Backlinks -Frequently Asked Questions

[shuvo]

You also may try the followings-

::web 2.0 link building
::social bookmarking
::directory submission
::Local directory listings like yell,yelp,superpages,hotfrog etc.

[App Developers]

Everyone has their own opinion. I have seen bigger jumps in the SERPS from high quality blog commenting. Smaller jumps with forum commenting. And verdict is still out with directories. I tried articles submissions and gave up out of boredom. It all just equals a whole lot of work and also throwing in the nofollow links to look natural. good luck!

[DanielCurpas]

Well, if i write articles on my blog...and then post them on ezinearticles.com ?...it is a good or a bad investment?

[jhnbrwn]

No, blogs commenting and forum posting is still respected by the Big G, cop up with both of the guys, surely you will get sweet fruits in no time.

Regards

[soulpower]

diversify your link portfolio, mix it all up....focus on strong pr sites

[strategic seo services]

The best types of backlinks are those that are dofollow and that originate from a high PR domain.

[tucan]

links in article I find are the best backlinks

and your keyword in the article's title I hear is an important factor too.

[Backlinksboy]

the best would be the mixture of all the link building methods you have mentioned

[uProSoft]

contexual backlinks are the dominants. Hard to get, and one from a pr7 .edu blog will make you rank for the keyword 'car insurance' overnight... Just kidding lol! But who knows?!. Anyway you get the point.

[syahbiz]

the best backlinks are one way links from related sites with a keyword as anchor text

[desmond11]

This is a hard one to answer because backlinks for one niche may not be as effective for another.

For example:

1. The best backlink for the health niche is a signature link within a forum. If you're an active participant then this is way more powerful than any other. This will you get more targeted and a more powerful backlink than 1000 forum backlinks for example.

2. If you're doing some marketing for a local company, then backlinks from local business directories, twitter posts, and local area news site blogs would be better.

There really is no right or wrong answer. It's all niche dependant.

Note: Getting backlinks from high PR sites isn't enough either. It's the page you need to focus on. (Has the page got a decent page rank)

[desmond11]

Originally Posted by syahbiz

the best backlinks are one way links from related sites with a keyword as anchor text

From my research, it doesn't matter if the backlink is related to your niche or not. If anything, getting backlinks from niche sites only is definitely a red flag.

[JoshKelsey]

All of the links you listed are basically trash links.

The best backlinks are those from authority sites related / indirectly related to your niche. Some ways to get those links:

- guest posting
- paid links
- having great content, and just simply asking for a link
- sometimes you can get a link just by offering to pay somebody's domain renewal.

Etc...

Don't just think about links. Think about getting a link + traffic.

Trash / Spam links work, but it's often short lived. Out of the links you posted manual blog commenting on related pages (also evidence to be shown that no-follow links are a good thing), and article sites are probably the best.

Create great content, and find that "trick" that each niche has to put you over the top of your competitors.

Originally Posted by vaibhavm1

here is what i do:
blog comments
article submissions
forum backlinks
profile backlinks

but i don't know how much to do of each(like by percentage of my total backlinks).
and are there more types that i should do?

i recently read somewhere that blog comments are no longer of any real value, is that true for forum backlinks also?

and say one type of backlinking is really effective compared to the rest is it bad to do just that type of backlinking? (like only article submissions)

thanks warrior forum

[sharma3361]

effective back links are links on websites situated on different IPs and having a dofollow attribute as well as relevant anchor text. The best ways to build them is article submission but too hectic process ...

[NastyBlast]

I've worked with a link building platform for about five years. And I can tell you for a fact that relevant links from sites relevant to your niche are absolutely the way to go.

I'm not going to bother to dig up a bunch of articles about it but it's common knowledge that relevant links of the most important. as one person mentioned too much relevant links with the same anchors might be perceived as spam by getting links purely from sites in your niche makes total sense.

I don't know why people aren't playing up .gov and .edu domains? that makes absolutely no sense in this view are also a government entity or educational entity.

if I judge by the links in your signature you have sites related to games. Unless it's a government site rating games then I see no relevance.

Over the years many Buzz rumors have been passed around. the confuse people and cause them to go in directions that are complete waste of time. the .gov card was played around maybe 6 years ago.

