Backlinking - Is it worth the hassle?

Is it really "artificial" link building if you provide quality information, and quality content in many places?

If your audience/market is using sites like Squidoo, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook, don't you owe it to them to provide useful information where they live and search?

There are two ways to accomplish your task. The first way is exactly what your are describing, creating junk and scattering it to the wind.

The second way is to provide quality, and excellent information which guides people to your sites.

Is it a crappy blog if yourself, or another expert from your staff creates a blog and shares useful information for the niche?

Are articles written with the intent of giving good information, which then link back to your site not valuable?

I'd agree, you do see many people creating links for the sake of links. Then there are market leaders who create a web of quality, and trust.

I'm guessing I already know which direction you want to follow.

But to answer your primary question. Is backlinking worth the hassle? Of course, it is. The internet is vast, search engines algorithms are tougher, and only by getting your site to the top do you offer your superior quality to your market.

I think it depends on how "good" your traffic is. For instance, I have a regional site that is #1 for a search like businesstype cityname, state, so I don't need to do any backlinking - it's hard to improve on that, and I know I'll never compete for just the business name. If you have maximized what you can do, backlinking isn't worth it.

If you're under the top 5 for your money kws, you should probably start a backlinking campaign. It can't hurt.

Well Im not sure the impact that Backlinks have, but I stick with the methods I use and I usually get to the top of Google for medium comp. keywords in about a month... I dont take that much time so its not really a hassle...

I would just do it whenever you want a boost or something...

I'd really like to know opinions about this.

It seems that Internet Marketing is VERY time consuming and back linking is one of the MOST time consuming of all.

Considering that not all links are worth the same, it is a shame that many hours of work could be in vain by link building if they are poor quality.

I sure wish I could find ways to speed this up somehow.

I find it quite demoralising actually and it is the one thing about Internet Marketing that I find really upsetting. It is no exaggeration to say that I feel sick in my stomach when I think about link building and the mind-numbing work involved.

Is it worth the hassle? I really don't know.

I'm another one that needs a pep talk about this subject. If indeed it is worth the hassle.

Gulp. Please help.........

Joe

No. Google would much prefer that you spend your money on PPC (Adwords) with them instead of trying to get links.

An interesting point bgmacaw.

Are you suggesting that this is a viable option, or could be, if someone can't be bothered with link building?

Or are you saying we should linkbuild to avoid having to go ppc?

Please clarify as you seem knowledgeable in this field :-)

Thanks,

Joe

How can it be artificial links when you go to forums, web 2.0 sites, and similar sites every day and join in a discussion or post useful information.. ??

For one thing there is way more than just google, I do not know why everyone relates everything to google. They certainly are not the only search engine and million upon millions use many other websites to find things they desire.

Link building is not a waste of time if you wish to build a solid business because the only way you are going to build a solid business is by building links. If someone else does it or you do it, either way it still must be done. Unless of course you have thousands upon thousands to put into media buys, ppc adverts, commercials, and etc ..

I guess what it boils down to is what is best for your business and what your budget is. Nobody can really answer your question for you because there are so many factors involved that others do not know, such as budget and time..

I will say this though ... It certainly does not hurt you to have 200, 500, or even 1,000 links built every day..

James

James,

Is there a "magic" way to speed up the process of getting links?

I also find it so time consuming. Getting hundreds a day - Wow!

How do you do that?

Can you point me in the right direction?

Cheers,

Michael

There's automated tools for everything, it's finding the one that works the best and gives you the most options which is a challenge to find.

The day I have enough money, any method of building backlinks is being outsourced to a programmer to make an All-in-one program for me, so I can add as many sites as needed and as many functions I like.

Meanwhile I test other peoples software and pickup ideas from them Then I could either keep the product to myself, or I could sell it for one time fees or monthly fees

Short answer
Q1: Yes - Q2: Depends

Long answer
I am almost in the same situation you are. The main site I work on (company site, b2b services) is aged and has gained authority -never built a backlink for it in 9 years and it always sat #1 in google for all the money making keyword.

Last year competitors began link building and they were able to grow. And in some cases they were able to outrank ours even with paper thin content pages.

So yes, backlinks do matter a lot.

You will need to build backlinks for new sites, and keep an eye on your authority site just in case someone attempts an hostile takeover of your #1 spots (or do pre-emptive link building for it anyway).

I felt the same as you feel regarding "gaming" google. On the other hand the competitors have paid links, links from unrelevant chinese directories... thousands of crap links built every day.

So it was really not a matter of gaming the search engines, but to prevent others from doing so.

Think of linkbuilding as a form of advertising campaign. Do ethical link building -that's to say no paid links, no spam, no fake profiles.

