk (which most spun content is), so I will keep doing what works for me.

[ezybux4u]

Conner, I would love to hear your input regarding edu links, and their relative SEO value. I think alot of other Warriors would like to know as well. Thanks for the initial share, it was informative, and I love number crunching

[kashif nazeer]

Your information is great. However i have few concerns about your ideas. Google penalize the copied content if it is static. It it contain brand names or company related keywords that are mostly used on different ecommerce or affiliate sites, google ignore them. but do not do any adventure to copy and paste the static content on your site. This adventure may cost the sandbox

[morc3x]

On the pinging subject.

I agree to ping your backlinks if you build small amount of them.

If you build tens of thousands per day I don't suggest this. Let the google find them naturally over the time.

[ConnorMcCreesh]

Originally Posted by ezybux4u

Conner, I would love to hear your input regarding edu links, and their relative SEO value. I think alot of other Warriors would like to know as well. Thanks for the initial share, it was informative, and I love number crunching

Hrmm I will give the OP an update to give an input on this. (Well my personal ideas, once again nothing from the big G).

Originally Posted by kashif nazeer

Your information is great. However i have few concerns about your ideas. Google penalize the copied content if it is static. It it contain brand names or company related keywords that are mostly used on different ecommerce or affiliate sites, google ignore them. but do not do any adventure to copy and paste the static content on your site. This adventure may cost the sandbox

I am not 100% sure on what you mean here sorry buddy. If you are talking about duplicate content, to my knowledge Google just doesn't index the duplicate content because it would not be as relevant as the original piece.

Not sure if this is what you mean?

Originally Posted by morc3x

On the pinging subject.

I agree to ping your backlinks if you build small amount of them.

If you build tens of thousands per day I don't suggest this. Let the google find them naturally over the time.

Yeah I get that, you want Google to find links at a realistic rate relevant to your website. If you are running a PR8 site then they can expect to index 10,000+ links a day, but for a young site this is quite obvious (unless it is "the next big thing", which I would assume most sites are not).

Drip feeding is an important aspect that I have gathered from respected marketers lots of times over.

Kind Regards,
Connor

[augustusrome17]

hi

is it possible to get free backlink from edu or gov ?

[Rollmodl]

Finally, an informative post.

[ConnorMcCreesh]

Originally Posted by augustusrome17

hi

is it possible to get free backlink from edu or gov ?

Yeah sure, just search for ones that are blogs and post a thought out, relevant reply to one of the blog posts and have a link to your relevant website at the end (or in the "your website" field).

Originally Posted by Rollmodl

Finally, an informative post.

I hope you enjoyed it buddy

Kind Regards,
Connor

[kkchoon]

About the duplicated content part, actually if you submit more than 10 identical articles to 10 different websites, Google will only count them like 10, so if you don't spin your article, you'll see a lot less effect on your ranking!

[brianlmaule]

Nice information thanks for sharing it

[Srinagarhouseboats]

Really nice information about myths . Thanks for sharing

[ConnorMcCreesh]

Originally Posted by kkchoon

About the duplicated content part, actually if you submit more than 10 identical articles to 10 different websites, Google will only count them like 10, so if you don't spin your article, you'll see a lot less effect on your ranking!

Are you sure? What I have learned from freelancing and also from large article marketers on the forum such as Alexa that Google registers all of the links even if they are duplicate, but they will only index the first one they find in the search engines results.

This is because lots of people may quote a good article so they can still be relevant but they are not as relevant to Google as the original which is the one they will index.

Originally Posted by Srinagarhouseboats

Really nice information about myths . Thanks for sharing

No problem, hope you liked it.

[ConnorMcCreesh]

Updates the OP

Kind Regards,
Connor