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BACKLINKS Can Be HARMFUL To Your SEO STRATEGIES

by LOWESTCOSTWIRELESS
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Interesting,

As with most, I use to waste tons of time taking the advice of most SEO experts and backlinks were what most were preaching. With the ever changing zoo that Google keeps attacking us with, I got curious and dumped my backlinks, years worth of work, and here is the shock.

I have been on top of organic search results on Google every since for my keywords without any backlinks. So this got me thinking, can backlinks now be hurting you search results? After all, you cannot control backlinks, so how would you know if one such link was actually pulling your site down from search results?

Has anyone else seen success without using backlinks, and if so, when did you discover the same as I have, MOST BACKLINKS SUCK. lol

Success to all,
#backlinks #harmful #seo #strategies
  • Profile picture of the author NSA
    Hi LOWESTCOSTWIRELESS,

    I also experienced drop in rankings after building good old "standard backlinks". I am talking about the kind of backlinks you can build with tools like senukex, ultimate demon, bookmarking demon, gsa, scrapebox, magic submitter and so on.

    I believe that from 2012+ (knowledge graph replacing PageRank algorithm) the google guys are on a silent rush against people like SEOs which are "wasting" the time of google bot crawling the web.

    It seems that they have an index of "non moderated sites" and open source scripts like pligg, scuttle, article directories and such.

    I believe they silently penalize sites which achieve backlinks from such sources. Obviously you can see rankings drop. E.g. moving from page one to position 11, page 2 (seems like a "ban from page 1" to me).

    Nowadays this seems to happen even when you build only a dozen of those in short time and building the rest on tier 2 and 3 (link pyramids or wheels).

    Better staying away from such bad targeted link sources and methods. Maybe better invest some time to exploit the new core system with the knowledge graph at heart.

    I am interested to research lot more into this new environment. Think the G guys have learned a lot from past, now trying to keep all these new ranking factors as private and secretive as possible.

    I would love to be part of a research team, sharing experience and grow strong again in this new era. If some Warriors are building such team, please invite me also.

    All for one and one for all
    Signature

    If you want real authority backlinks from sites like Wikipedia.org, this is my way to go: www.wikilink.biz

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  • Profile picture of the author Flyingpig7
    I'm curious do you mean that you're staying up the search rankings because of your on-page seo
    and off-page seo ? But leaving out the deliberate backlink outreach activity.
    You must be doing some sort of pr activity? writing articles, commenting etc...

    To answer your question about bad links you can check them out using free services like AHREFS for those inbound links to your site.

    Yes I too am curious if anyone else has noticed changes when they have stopped doing something that is thecurrent received wisdom.
    Signature

    Have a great day

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  • Profile picture of the author NSA
    @Flyingpig7:

    If you use ahrefs to examine your links, after which pattern or metrics you are going to identify these links that actually will hurt rankings?

    Thanks & Greetings
    Signature

    If you want real authority backlinks from sites like Wikipedia.org, this is my way to go: www.wikilink.biz

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    • Profile picture of the author Chaudhary Daniyal
      No offense, but this is a pretty stupid post.

      In your case, you might be ranking for noncompetitive keywords. It's not rare to see rankings without link building in such cases.

      You can never ignore backlinks when you dive into more competitive niches.


      Originally Posted by LOWESTCOSTWIRELESS View Post

      So this got me thinking, can backlinks now be hurting you search results? After all, you cannot control backlinks, so how would you know if one such link was actually pulling your site down from search results?
      Here's the thing, If you have an authority site, then you can't control the links you'll be getting. However, these are going to be the best kind of links according to Google's guidelines.

      If you're talking about niche sites, then you can most definitely control your links.. unless your competition blasts you with spam.
      I would never build links which I can not take down in future.. that's just stupid SEO.

      Originally Posted by NSA View Post

      Hi LOWESTCOSTWIRELESS,

      I also experienced drop in rankings after building good old "standard backlinks". I am talking about the kind of backlinks you can build with tools like senukex, ultimate demon, bookmarking demon, gsa, scrapebox, magic submitter and so on.
      The problem is not the Software - It's in the way people use them

      When you create Tier 1 links with these softwares, they just create a Web 2.0 property and publish a spun piece of content. These Web 2.0's are thin sites with a single post linking out your niche site..

      Personally, It's a drag, but I manually create my Web 2.0. I make sure each site has important pages like about me, privacy policy etc. I also schedule a couple of article weeks apart.

      I then use softwares to build tier 2 links.


      Originally Posted by NSA View Post

      @Flyingpig7:

      If you use ahrefs to examine your links, after which pattern or metrics you are going to identify these links that actually will hurt rankings?

      Thanks & Greetings
      When you start seeing links with weird/spammy anchor texts from weird/spammy domains.
      Signature

      Sig in the making ...

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  • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
    Originally Posted by LOWESTCOSTWIRELESS View Post

    Interesting,

    As with most, I use to waste tons of time taking the advice of most SEO experts and backlinks were what most were preaching. With the ever changing zoo that Google keeps attacking us with, I got curious and dumped my backlinks, years worth of work, and here is the shock.

    I have been on top of organic search results on Google every since for my keywords without any backlinks. So this got me thinking, can backlinks now be hurting you search results? After all, you cannot control backlinks, so how would you know if one such link was actually pulling your site down from search results?

    Has anyone else seen success without using backlinks, and if so, when did you discover the same as I have, MOST BACKLINKS SUCK. lol

    Success to all,
    I love it how when someone states backlinks suck or similar and they are ranking without any backlinks they never provide proof like I'm ranking for a SERP like:

    FREE INSTANT PASSIVE INCOME SYSTEM

    That's the anchor text of the OP's sig link.

    I don't see the OP's site anywhere in Google.

    So, how much traffic are you generating a month without backlinks, what's your highest traffic SERP?

    David
    Signature
    Freelance SEO Consultant
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Power
    Your target keyword is probably a keyword that gets less than a 100 searches per month. If it is a competitive keyword, plug your site into ahrefs.com. You have backlinks - you just don't know you do. It is not possible to rank for anything competitive/profitable without backlinks.
    Signature
    ONE HOUR INDEXING - STOP WASTING MONEY ON LINKS GOOGLE NEVER FINDS
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      I can't muster much of a response anymore. I am just awaiting the thread where someone says having your keywords anywhere on a page is harmful to your ranking for those terms. That and Two rolleye salutes

      Signature

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      • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        I can't muster much of a response anymore. I am just awaiting the thread where someone says having your keywords anywhere on a page is harmful to your ranking for those terms. That and Two rolleye salutes
        It's not far off that now with the anti-SEO brigade believing any optimization is bad!

        We have so called SEO experts advising not using keywords in anchor text, others promoting nofollow links as important!

        David
        Signature
        Freelance SEO Consultant
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