Tweeting, getting real facebook fans, contacting old partners and having a few case studies published on their sites... A few quality backlinks matter more than a thousand crap ones.

Backlinking is the soul of the search engines, without backlinks you are losing a lot of potential traffic from the search engines, no matter if your site was made 3 years ago or yesterday.

I'm going to try a different persepctive. Forget about SEO and backlinks and think business challenges.

No business sells anything without marketing, ever. Even if it's word of mouth, it's marketing. Word of mouth marketing takes relationships, time, money, etc. Advertising is another form. SEO as we call is another. internet marketing best defines SEO.

Internet Marketing is merely creating transparency and exposure, however we look at as backlinks. This is merely another site giving you word of mouth. To get that endorsement, you need to earn the endorsement, or earn the link.

Bottom line, a money site that needs to be rank needs to be marketed. You need to expose the website. Therefore, yes, absolutly, links are critical to most online marketing campaign.

Adding the occasional link to your site when it's relevant is acceptable. When you are adding lots of links to your site as a means to draw traffic or boost SE rankings is artificial link building and spamming.

What Terry Kyle is doing is bringing his sites up to the same level as yours except he's not waiting years for the backlinks to come naturally - he is speeding up the process and creating those backlinks himself.

Would your sites be doing as well without all of their backlinks? If your answer is 'no' then you've answered your own question.

In this day and age it's going to be difficult to get a new site off the ground and noticed without backlink building in one form or another.

Use automated tools.

The reason why this strategy is not promoted more, is that many guys earn their money by selling SEO tips to newbs without money. Having an automated article submitter, feed submitter, directory submitter, maybe even Web 2.0 submitter, will cut back on your time spent. And it works fast. Then supplement with some profile links from Terry, Angela etc.

Or pay someone to do it. It pays off. I've had awesome results with massive article submission campaigns.

Alright, my turn to chip in.

There is alot of BS when it comes to SEO and link building. And one of the big ones, apart from article spinning being rubbish, is that you cannot add more than say 30 or so back-links in any given single (don't quote me on that specific number) because 'it wont look natural' is another one of these easily disproved lies.

For any newbes here, people who make these kinds of claims usually either offer a service in relation to link building or SEO in some way, or a just have no idea what they are talking about, or had a site which got de-indexed because they were doing something they shouldn't have been.

Such as using a link farm etc.

example:

Exrat runs a blog in a particular niche I wish to enter, now he has the top spot in the listings. According to the 'natural' link building thumpers if he adds over x amount of links in a day, he will be sand-boxed and effectively de-indexed.

Now I am a jerk and want to get him sandboxed so according to the thumpers, all I have to do is use a comment spamming program to send out thousands of links in a day and Google will slap him out of existance.

Can you not see the OBVIOUS FLAW with this 'natural' link building belief?

If this was true, you could easily eliminate your competitors by spamming their links. black hatters waste their time trying but rarely succeed.

These people also seem to forget that Google is not able to monitor each and every single website in real time 24/7. Meaning by the time it does crawl these sites they wont be 1 after the other resulting in the appearance of each of these links days or possibly weeks after they have been added.

If you were possibly offended by my use of the term "thumper," subtlety and beating about the bush are not strong suits of mine, I am very blunt at times.


Chris


P.S. James, I am still waiting for my review copy of your myth busting WSO

Backlinking can bring a huge return if done in conjunction with a well written website and some quality keyword research. Ignore that at your peril.

Those methods can still work-however for some of us, creating great content isn't good enough without being able to advertise it. Link building helps my content get noticed and I don't feel the need to apologize for that

I disagree that backlinking requires any real effort. I spend about an hour a day building backlinks. It is just part of my business routine.

For me backlinking is an effective way to market your site but it somehow eats a lot of time, specially if you don't have any tools in doing this... Backlinking is best if you need traffic for targeted niche...

I would begin by determining your ranking on Google, MSN, Yahoo for the keywords you have decided are a priority.

Some, you are bound to already rank highly on and backlinking (as a strategy to improve SERP) won't be as high a priority - others you may be way down the list in terms of your desired position for that keyword phrase. If that is the case, then check and see how many backlinks you have and the competitive position of the top 10 pages above you - you may find that backlinks are where you are weak or it may be something else such as keywords in the domain name, longer domain life, etc...

The first step is to know the important keywords that get you ROI

Next, know where you rank with respect to those keywords

Third, know what your competitors have that you don't

Then - that will tell you if backlinks are a legit way you can raise your position - then they can be VERY worth the effort.

Jeff

My first journey into IM all started with back linking was so proud getting my blog to PR 5, then I just let it slip, as for me it wasn't worth the hassle. But I do have a friend who buys and sells links and generates links for his website just from back links and makes a full time living from it. So personally I do think back links are still profitable.

