Backlinks are worthless

by Doug Pretorius

Posted: 14 years ago 31 replies

Yup gonna get flamed for that title I'm sure

The thing is, I'm really starting to doubt the effectiveness of ALL the various backlinking theories. We've all seen the crappy sites with 5 backlinks from other crappy sites that outrank the high quality sites with 200,000 links from other quality sites. So what's up with that?

Maybe deliberately creating backlinks does some good...or maybe Google tracks all of your activities and discounts the backlinks you create. No one really knows it's all just personal theories (unless you work for Google).

Another popular suggestion that has never sat well with me is the idea of creating 1 unique bit of content on your own site and then creating say 10 unique or semi-unique bits of content linking back to yours and sprinkling them around the web. What's the point? Google will find your content wherever you put it, so why not put all 11 pieces on your own site? For the backlinks you say? -See above

Google does offer some guidelines. Namely: Create good original content, a positive user experience, and write for your readers not for search engines. And they actively discourage 'tricks' and we know they're always changing things. A trick that works today gets you deindexed tomorrow. But over all the years the net has been going it keeps coming back to "quality original content" that wins the day.

I'm not saying Google is looking out for our best interests. But is their recommendation any less trustworthy than someone posting on a forum or selling some method for gaming the system?

One caveat: The above is only an argument against using various promotional methods strictly in the hopes of gaining link juice to push your site up in the rankings. If you're using these methods to get traffic from outside of the search engines, that's another issue entirely.

#backlinks #worthless

jasonmorgan

14 years ago

I'm not flaming... what makes you believe or has given you the impression that these methods don't work?

We've all seen the crappy sites with 5 backlinks from other crappy sites that outrank the high quality sites with 200,000 links from other quality sites. So what's up with that?

301 redirect is the first thing that comes to mind. Blocking Yahoo search bots is another. There are more ways to hide your backlinks.

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George Wright 14 years ago

Hi,

It's always good to hear a different opinion. I don't agree or disagree with what you said because frankly I really don't know.

I know I have very few back links and fewer "keyword," rich sites (on purpose anyway). My page positions are due to keywords that no one ever searches.

I've approached this IM thing differently than most and I'm happy, not rich, just happy.

I have a few more years to try the conventional ways. I just might do it. Anyway, as I said, it's good to hear your opinion.

George Wright
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KenThompson 14 years ago

Not here to flame you, either. There could be a number of reasons for
the particular situations you have seen. Jason makes a valid point, as
well.

I've seen what you described quite a few times. One very plausible and
accurate reason, all other things considered, has to do with a site's
internal link structure. A site page can lose pr, or ranking ability, due to
improper link structure. I'm not suggesting pr is the end-all-be-all with
ranking, though.

You really would need to look at the whole picture for the results of a
particular keyword phrase to have a better understanding of these
seemingly contradictory results. But they most certainly can be explained
and understood.
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Zeus66 14 years ago

I think a lot of what leads people to conclude that link building is pointless is that they've chosen keywords poorly. Too much overall competition or at least heavy Page 1 competition. So you link and link and link and never crack the top 10 or 20, so you conclude it's all bunk.

I'm not saying that accounts for all of what you're talking about, but a lot of it.

Google has to please its users or it loses its edge. That means lower share prices, etc. We marketers need to please Google or we lose our edge and make less money (if we rely on organic traffic from them). So there's an obvious symbiosis going on. Which means I ultimately agree with your bigger point - that we need to concentrate more on doing the things Google gives its blessings to and not try so much to "game" their system.

But that's kind of naive when businesses are at stake. If you think about it, every single form of proactive link building is spamming, at least from Google's perspective. In their perfect world, we'd all do nothing but add great content and let the votes (links) fall as they will. But that's totally naive and you have to know that Google knew that when they made this decision long ago to rely so heavily on links as votes. They had to see this coming.

In the end, links do work, but I sure wish it was a lot more about on-page content. They made this bed and we all have to lie in it.

John
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TheRichJerksNet

14 years ago

I am not flaming you either ... But ---

It always amazes me how much time people waste trying to lookup their competition and compare, analyze, research, and blah blah... This is truly amazing, it really really is.