Last year (or the year before) the buzz card was "spider friendly website coding". It's one of the most absurd things I've ever seen but people bought into it like a madman. the pitch from the salespeople / SEO Crap-Hats was that coding a website with pure CSS would make it easier for Google bot to get through.

GoogleBot is the most advanced crawling bot on the net. To imply that it needs any help in analyzing a website is absurd. additionally the first thing Google but does is strip off all the CSS and HTML coding so it can analyze the text and links. I'm up in the dig up any articles on it... so Just look at what makes sense.

look at what makes sense to the user is all you ever have to do with Google. If you're on a website that is all about games... And you link to another site that is about games... That link makes sense and should count when Google sees it. But if you suddenly link off to a site about nursing homes for old people... That link makes absolutely no sense to a visitor and would probably not be counted at all by Google.

So even though these are two separate subjects they lead to the same conclusion in which you should pay more attention to how users perceive websites rather than Google.

It is commonly iterated not the program from Google but to program for the user. But so many people refuse to take that advice because they're looking for shortcuts to the top. The only shortcut to the top is extremely hard work to keep your site relevant and making sense to the people that arrive on it. There are boost factors that can continually boost a website but that is a very costly long-term strategy.

Program for the people... Not the bots

[NastyBlast]

Originally Posted by JoshKelsey

Trash / Spam links work, but it's often short lived.

that's exactly right. I've been calling it the boost factor. You can continually boost a website with a flood of inbound links. Google gives the links a chance at first and that's the shelf life of that link. when Google determines that the link is not relevant enough the link dies and its value with it.

Program for the long-term

[desmond11]

Originally Posted by JoshKelsey

All of the links you listed are basically trash links.

The best backlinks are those from authority sites related / indirectly related to your niche. Some ways to get those links:

- guest posting
- paid links
- having great content, and just simply asking for a link
- sometimes you can get a link just by offering to pay somebody's domain renewal.

Etc...

Don't just think about links. Think about getting a link + traffic.

Trash / Spam links work, but it's often short lived. Out of the links you posted manual blog commenting on related pages (also evidence to be shown that no-follow links are a good thing), and article sites are probably the best.

Create great content, and find that "trick" that each niche has to put you over the top of your competitors.

Hey Josh,

I think each link has its own merit depending on the niche you're in mate.

For example:

Blog commenting is great if you're in the same niche as the blog you're commenting on and actually making a valuable contribution to. Thus, other readers will continue to see your comments and click through to your site to see what you're offering.

Same goes for forum backlinks (within signature file).

If done correctly, article submissions does still work. Being honest, I don't do that much anymore but I still make sales from article on EZA that are over 5 years old. I'm not even listbuilding, I'm just sending them to clickbank pages (my early days )

The jury is still out on profile backlinks. I haven't tested these for a while so can't really comment. If you take a look around the SEO forums you'll still see people raving about them and I guess these guys know what they're talking about.

I don't get too focused on "no follow" and "do follow" anymore. However, I've found that posting daily and linking to an authority site on a regular basis has helped. I've also got links within the blogroll of old blogs I set up years ago. that have got great page ranks over time.

[desmond11]

Originally Posted by NastyBlast

that's exactly right. I've been calling it the boost factor. You can continually boost a website with a flood of inbound links. Google gives the links a chance at first and that's the shelf life of that link. when Google determines that the link is not relevant enough the link dies and its value with it.

Program for the long-term

I agree and disagree. I believe certain links die off over time, but I don't believe this is based on how relevant the link is. Otherwise the links to your site would ALL be relevant over a period of time, and this clearly isn't the case.

[JoshKelsey]

Yeah I would be hard-pressed to disagree w/ that statement. But op was talking about "most effective" and I think it's pretty proven that:

- in content
- high trust sites
- theme related
- low number of outbound links

Are going to be the most effective.

How long do we really think types of link building like "forum profiles" is going to last? It seems obvious to me that when you have 1000+ profile links available for $5 they're not going to continue to add much value.

Topic related forums are great for traffic. I don't believe that signature links are a strong linking strategy overall.

To put it short, editorial style links, are the most effective and I don't think that's bound to change any time soon.