But for me, I'll leave it for somebody else to grind.

Wow, everyone.

Thanks for all your answers.

It looks like we will have to get some back linking done for our newer sites. Ah well, such is life :-)

Does anyone have any more auto or semi-auto software solutions which might help us speed up the back linking process a little?

Kind regards,

Sonny

if you're committed to trying to dominate your niche for the long haul, you better be cozy with the search engines with serious backlinking going on. Quantity of links and more important quality link partners is critical. If you don't want to do it, automate or outsource ... take your pick

Building QUALITY backlinks are worth the effort(if you do it yourself) and worth the $$$ (if you outsource it). After all, Quality Content + Good on page SEO + Quality backlinks will be the determining factors for your sites to rank really well for a longer period of time.

Hi Sonny. I haven't read the rest of this thread yet but wanted to commend you on the authority sites you previously built and to say that yeah...it does seem like it has become a link building rat race.

I am no expert when it comes to ranking highly. You seem to have much more experience than I do so take what I say with a grain of salt but I would say this in response to your post.

On page SEO is a given that should be done with no question. Appropriate titles, navigation, interlinking with keyword anchored text links among site pages, keyword focused page content, etc.. I think we can all agree that on page SEO should be done by everyone and as perfectly so as it can be.

That leaves off page SEO factors and this is where we come to a divergence on what should be done. Some say just keep adding valuable content pages and that the backlinks will come naturally (this tends to be Google's position overall). Others, most on this forum, would say we should be more proactive and go out there and pursue backlinks.

I tend to think pursuing backlinks is a good thing alongside of adding more content. But how we pursue backlinks is the issue, at least for me.

Do we create bot nets of feeder sites to give ourselves link juice? Do we use software to create thousands of fake blogs? Do we spin articles we write, again using software, to create thousands of "unique" articles to fool the search engines into thinking our sites are more popular than they really are?

Do we use other such techniques to deceive and connive and push and prod our way to the top of the rankings? Whatever and however we must do it?

May I venture to suggest that in view of your success so far that you NOT engage in such tactics much if at all.

It is one thing for me as a beginning internet marketer to consider using such tactics which I generally find distasteful but it is quite another for you who have successful web sites and have some reputation built up to then start resorting to these somewhat if not entirely questionable methods to promote future sites.

I say do what you have done. Repeat your past successes.

I mean do what you can to build backlinks too. But do it in a way that you can be proud of. Do what makes sense.

Is pushing out thousands of spinned articles something that sounds like it might be worth doing? I mean is that really the way to market our sites these days? I daresay that such is not a viable long term strategy. It's nothing short of spam. It may succeed for a while but it won't last. Nobody but the spammers like spam. It will catch up to them at some point.

Don't resort to spamming techniques to avoid the need to put in the work to build quality sites.

Does building hundreds of near valueless blogs with scraped content as feeders of link juice sound like something that someone with any kind of integrity would do? If not...don't do it. If you see yourself as operating with integrity I mean.

I don't have all the answers. I am still looking and studying and trying to figure out ways to improve my site rankings without having to resort to such techniques.

Article marketing does show some promise (as much as I have been against it in the past). I've even been on Google Webmaster Help forum discussing whether such is a violation of Google TOS. It's been an interesting discussion but the judgment is that it is not. So that is one way that one can use to promote a site in an ethical manner. There are others.

I guess what I am saying Sonny is that you are on a forum where a great deal of the not so ethical manner of pushing our web sites is promoted (at least that is how it seems like to me). I like hanging out here to get ideas and also because the discussions can be good. But...I would advise you to be careful about implementing the things you hear here. It's a great big internet world out there and this forum and the techniques promoted here are not the end all and be all of how to do internet marketing.

In the end we have to do what we feel comfortable doing and what our conscience tells us is good to do. There are risks to doing things that are outside acceptable norms at least by Google. It's up to you whether or not those risks are worth it. But given your past success I would look to your experience more than anything else to help you decide how best to promote your sites in the future. Not to the input you might get on this or any other forum.

The internet has changed a lot in the past few years. It will undoubtedly change a lot in the future. But, certain things stay the same. Good content, great on page SEO are a given. Add some judicious backlinking and perhaps even some conservative interlinking between your sites and you should continue to do just fine.

Just my two cents Sonny.

Carlos

Building backlinks is not waste of time. Google and other search engines considers the number of quality backlinks when assigning search engine ranking. So start building backlinks.

The best way to build back links is to get an automatic software to do the work for you. I have personally put three websites in number one position for keywords with over 50 million competition. And over 3 million searches per month. I suggest you look up brute force linking loophole software.

Its never too late to start backlinking. And you can always outsource it.