All that time you (generally speaking not saying you) spent doing all that work and you could have been working on building backlinks, marketing your site, and making sales.

A few Facts here for those that do waste their time

* PR means nothing at all and this certainly does not mean you rank better because you have a higher PR.

* Alexa rank means nothing as it is 100% wrong.

* You will never, ever find all backlinks to all sites. I do not care what system you use or what tool says this or that.

Backlinks are what drives top listings but yes onsite seo and other hidden methods people use make a huge difference also ...

James

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halfpoint

14 years ago

Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet

It always amazes me how much time people waste trying to lookup their competition and compare, analyze, research, and blah blah... This is truly amazing, it really really is.

Most of the best sites I've found for getting backlinks from have come as a direct result of studying my competition's links. It definitely pays to research your competition.

Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet

A few Facts here for those that do waste their time

* PR means nothing at all and this certainly does not mean you rank better because you have a higher PR.

* Alexa rank means nothing as it is 100% wrong.

* You will never, ever find all backlinks to all sites. I do not care what system you use or what tool says this or that.

Yes, the PR of your site or the PR of the sites you are competing against is irrelevant. However, the PR of the sites (more specifically pages) linking to you is important. Surely you can't dispute that?

Yes, Alexa is irrelevant. I think I've visited Alexa once or twice in my lifetime.

As for the last point, so what? You don't need to find all of them. If you study a web page ranking for a competitive term and only find 20% of their backlinks there is still a very good chance you're going to find some great sources to get links yourself.

I definitely would not refer to studying your competition as a "waste of time".

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reapr 14 years ago

Im not going to flame you but will tell it the way it is.

One poster said poor choice of keywords and if your keyword research is lacking that will be a huge factor.

If your not utilizing your internal linking structure that can be another failure to get some link lov'

Another factor is failing to spread you links around around various places. If you are just focusing on directories and not spending time on blog comments, forum sigs, article directories and link exchanges then yes you will find 'backlinks are worthless'

You said ... We've all seen the crappy sites with 5 backlinks from other crappy sites that outrank the high quality sites with 200,000 links from other quality sites. So what's up with that?

Well if you have been doing enough research you know that Google does not show all backlinks so who is to say a pr 8 link is not showing? I would take a pr 8 link any day over 10 pr 5 links anyday.

Your right google does not look after our best interest(they are profit motivated) they just provide guidelines for what is acceptable ... they are more likely to look after their own interest by limiting and filtering the information they provide to the end user and people who want to use their data to their own advantage. Their only motivation is to provide the data to the end user that is likly to provide them te most profit and internet marketers relying on natural or organic search does not fill this criteria only people using ad words does and even then the data seems to be filtered.

So if you are not able to choose good keywords or do the research to find the correct ones Google is more than willing to provide you the vehicle to put you up in the sponsored results ... its called ad words

Once you have a good list of keyword you will find that they do work.
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- arttse 14 years ago
  
  I have been trying to rank an inner page for 3 months and cant seem to rank the pa
  ge at all. I have done all I can do re onpage SEO. Google has indexed the page for the targetted key word phrase as well as other long tail keyword phrases. The page has over 50 backlinks pointing to the article using Angela's packets and possibly another 50 backlinks not yet showing in Yahoo site explorer.
  
  Why wont my page rank? FYI my home page is currently ranked 5 for the targeted keyword phrase whereas the inner page is ranked 700+.
  
  Thanks
  
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- J smith 14 years ago
  
  But what if you had 20 sites with great content, good on site seo and user friendly design? How would google determine which 10 to rank and which 10 not to rank?
  
  Also, what if someone takes 100 articles from say EA and puts them on their own blog, while you have 10 unique (untill someone steals them) articles on your site. Doesn't the site with 100 copied articles have 10x more content than yours? Sure yours are unique (unless someone copied them) but somone searching Google won't know or care about that, and chances are a site with 100 copied articles will deliver better "user experience" than a site with 10 original articles.
  
  In the end Google uses a algorithm, a very complicated one (and seemingly with a bunch of random values thrown in) but an algorith none the less, and at this poitn in time backlinks are a huge part of site's rankings, while "original content" is practically worthless (imo) as long as you have a keyword rich text that makes sense to a human, it doesn't seem to matter one bit to Google if it's unique content or not.
  