Originally Posted by desmond11

Hey Josh,

I think each link has its own merit depending on the niche you're in mate.

[desmond11]

Josh, you're right and we're probably talking about totally different things here. I simply didn't want to put anyone off commenting on blogs posts (and or) forums.

If his idea is to get more link juice from the sheer amount of links from these places, then it's a short term strategy that almost always means more work in the long term.

[brendan9971]

.gov and .edu are for sure better. but in general, I would say that angele's list still do well for me.

[JoshKelsey]

Originally Posted by brendan9971

.gov and .edu are for sure better. but in general, I would say that angele's list still do well for me.

All of the .gov and .edu? Even the ones full of 3P's links?

That kind of stuff is played out man. If you can get "good" .gov and .edu yeah they're going to be great... Same with any other "good" high authority/trust link.

[Millerking]

Originally Posted by NastyBlast

that's exactly right. I've been calling it the boost factor. You can continually boost a website with a flood of inbound links. Google gives the links a chance at first and that's the shelf life of that link. when Google determines that the link is not relevant enough the link dies and its value with it.

Program for the long-term

Try to spam smart

[Oranges]

Blogpost Links!

[SB274]

I have found that getting edus and gov backlinks first and then going after blog comments has worked best for me. If you don't already have edu links I think that is probably the best place to focus.

[Rukshan]

Originally Posted by Kevin Pojezny

I have found that getting edus and gov backlinks first and then going after blog comments has worked best for me. If you don't already have edu links I think that is probably the best place to focus.

.mil links also have same power. But little bit difficult to find them

[masterjani]

All backlinks are useful,You can acquire links from forums,article submission,web2.0 etc..
The main thing here is link diversity you need to get links from various places to gain more exposure.

[nokimchen]

i recently read somewhere that blog comments are no longer of any real value

No one can really say that with 100% surety!
Ya, google have the ability to know whether the link is from comment or not. But it doesn't mean that it dont have any value. It certainly do have value. Try blog commenting on related niches (high PR too) for a month regularly, you'll surely see an increase in you SERP

[Brantley]

Contextual links
Profile links
Blog commenting on high PR domains- dofollow blogs

Keep in mind that a few nofollow backlinks are good because it looks more natural to the serps than just dofollow links. diversify!!!!

[samuel.johnson]

Try to get contextual backlinks from quality sites.Surely this will helps you a lot.

[online4cash]

Article Submision Is The Best One
But I Think That Blog Commented Is Not So Much Effective.....!!!

[Mr Lim]

If you intent to rank in SEO, articles marketing is the best.
If you intent to receive traffic and rank in search engine, homepage links is the best.

Just in my opinion.

[eyedsign]

guest posting and article submission works for me

[maramkt]

Hi everyone! I'm new to affiliate marketing and I'm pushing my websites to the top through article marketing mainly. I almost reached the top rank but then, I got buried somewhere down and deep! My ranking don't even show up in firefox rank checker anymore. They only show up as a dash (-). Can anyone suggest a reason why that happened. I'd been going steady for three months, climbing slow.
Recently I've been trying backlinks from squidoo and blog comments. I thought mixing things up might help.

[arttse]

I agree.

I've seen sites with PR4+ that rank very highly with less than 100 links - only because they backlinked using your method.

ie contextual links + theme related + high authority links + low no of outbound links.

Originally Posted by JoshKelsey

Yeah I would be hard-pressed to disagree w/ that statement. But op was talking about "most effective" and I think it's pretty proven that:

- in content
- high trust sites
- theme related
- low number of outbound links

Are going to be the most effective.

How long do we really think types of link building like "forum profiles" is going to last? It seems obvious to me that when you have 1000+ profile links available for $5 they're not going to continue to add much value.

Topic related forums are great for traffic. I don't believe that signature links are a strong linking strategy overall.

To put it short, editorial style links, are the most effective and I don't think that's bound to change any time soon.

[NastyBlast]

Originally Posted by brendan9971

.gov and .edu are for sure better.

this is an accurate.

The extension of the domain does not give it more credibility, weight, points, PR or any other measurable value other than being more common to type such as .com

[Shirlyn]

The backlinks which are coming from sites which is related to niche of our website.

