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Is This Artificial Link Building?

by rvrabel2002
15 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hey Guys,
I am in the process of creating a small network of blogs (3 to be exact), all with the intention of linking these 3 sites back to my main money site.

In addition, I plan on doing link building to my blog network through social bookmarking and BMR posts, to build link juice.

Each post in each blog will link back to my money site, and each blog is on a completely different server.

I guess my question is, is this considered a "black hat" technique, and would doing something like this be detrimental to my site in the future?

I don't want to do anything wrong, but I have reverse engineered my competitors sites, and every one of them that ranks in the top 5 for my keywords is using this exact strategy. Im just trying to not get lost in the SERPs.
#artificial #building #link
  • Profile picture of the author nicktyler
    If it works then it works tbh. If your competitors are doing well with it then why shouldn't you. It shoud be a perfectly natural way of linking as if you created link bait and it was successfull this is how it would look. I mean can you prove that your competitors built it themselves?
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    • Profile picture of the author rvrabel2002
      Originally Posted by nicktyler View Post

      If it works then it works tbh. If your competitors are doing well with it then why shouldn't you. It shoud be a perfectly natural way of linking as if you created link bait and it was successfull this is how it would look. I mean can you prove that your competitors built it themselves?

      Well my main concern is that they know something that I don't. From what I can tell, it looks to me that they did it themselves, but I cant exactly prove it.

      I just wonder that if google sees a particular site backlinking to one or 2 sites consistently, it might throw up a red flag.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

    I don't want to do anything wrong, but I have reverse engineered my competitors sites, and every one of them that ranks in the top 5 for my keywords is using this exact strategy. Im just trying to not get lost in the SERPs.
    If you asked Google they would say its the wrong hat but they would probably just smile when you pointed out that many well respected and highly rated corporate websites they rank pages highly for have links from and to their other properties. This is EXTREMELY common in the serps particularly with established businesses.

    To be honest though I lean to white hat for some reasons but they are always reasons about being ethical not what matches up with someones idea of what they want me to do. If I have more than one property and want to link to one of my other sites how can it be unethical for me to do it?

    In my case though I am trying to build sites that have usefulness on their own not just to get juice but I am not going to sit there and not recommend my own site that I have worked to put quality on.
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    • Profile picture of the author rvrabel2002
      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

      If you asked Google they would say its the wrong hat but they would probably just smile when you pointed out that many well respected and highly rated corporate websites they rank pages highly for have links from and to their other properties. This is EXTREMELY common in the serps particularly with established businesses.

      To be honest though I lean to white hat for some reasons but they are always reasons about being ethical not what matches up with someones idea of what they want me to do. If I have more than one property and want to link to one of my other sites how can it be unethical for me to do it?

      In my case though I am trying to build sites that have usefulness on their own not just to get juice but I am not going to sit there and not recommend my own site that I have worked to put quality on.

      Exactly what I was thinking. Why should I not be able to link my sites to and from each other. Well, the intention is to produce relevant quality content with this network, not just s blurb of crap that I see my competitor doing.

      My money site was doing very well back in March because i was ranking quite well for many keywords. It still gets good traffic, but only about half of what it did back in March, and as a result, my earnings were cut by about 30%.

      So what you are saying in essence is that it is not ok from googles standpoint, but there is no trigger that they will pull banning all of these sites?
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      • Profile picture of the author razorhound
        Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

        Exactly what I was thinking. Why should I not be able to link my sites to and from each other. Well, the intention is to produce relevant quality content with this network, not just s blurb of crap that I see my competitor doing.

        My money site was doing very well back in March because i was ranking quite well for many keywords. It still gets good traffic, but only about half of what it did back in March, and as a result, my earnings were cut by about 30%.