  Thanks
  
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  Doug Pretorius 14 years ago
  
  @jasonmorgan I hadn't thought about hidden backlinks. So are you say you believe the crappy little site has 200,001 hidden backlinks and that's the sole reason it outranks the site with 200,000 'legitimate' backlinks?
  
  @George Wright I'm sure we've all experienced the page that ranks for obscure keywords without any backlinks, in fact, outranking sites/pages for that keyword. I think that's the point I'm getting at LOL
  
  @KenThompson I certainly won't disagree with the benefits of natural internal linking structure. That's how I've ended up with a bunch of indented rankings.
  
  @Zeus66 I agree with that and I'm going to touch on that below. Basically my question is whether backlinks would do anything to help a a newer smaller site to outrank a large established site for a competitive keyword. I would say no. And correct me if I'm wrong but your post seems to agree?
  
  @TheRichJerkNet Totally agree regarding PR and Alexa. Still unsure about backlinks being the answer though.
  
  @reapr I guess the question is, which will benefit you more in the long-run: Creating original content based on proper keyword research, or creating backlinks based on that same research?
  
  @seohelp2u That's what I'm thinking. Creating content for the keyword you're interested in may be better than creating a backlink for that keyword.
  
  @arttse I have no proof to confirm this but what about this as a possibility. Your main site ranks 5th for that keyword thanks to your internal page. So it would be better to create more content targetting related keywords (or the same keyword in different ways) than it would be to use backlinks to try to get that one page ranking higher.
  
  @J smith I don't think content scraping is as detremental as you suggest. Using an example of an article I wrote a few years back. It was for a very non-competitive keyword at the time, in fact I was one of the first people to write about it. My original article submitted to a tiny article directory is still ranked #2. The same article reposted about the same time on one of my blogs is ranked #3, the blog has since not been updated or had any backlink work done.
  
  When I originally wrote the article there were maybe a few dozen hits for the keyword. Now there are millions and I'm still ranked at the top. The page that's at #1 is also a fairly old article and the site is heavily based around that keyword. So it makes sense that it outranks mine.
  
  I've had plenty of people scrap my article and repost it but it doesn't make any difference my original article still outranks them all. So it would seem Google's algorithm gives more weight to the first instance of the article.
  
  Regarding keywords. I agree with everyone who suggested that backlinks won't overcome poor choice of keywords. In fact I think that was my original point. Most people do exactly that. They want to outrank ESPN for "sports" so they buy into the idea that backlinks will get their brand new tiny site to the top of page 1 for an insanely competitive keyword. Then they wonder why it didn't work. This is NOT what I'm saying about backlinks at all. I'm simply suggesting that creating content for non-competitive related keywords will get you further in the long run than creating backlinks for those related keywords.
  
  So here's what I'm thinking. If you want to go after "sports" I'm thinking that creating content based on related keywords is better than creating backlinks.
  
  We know that "outdoor sports" would be easier to rank for than just "sports" and "winter outdoor sports" would be easier still. And "winter outdoor sports tips" and "winter outdoor sports tips for staying warm" should be easier and easier.
  
  As I'm sure many of you have experienced, you can create content for these tiny niche keywords and rank well without any backlinks at all. And it would seem that as Google ranks you for these keywords, it gives you more and more authority for the higher competition keywords that they relate to.
  
  The thing I'm trying to get at is that I think (well, wonder really) whether creating content for those niches isn't more potent than creating backlinks for them?
  
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seohelp2u 14 years ago

I'm not flaming you buddy,it seems a different opinion, but writing an interesting topic drives more traffic which attracts audience which in turn helps to get easily ranked in search engines. So writing with optimum keywords for readers is equally beneficial to get more back links.
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lokodomain 14 years ago

@33centsaday, I agree with your point, Quality is important. Because thats basically what google wants to deliver, But I would say not to cease from doing good. Baclinking, Onpage SEO & Good Content is the equivalent of building a house on the rock instead of the sand!
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- arttse 14 years ago
  
  33centsaday
  
  Have you bought SEO forever by Caliban Darklock? If not I suggest you get a copy...it explains in plain simple language, the way to get top rankings.
  
  hint...he explains that its not about spamming the www with backlinks...but something else.
  