[spiders1980]

blog comments is very powerful it helps 50% in serp.by doing blog comments in nofollow also helps you

[summerbuzz]

i suggest .gov or .edu links..

[mattr2110]

How do you ping the articles that are submitted to the 20 article directories? The report just gives you where they where submitted to? Do you go search each directory for the actual link to the article?

[webdango]

Hi Matt

I don't ping the articles. It might be worth your effort to track down a few of them at some of the more popular directories and ping them, but I'm not sure it would be worth your time and effort to do them all.

[mattr2110]

Ok guess I'm confused cause you said you pinged them on day 3

Day 3

1. Spin the article you wrote on day 1
   1. Clean up the rewrite - (I do a thorough cleanup/rewrite to make sure it readable)
2. Use the article for 20 article submissions at lexorsoft (.2 credits = $2.00)
   1. Use two links in the resource box
      1. Link 1: article keyword phrase linked to article URL
      2. Link 2: one of you main domain keyword phrase linked to main domain
3. Once task is complete (1 - 3 days) and you get the report from Lexorsoft, ping the articles using pingler

[webdango]

Hi Matt

That's what I was originally doing, but I found the time it took to track the articles down for pinging was too long, so I started only pinging a few of them.

It's an 'organic' linkbuilding plan, in that I keep making changes too it.

Another thing I've started doing instead of subbing artciles through Lexor - I found a service on Warrior that will do UAW and Linkvine subs, so I've been sending articles through them.

[mattr2110]

Its interesting how this works for some but not others. I followed these link building steps and my page went from page 3 on google to page 9, ouch.

[webdango]

Hi matt

There are a lot of variable that can come into play.

I often see fluctuation when I first start doing this with a site, especially if it's a new registration. After a month or two, I start to see more consistency in placement, and the ranking begins to improve.

I'm seeing that right now with an older domain. I'd had it for 5 years, never did anything with it, finally added 10 pages of content and started runing this plan. I was on the 4th page, dropped all the way down to the 18th page, then climbed about 20 - 40 spots per week. After 2 months I was in position 11, and now, a month after that, I'm in #9.

Consistency and repetition are huge parts of the ranking game.

[PPV Guru]

Well this post is gonna be a lot shorter than the last one but it’s basically going to be my linking strategy in the most basic fashion. There are many ways to link to your site but the basics are all the same.

For starters, we’re only gonna be working with PR5 or better sites. I know this limits the NUMBER of backlinks you can receive as there are way more lower PR sites around. But what you’ll lose in volume you make up for in quality and Google LOVES quality. HINT: see Google’s “quality” score…teaches you EVERYTHING you need to know about great SEO practices.

Now I know a bunch of guys sell 50k backlinks for 50 bucks and whatnot but most of those links don’t get above PR2 most times. Then they have the nerve to call PR3 and PR4 high page rank sites when that’s absolutely ridiculous. That’s like saying “teacher, my 40% out of 100% on the math test is passing.” She’s gonna look at you like you lost your mind because 60% is barely passing.

Well PR4 sites are like 40%, PR5 sites are like 50%, and so on. The same way a teacher grades a test is the same way Google grades the quality of your back link and PR5 is that barely passing grade of quality for Google. Now don’t get me wrong, you can get traffic with low quality links. But this isn’t about traffic more than it is about quality of traffic.

If you want to get to a point where you don’t have to back link a site anymore, you’re gonna have to focus on higher quality sites. You get what you pay for.

So with that out of the way, the strategy…

Very simple. You have a money site. This money site could be a sales page, a blog with ads, or even a direct link to a cpa offer (which I don’t recommend…why pass all that juice to another site you don’t own?). Now we are taught to link as many backlinks to your money site as possible but the problem with that is, if you’re site is not a PR5+ site then you linking that much to your site at one time is gonna get you slapped.

Google is gonna see your linking as being unnatural and you’re gonna get slapped and lose your rankings. If you back link with software using proxy it will work for a while and then you will get slapped because Google sees it’s unnatural. If you link like crazy from one IP address using a software you’re gonna get slapped because Google knows no human can naturally back link that much to one site that fast and that consistently.

