Spammy Profile Backlinks - If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em?
Posted 02-01-2010 at 02:57 AM by Chris Kent
Something that has been annoying me lately is the huge amount of people doing spammy methods of backlinking.
It wasn't long ago that many people struggled to get backlinks.
Sure, you can write articles for the directories. Sure, you can try and contact webmasters and ask for a link. You can write press releases.
Problem with all these methods is that they require either a lot of effort, time or money and/or fail to give good returns.
That all changed with forum profile backlinking.
What Is Forum Profile Backlinking?
What a lot of people do now (helped by the success of "backlink packets") is to join various forums and leave a link in their profile.
You get a high PR backlink for very little effort.
So what's wrong with this?
SPAM!
Ask yourself, if you owned a forum, and you found out that tons of marketers were coming to your site, creating an account, posting nothing (or maybe one or two posts), just to leave their backlinks there?
I'd be pretty mad!
I mean, here on WF there are people who register just to leave a sig link after making only one or two posts.
These people are frowned upon because they only take and in return they give back ZERO value. But in my view they are no different to forum profile backlink spammers.
So do you beat em or join em? Therein lies the problem.
Like The Housing Market, Tech Boom etc.
This whole situation reminds me of financial bubbles.
You have a ton of people getting great success from this spamming method. More and more people join in.
These were questionable practices not long ago but now these same people will deny they are spamming and seek to reinforce their already twisted points of view.
The longer that it looks like Google will do nothing about it, the bigger and more widespread this practice will become.
I seriously hope Google clamps down on this because if they don't then I'll regret not having done it myself.
But right now, I don't want to risk my sites. I reckon it's not hard for Google to find footprints for these spammers. Simply see if a site has 50 backlinks coming from forum profiles and check the no. of posts on those accounts (this data could be parsed automatically).
For now, I'm gonna stick to article marketing. Maybe I'll risk a few new sites using these spammy backlinks. Not my good sites though, no way.
Best,
Chris
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It wasn't long ago that many people struggled to get backlinks.
Sure, you can write articles for the directories. Sure, you can try and contact webmasters and ask for a link. You can write press releases.
Problem with all these methods is that they require either a lot of effort, time or money and/or fail to give good returns.
That all changed with forum profile backlinking.
What Is Forum Profile Backlinking?
What a lot of people do now (helped by the success of "backlink packets") is to join various forums and leave a link in their profile.
You get a high PR backlink for very little effort.
So what's wrong with this?
SPAM!
Ask yourself, if you owned a forum, and you found out that tons of marketers were coming to your site, creating an account, posting nothing (or maybe one or two posts), just to leave their backlinks there?
I'd be pretty mad!
I mean, here on WF there are people who register just to leave a sig link after making only one or two posts.
These people are frowned upon because they only take and in return they give back ZERO value. But in my view they are no different to forum profile backlink spammers.
So do you beat em or join em? Therein lies the problem.
Like The Housing Market, Tech Boom etc.
This whole situation reminds me of financial bubbles.
You have a ton of people getting great success from this spamming method. More and more people join in.
These were questionable practices not long ago but now these same people will deny they are spamming and seek to reinforce their already twisted points of view.
The longer that it looks like Google will do nothing about it, the bigger and more widespread this practice will become.
I seriously hope Google clamps down on this because if they don't then I'll regret not having done it myself.
But right now, I don't want to risk my sites. I reckon it's not hard for Google to find footprints for these spammers. Simply see if a site has 50 backlinks coming from forum profiles and check the no. of posts on those accounts (this data could be parsed automatically).
For now, I'm gonna stick to article marketing. Maybe I'll risk a few new sites using these spammy backlinks. Not my good sites though, no way.
Best,
Chris
Buy PLR Articles
PLR Membership
Total Comments 5
Comments
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If google were to smack a site for doing this, would they remove the smack if the person went through and deleted all the forum profiles? Or would it be a permanent negative to the site?Posted 02-01-2010 at 03:18 AM by theunknownthem
- Google is not going to ban these sites. Why because that would be the fastest way for a blckhat to knock out the competition, eventually they will become almost worthless, just like article marketing is now.Posted 02-04-2010 at 02:46 PM by sterlingtek
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I have no idea. I doubt many people have tried to resurrect such a site. And at the moment, I hear of few such smacks. Maybe if you have a MFA site, but not for profile spamming, er I mean backlinking.Quote:Originally Posted by theunknownthem
If google were to smack a site for doing this, would they remove the smack if the person went through and deleted all the forum profiles? Or would it be a permanent negative to the site?Posted 02-05-2010 at 02:29 PM by Chris Kent 
- I agree. In fact, I'm thinking of using these spammy "packets" on many of my new sites. As I'm making so many sites, I can afford to risk this.Quote:Originally Posted by sterlingtek Google is not going to ban these sites. Why because that would be the fastest way for a blckhat to knock out the competition, eventually they will become almost worthless, just like article marketing is now.
I agree that Google will lessen the effects of them over time but I can't see how they can differentiate them easily without penalising innocents. Plus, the backlink is the core of the Google ranking algorithm, they need a hell of a revelation to come up with something better though I've no doubt that their PhDs are working on it.Posted 02-05-2010 at 02:31 PM by Chris Kent -
Google will only add filter to profile links, they won't "completely" ban it! Like it or not, you still need to mix the links and avoid putting all your eggs in one basket, if you want long term result.Posted 02-19-2010 at 08:08 PM by kkchoon