  Thanks
  
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  M Thompson 14 years ago
  
  How is this to throw a spanner in the works..
  
  I registered a domain name for a client last january.. she never went any further with her business so it just sat there with a wordpress theme and the hello world post. It's had no nada, zilch promotion of any kind not even an seo plugin.
  
  Now the domain is 2 words city name then type of business i.e chicagolawyer (but not that)
  
  It due for renewal soon so for some reason i typed the word into google.. guess what
  
  it's sat in second place in the rankings and getting visiotrs every day.
  
  needless to say I added some content and a big for sale sign. I'll go and knock the #1 site off the top and then try to sell it to them
  
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turbohips 14 years ago

I'll flame ya if no one else will. Just kidding. I would first start off and look at your site. If it was made incorrectly with poor utilization of keywords, coding and on-page optimization then yes no matter what you do your site will struggle on the SERPs. Have someone take a look at your site. Heck PM me your link and I tell you what's possibly wrong with it.
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- shmeeko69 14 years ago
  
  From my own personal experience, keyword backlinks with highly ranked
  alexa websites are already doing the business & I'm already getting more
  organic traffic because of this & for my two main keywords at the bottom,
  already on page 1/position 5.
  
  I don't know for sure, but will assume the reason for this is linking my
  chosen related keyword back to our websites & articles posted to the
  top directories.
  
  There are probably other routes to market your business at a low cost,
  but I'll stick mainly to backlink packets & article writing for the forseeable
  future.
  
  Mark
  
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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

Yup gonna get flamed for that title I'm sure

Its not a matter of writing a post that is controversial. People are trying to make money in a down economy. It only matters it you are right and have the goods to back them up. backlinks are proven many times over and Google has confirmed they take backlinks as votes for your site. So if your post helps because you can prove that all the data and Google are wrong then thats good. If not then you are misleading people trying hard to make it. Not a good thing.

Maybe deliberately creating backlinks does some good...or maybe Google tracks all of your activities and discounts the backlinks you create. No one really knows it's all just personal theories (unless you work for Google).

Umm. Yes that we do know. The NSA, Scotland Yard or the KGB may be able to track all of your activities not Google. They just run the search engine they don't own the internet.

Another popular suggestion that has never sat well with me is the idea of creating 1 unique bit of content on your own site and then creating say 10 unique or semi-unique bits of content linking back to yours and sprinkling them around the web

It can be effective but I think I agree with you a little bit in that people spend so much time doing this they don't put content worth anything on their site

and

Thats why no one can tell what is happening in your case and why posts like this really don't matter much. Backlinks won't work if you do bad keyword research, they won't work if your on page seo is bad, they won't work if they are over used backlink (divides up the juice) and they won't work if they are just quantity and poor quality.

We know none of those things here.

Quality content means nothing if google doesn't find it and as I posted a few weeks back they have stated openly that they count backlinks in order to determine if they are even going to index the content.

I'm presently doing an experiment with a brand new domain and may just put it up early with threads like these popping up. Suffice to say I am very pleased with what I have seen and with very few quality backlinks. Not done yet as it was only a few backlinks but I sat at 200 for a keyword, let it settle out for some time then added the backlinks and moved up over a hundred spots. No sandbox or anything. the domain is now about a month old. Since I have multiple tests I want to do I let it stand there but I'll get into those details later.

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searchnology

14 years ago

They know more than you might think....even better reason to not use those free services they are so kind to provide.

Your Gmail, Google analytics, Webmaster tools, Adwords, Adsense, Google toolbar, Website optimizer, Google voice, and Google checkout data are very telling of your online activity. Stay away.... if you actually care about hiding your tracks.

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Umm. Yes that we do know. The NSA, Scotland Yard or the KGB may be able to track all of your activities not Google. They just run the search engine they don't own the internet.

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tjcocker

14 years ago

Ok... I'm in a bad mood, so I'll flame ya. Nothing personal.