My point? Any hint of an unnatural link will get you in trouble. It will work short term but will bite your head off long term. Period. People who say they do these things and have not gotten slapped yet, wait longer, it will come with the next algo change.

So the way to link to your money site, appeasing google in the process, is to make your linking appear as natural as possible. 1500 links a day is suspect and temporary success. How do we make them look natural? Simple. Slow and steady.

It’s natural to link a few dozen times a day. A human can link maybe even 100 a day naturally and not get in trouble in the long run. But the problem is this…how many links can you get to your site if you’re only doing a few dozen a day? Quickly here is a hard and fast rule about getting high rankings. Back in the day, it was the number of backlinks you had to your site. So if rank 1, page 1 had 20,000 backlinks, all you would have needed was 20,001 backlinks to take the number one spot.

But people started cheating and google did two things.

1) They stopped showing how many backlinks a site had to third parties. They now will only show the true number of backlinks to the actual site owner in google webmasters. So all you people using softwares to detect backlinks, those numbers are way off. Google generates random number of a small percentage to deliver to the public so that third parties can never know how many backlinks a site has but the owner.

2) They added a rule that the high rankings are still decided by backlinks but also it grades the quality of the backlink as well (page rank).
So back to the method.

Your money site needs to be back link naturally or with the appearance of natural but only using high page ranked sites (PR5 or better). You need LESS powerful backlinks to make up for many weak links so this actually makes your job a lot easier. Here is that formula:

PR5+ Sites => Money Site

I’m gonna make this really easy for you. Here are 10 sites I use and recommend that you use to start your back linking campaigns…

• Blogger.com
• Tumblr.com
• Xanga.com
• Weebly.com
• Blogspot.com
• Wordpress.com
• Hubpages.com
• Squidoo.com

Now there are plenty of others but these are good to start with. What you want to do is, create profiles using keywords you want. So if your niche is business and your keyword is “make money online” then you will try to find a way to include “make money online” in your profile creation. For some accounts like blogger it will make the keyword a subdomain which is HIGHLY effective for getting indexed.

For other accounts like Squidoo it will create a lens with the keyword somewhere in a folder like squidoo.com/YOUR-KEYWORD. The key is to keep content on these sites regularly, why? Because these are high PR sites which means that when you post content to these higher PR sites, you will get indexed instantly. In many cases, you will jump to the first page for that keyword in hours. NO lie.

You see, it’s not enough to get your OWN links indexed high. You have to ALSO get your BACKLINKS indexed high too. If your backlink isn’t indexed then it won’t pass much power to your money site. This is why we spend a great deal of time on link wheels. Another thing to consider, just because the HOMEPAGE is PR7 doesn’t mean that YOUR profile links or blog pages are PR7. A lot of times you’ll find the home page is PR7 but your new account profile or blog posts are only PR1 or PR2…if THAT much (sometimes PR0) and that doesn’t pass a single ounce of power to your site.

MYTH. Google ranks sites. WRONG. Google doesn’t rank sites, they rank PAGES. Big difference. So one PAGE could be PR7 but another page could get PR1 so your PR7 page would get more traffic than that PR1 page.
Back to linking.
Since your newly created profile or blog post doesn’t have a good page rank yet, that means you have to back link THAT post or profile to increase the rankings. Now here is where the fun part comes in. Ok, you have to increase the page rank of your blog post or profile from one of the sites in the list above so what do you do? You backlink the HECK out of it.

So I’ll post something to Blogger and then fine a bunch of other PR5+ sites (or outsource) and backlink as much as I can to those pages. Now if you want to use a software, you can start to do it because there is no WAY google is gonna slap a PR5+ site, you can forget about it. If it were that easy to get slapped the entire search engine infrastructure would collapse overnight. So you send as many links to that blog post from high PR social bookmark sites, press releases, article sites and maybe a few other high PR blogs. Again, we need a lot of links but we also need high PR because google qualifies by quantity AND quality. Remember the quality score reference…

Your 3rd level backlinks gives juice to the 2nd level backlinks which then gives your money site juice. Now, keep in mind, your site never ever gets slapped. Why? Because you technically only have 8 sites backlinking you. You might have several pages from these sites linking to you but you only have 8 sites doing it. Another thing to consider about this technique is that the more backlinks you get from one single high PR site, the stronger your money site becomes and the stronger the other backlinks on that same 2nd tier site become.