        So what you are saying in essence is that it is not ok from googles standpoint, but there is no trigger that they will pull banning all of these sites?
        Do you use different articles for each blog to link back to your money site?
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

        Exactly what I was thinking. Why should I not be able to link my sites to and from each other.
        No. Don't do back and forth. Thats reciprocal linking if you do it the wrong way and you end up losing some of the effect. I would run it one way out not back again. Think chains not loops


        So what you are saying in essence is that it is not ok from googles standpoint, but there is no trigger that they will pull banning all of these sites?
        Heh. I aint swearing nothing about google my man. July 5th the story broke that they are in fact penalizing sites for "manipulating pagerank". All I am saying is that I do not agree with them that I cannot ethically link to another site with what I chose not what they claim I must link with (nofollow). Its my site. I don't see them heeding my advice that sticking paid links at the very top of every serp on their site isnt confusing and "degrading to the quality experience of the user" . Now since we do not agree I govern myself accordingly and if you don't understand what I mean by that then feel free to PM me
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
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          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          No. Don't do back and forth. Thats reciprocal linking if you do it the wrong way and you end up losing some of the effect. I would run it one way out not back again. Think chains not loops




          Heh. I aint swearing nothing about google my man. July 5th the story broke that they are in fact penalizing sites for "manipulating pagerank". All I am saying is that I do not agree with them that I cannot ethically link to another site with what I chose not what they claim I must link with (nofollow). Its my site. I don't see them heeding my advice that sticking paid links at the very top of every serp on their site isnt confusing and "degrading to the quality experience of the user" . Now since we do not agree I govern myself accordingly and if you don't understand what I mean by that then feel free to PM me
          Then again I have a few reciprocal links that deliver very good traffic from 100% related sites.

          Point the reciprocal at an internal page.

          I know your talking seo here, just saying the ultimate goal is traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

      If you asked Google they would say its the wrong hat but they would probably just smile when you pointed out that many well respected and highly rated corporate websites they rank pages highly for have links from and to their other properties. This is EXTREMELY common in the serps particularly with established businesses.
      Yeah boy! Soon the cat will be out of the bag, and everybody will be in on this secret!

      Since it crushes a mindset of a certain "SEO" (and I use that term loosely)
      business, the fear factor is peddled most often.

      Wrong hat...I'm still chuckling

      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        Yeah boy! Soon the cat will be out of the bag, and everybody will be in on this secret!

        Since it crushes a mindset of a certain "SEO" (and I use that term loosely)
        business, the fear factor is peddled most often.

        Wrong hat...I'm still chuckling

        Paul
        Thing is though I for myself still consider it white hat. I'm not going to buy that its grey for me to do with my sites as I wish. Its pretty ridiculous after all. ABC news is owned by Disney last I checked. So what? A writer on Disney talking about the news of the day is going to link to CNN and give them a followed link but if he refers to ABC he must put a nofolllow on it????

        A) we all know including Google that does not happen and Disney is not going to be censored in the serps for it.
        B) Why shouldn't Disney be able to vouch for its own news coverage?

        Key though with that approach is that the sites must have some quality and for a very practical reason as well. If you put up a bunch of gibberish with links (as some do with "contextual home page" backlinks then its pretty easy to see that you are trying to manipulate pagerank should google come a looking but if the site is solid on its own and therefore worthy of being linked to theres not an algo in the world that can detect otherwise (Again if you govern yourself accordingly).
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  • Profile picture of the author visimedia
    do you think that currently your blog network is a network consisted of blogs with PR 0 sites? Do you think that will work?
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    • Profile picture of the author rvrabel2002
      Originally Posted by visimedia View Post

      do you think that currently your blog network is a network consisted of blogs with PR 0 sites? Do you think that will work?

      Its definitely a network of PR 0 sites for now, but the intention is to increase page rank of these sites with social bookmarking, BMR posts, blog commentin, etc.

      Im thinking long term for this strategy, maybe 6 - 12 months?
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  • Profile picture of the author Lyanna
    Why not? I am a writer and I have a lot of interests. I have different blogs and websites from way back uh... like 1992 or something! They are all cross-linked to hell and back because they are all mine and I always link to my own content. Why wouldn't I?

    From what I can tell, Google doesn't mind. I'm talking real content though not weird spammy stuff or spun articles.
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  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    All "Link Building" is artificial. No such thing as natural link building.
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  • Profile picture of the author DancingHamster
    Go for it, as long as you are providing value
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  • Profile picture of the author dmac3296
    Long term this stategy could work but you might want to think about purchasing some tweets to help signal the search engines of the content to get it indexed quicker. yes google's contract with twitter is up but social links still pass value with the current algorithm
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