I refute your entire premise based on research and personal experience. Get into some more competitive keywords and then see if backlinks are worthless and only more content will get you ranked. Sorry, I have not found it to work that way in actuality. Yes, you can get traffic through some good backlinks, but backlinks are also definitely required for pure SERP increases. You can have thousands of pages, and I know people who do, but you'll never rank for anything more than crazy long-tail searches. That has nothing to do with the practice of getting a site ranked for a highly competitive keyword, or "SEO" as people like to call it. Doing anything else is just making a huge website for fun and hoping it gets out there for all to see one day.

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Doug Pretorius

14 years ago

@lokodomain Nice application of an age old principle, I like it

@arttse No can't say I have.

@M Thompson No content OR backlinks, just the keyword in the url! If that doesn't speak volumes I don't know what does. Thanks for sharing

@turbohips I have a bunch of sites and have tried many ranking and traffic generating methods on them. My current top producing money site ranks on page 1 for all of its major keywords (and the list of keywords is ever-expanding because it's a broad niche). I have both original content and natural backlinks. I've done no 'backlink work' on the site.

@shmeeko69 Congratulations! What is your site like? Do you have little or no content there? If so then I would definitely believe that it's the backlinks that are getting you there. But if you have a ton of original content then it raises questions again for me.

@Mike Anthony Interesting that the only person to flame me is someone selling a backlink service. I don't think anything more needs to be said

@tjcocker Oops spoke too soon! So content has nothing to do with ranking? You can use backlinking to rank a 1 page site with nothing on it for a highly competitive keyword? I'd definitely like to hear more if that's the case!

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

@Mike Anthony Interesting that the only person to flame me is someone selling a backlink service. I don't think anything more needs to be said

LOL! You considered that a flame? Okay heres another flame then. Its from some clown site named Google.

The guy starts nailing the coffin closed on your point beginning at about the 1:15 mark. He flat out states you need relevant content AND importance and explains that backlinks are what Google looks at for importance.

YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.

The argument that content not backlinks is all that is needed is dead

Honestly guy I was being kind and understanding. Saying backlinks are worthless to SEO is the plain and obvious sign of a newbie that has no clue about Internet marketing. Like I said if you want to hold that position thats fine just make sure you keep your day job (even if its flipping burgers it will be more profitable for you). However when you post this on a forum where people are trying hard to make money online you are not doing a service to those who are not already making money. Doesn't affect the rest of us at all because we already know you are talking about what you have no clue about.

You can argue this or that kind of backlink isn't what Google looks at but your blanket statement on all kinds of backlinks is just really totally uninformed. Its no mistake that the few people who agree with you on this thread are either new or haven't discussed SEO very often.

Incidentally I don't sell backlinking or backlinks. I sell a system that points people to places where they can create backlinks themselves a great deal of which are sites that they can do much more than just place a link -

but then again they want to make more than 33 cents a day

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halfpoint

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

The argument that content not backlinks is all that is needed is dead

Honestly guy I was being kind and understanding. Saying backlinks are worthless to SEO is the plain and obvious sign of a newbie that has no clue about Internet marketing.

Incidentally I don't sell backlinking or backlinks. I sell a system that points people to places where they can create backlinks themselves.

Mike,

Don't bother. Let people think that content trumps links.

It makes my life easier.

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DooYu291. 14 years ago

Hi, nice thread and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

I believe that making back links plays a huge role in SEO. The type of links and where you get the links from is even more important.

Have to agree with Pat that by checking out where your competition gets back links from and then retrace their steps and do a little extra effort on top, you can get your site where you want it to be.

I'm not saying it's all about linking but it definitely is important. Besides, if you make sure that you're links appear on some good sites in the same genre where people with an interest in your product or service go to, you can also create some extra traffic through the links which can also cause more sales etc.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks and good luck with all of your campaigns!

Udo
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bigcat1967 14 years ago

I totally agree with you and I am saying that most backlinks are worthless. However, I will say that sig links do help to a degree. We did test that out and they move mature sites up all the time. Sometimes to the first page, other times it may fall short of it.