So the content on these 8 sites will be original. I don’t care if you spin it and make sure it’s readable 8 times, just as long as the initial content is orginal and you are fine. I can guarantee you if you work this even on a small scale for several months you’ll be AMAZED at how much better your results are than getting 100k low quality backlinks that will get you slapped in 4 months…or 4 weeks.

There really is nothing else to it but consistency. Try to post to your 8 2nd tier sites as much as possible. I’d recommend 1-3 posts a week at least but if you keep this up you’ll be fine. One other thing I want to point out, the more pages on your money site, the better. You don’t HAVE to have a lot of pages. But if all you have is a one page lander then you’re gonna need a heck of a lot more back links to get indexed for a bunch of keywords. Ok I’ll let you guys ask questions, I’ve rambled enough.

[Adam Moran]

what you think is the best way to get tons of links to the second tier?
is there some software /service you can recommend?
thanks!

[JamesGw]

Meh.

Google doesn't really penalize entire websites if you spam links to a page regardless of PR. It tends to just penalize the page for the particular keyword that you're spamming. For example, if I blasted 50,000 links at a Hub with one keyword, the hub will most likely get dropped for that keyword.

Also, page rank is just that: page rank. Hubs can have high PRs, but not all of them do. I've gotten hubs up to PR4, but most of them (especially if of only mediocre quality) are PR0-2. If you want real PR5+ backlinks, you better be ready to pay for them, network, or do some serious linkbaiting. Those sort of links don't come around often unless you're a really well established brand.

[PPV Guru]

Originally Posted by molan

what you think is the best way to get tons of links to the second tier?
is there some software /service you can recommend?
thanks!

yeah, I recommend se nuke for that or an outsource...you're best bet is to do manual linking with a team but if you don't have the budget, senuke is the best thing to use (which is still pretty costly like 147 a month).

Originally Posted by seoservicesaustralia

Hi

Waw This Is Nice Post It is Great Info Thanks By Share.

sure thing

Originally Posted by jacksite

Thanks very much. I am a newbie here, and I really learn a lot from this post.
My question is: Do I really need to find other high pr sites to backlink my 2nd tier sites?

Thank you. You really don't have to but it's just my practice because most of the times, if Google changes its algos and a slap ensues it's usually the lower PR links that get slapped. So if your linking campaign is made up of 70% low quality links then when the slap comes, you'll lose most of your results.

[PPV Guru]

Originally Posted by JamesGw

Meh.

Google doesn't really penalize entire websites if you spam links to a page regardless of PR. It tends to just penalize the page for the particular keyword that you're spamming. For example, if I blasted 50,000 links at a Hub with one keyword, the hub will most likely get dropped for that keyword.

Also, page rank is just that: page rank. Hubs can have high PRs, but not all of them do. I've gotten hubs up to PR4, but most of them (especially if of only mediocre quality) are PR0-2. If you want real PR5+ backlinks, you better be ready to pay for them, network, or do some serious linkbaiting. Those sort of links don't come around often unless you're a really well established brand.

Eh, I kinda explained that in the post. Hubpages (for example) has PR5 for the home page. But if you post a blog there, YOUR page is only like a PR1 or PR0. I also explained that you need to backlink THAT link on hub pages with other sites andtaht's what raises the PR of that blog post on hubpages higher.

Now by mere fact that the blog is posted on a PR5 "site" if you would (not really site, the homepage) then the PR5 HOMEPAGE automatically links BACK to that blog post that's only PR0. So, Hubpages HOME page passes its page rank power back over to your blog post which is the reason your blog post on hubpages will get indexed instantly and probably get to first page in as early as a few hours.

After all, this is the PURPOSE of linking anyway and this is the point of a strategy that I have outlined above. Now I know that google doesn't slap you inadvertedly even if you spam a million links to your site.

However, it DOES put you at risk of getting slapped a heck of a lot more than just simply linking to a buffering site and that's the point that I'm making. If you want to risk all your seo work on spam linking to your money site? Be my guest. But for people who are in this for the long haul would rather forgo "early success" for longer term success that is 99% slap proof.