I use backlinks for referral traffic nowadays. It's basically about promoting your site and then onpage - optimize with keywords with lots of unique content for the hungry crawlers.
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euhlir 14 years ago

I've seen from personal experience that backlinks DO in fact help my search engine rankings and increase the traffic to my sites. So no, backlinks are not worthless.
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- homenotion 14 years ago
  
  Backlinks are important to your website and pages. But I think both links and content go hand in hand.
  
  For example, if you put up a website with the best, most relevant quality content Google won't care a thing about it. Google's position is they want the internet community to like it.
  
  If people like your content they will link to it, put it in their blog roll, mention it in their posts, etc. Those are the links Google cares about. But you won't get those links if your content isn't worthwhile.
  
  You can force backlinks with blog comments, using forums, paying for them etc, but we all know that Google is getting smarter and smarter about that. I think quality content begets quality links which is what Google is most interested in.
  
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duncanb 14 years ago

All i can say is that backlinks are valuable, if the user implements them and utilises them correctly on their website. They must know how to strategically build backlinks and have strategic keyword selection. Work at learning how to build effective backlinks and you will soon learn that they make life much easier!
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eholmes 14 years ago

Here is my 2 cents.

I have a website that is number one in Google for these keywords "sales leads" "free sale leads" "b2b sales leads" and on any given day "leads" these are very competitive terms. I get asked all the time how I did it I will share with this group. I don't claim to be an expert but I will share what has worked for me and enabled me to kick Sales Genie and Info USA in the butt!

It is really basic boring stuff.

25% of SEO is the on page factors. Things like Title tags, having lexical words that relate to the title tag. Don't neglect this or the back linking will not work as well. My site is not perfect but I only have to be better than the next guy.

my wedding favours has to have the best on page SEO I have seen, study it as an example.

Then you need to go out and start getting links. My weapon is Google alerts, I set it up to alert me when my main keywords come up. Each morning I follow the links to the blogs and post a comment with a link back. PR does matter when it comes to linking. The higher the page rank the more valuable the link. If a high page rank page has thousands of links on it then the it could be worth less then a lower page rank page with only one link.

Try to send your links to your internal pages not just your home page. You should have most of your links going to your internal pages, this is how you build a stable site that Google will love. Keep plugging away and Google will not be able to ignore you.

I hope this helps
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Political Guru

14 years ago

Several of you state that internal link structure has an effect on a site's ranking. What do you mean by "link structure"? I know that having no-follow links from one page on your site to another page on your site is penalized by Google. Is that what you are referring to or is it more than that?

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eholmes

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Political Guru

Link structure is the backbone of your site. Take a look at myweddingfavors.com and you will see what I mean. You start off by doing your keyword research and making a list of keywords that you want to rank in order of importance. You take the top 2 or 3 and use them for the title tag on the home page.

Then take the next most important group of keywords 10 to 20 and use them as the anchor text linking to your internal pages. This is important, so many site use terms that are not search terms for anchor text like "why choose us". Look at the second tier anchor text on myweddingfavors.com they are search phrases like "Beach Wedding Favors".

Make sure the anchor text and the title tag of the page are the same, make sure the words on the page relate to the title tag, for beach wedding favors the words on the page are "Sunny, sandy beach wedding favors say thank you in the most memorable of summery ways! We have a large selection of beach wedding favors - at truly phenomenal prices. Make their memories of your special day on the beach linger on and on... "

At the bottom of the site you can have your 3rd level keywords, more of the long tail low search volume. You really need to think this all out in detail before you start to make your website. You are passing page rank off your home page to your internal pages through your links, be careful what you link to, do you really want a page optimized for the keywords "why choose us" with a page rank of 3?

Hope this helps you.

Thanks

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danlew 14 years ago

I'll also tell you how it is buddy;

You only need the following 10 backlinks with your "keyword anchor" and you will out beat a site with 100-1000 useless backlinks from comments on blog or directories.

1. Backlink from a pr6 site
2. Backlink from a relevant site
3. Backlink from quality press release at PRWEB
4. Backlink from a quality article
5. Backlink from a quality directory like dmoz or yahoo
6. Backlink from Digg
7. Backlink from your own unique blog with regular content
8. Backlink from Yahoo answers , nofollow is ok
9. Backlink from Twitter account , nofollow is ok
10. Backlink from a Blog Review site
- Thanks
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Backlinks are worthless

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