Yes thats natural - writers naturally get bylines and links on many publications. The idea is that you supply content - something worthwhile to the web so you earn those links. Its natural because thats how the sites are meant to operate.

fskcramer if you provided content to a few of the higher PR sites then you would not be labeled as a spammer. There are plenty of sites that will be happy with your links if you provide some participation


Come on Tom. Thats ridiculous. There are many businesses that can suffer from being considered spammers. Your situation is not representative.

LOL. Just saw your sig. Whats that all about?

I think the issue is that person did have better things to do than clean the spam off their site non stop.

There's a saying I've heard:
"If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem."

Being listed on that site is no harm no foul.

As already stated, I don't know what natural link building means. I'm still waiting to hear that one out ;-) The only truly natural way is to get others to link to you without any sort of arrangement with them (as then it really be a "vote" for your site). That can certainly be done, but it generally requires lots and lots of $$$, time or a large workforce. If you have one or more of those, then good luck.

Writing articles, or web 2.0 blogging, with links back to your sites is not natural link building. It never was and it never will be, despite what all of the article marketers try to sell you.

In any event, you can rank well with unnatural linking as has been shown time and time again.

Google has blog posts about a lot of things (actually, its matt cutts, not Google per se). Matt cutts wouldn't be a fan of 99.9% if the backlink building discussed around here. That doesn't mean that it doesn't work.

As a VB forum owner myself, leave links in the profiles all you want. Start spamming posts intrusively and i'll get your arse.

You can try and dress it up anyway you like. If you are creating the profile for the purposes of getting a backlink to the site, then its spam (why do you think the OP's IP address turned up on a forum spam database?).

If you add a link in your profile or signature and join the community to be a member of the community and contribute to the community, then that is different.

Its all about intentions - think what you can give to the community and NOT what can you get from the community.

So if I join your community with the intention of hanging out and chatting with people in it - and find out - you're a tool and leave - then what?

Whats the benefit to the forum community of having "profile" links - whether from a longstanding member with 1000 posts or a newb?

Me and tons of the Warriors are using it with great success, who cares if your site or email is listed in the stopforumspam.com? Until the forum platforum integrate their system into those black list sites, they are just there to "scare" you, don't give any attention to it.

The owner can report all they want, everyday they will still receive tons of non active profile creation. If the forum owner don't want people to put a link there, easy - Just set those links to nofollow or disable the public profile page.

Let me put it this way - Profile links in some perspective are not ethical, they work pretty well but not ethical in someway.

As long as Google still counting those links, and they help to push the ranking up, people will continue to find more profile sites and get a link from it.

One thing for sure, as a webmaster, we shouldn't 100% rely on profile links, and I'm serious about this. Google will one day force to ignore them, or by setting up more filters... The the 1st phrase of filters already implemented.

Many profile sites without direct link from the homepage is now disregards by Google, but we still can work around it by boosting more backlinks to those Profile links.

Profile links is "Grey Hat" to me, I'll always put some white hat strategy to my site, diversify those links and minimize the risk.

Hey Tom, I think you should starts to put some white hat strategy in place, just in case one day Google crack down those profile links - effectively!

I agree with you that most sites today are not natural - almost 95% of those sites are getting links somewhere and sometime not natural.

I believe there are still pure white hat sites that get links - naturally. Let me share some thoughts here:

You still can get links naturally with:

1. Link Bait Page - Promote your page in the forum and blogs that provide free report, tools, script, software or even comic. Anything that will attract people to link to it!

2. Extremely valuable content - Like Terry Kyle Experiment here, or some news breaking event that spread worthy.

Ok, here's the thing - Pure white hat strategy takes time, and a lot of time to see the serious traffic!

If you are doing Internet marketing, niche marketing or selling your own stuff online, using this method can be very time consuming ...

Try some highly competitive keywords - Golf, Dog Training, Weight Loss, Internet Marketing, Make Money Online... Do you really think by just utilizing white hat method, your site would rank well for those terms????



White hat sites relied on tons of long tail keywords and moderate competitive keywords to bring traffic, no way they are getting traffic from high competition keywords.

I'm not surprise until today Google still can't effectively filter all spams from their network, and I think Google can't do anything about it. When people find that "spamming" the search engine still work, and work rather well, the number will only be growing! and Google will force to implement more and more filters...



People are taught that "white hat" is the long term strategy, and the best way to go about it... I'm sorry to say this - 100% WRONG!

I saw many white hat sites' traffic dropped when Google updated their Algorithm! Talk about the white hat for long term... While many "Grey Hat" sites still growing strong.

Certainly, there are many "Grey Hat" sites that are dead or dropped from SERP entirely, but this does affect a lot of white hat sites in the process!

IMHO, only way to stay long term - cover your tracks. Many advance SEO guys plan their strategy and cover their tracks almost nearly impossible for Google to get them without killing innocent sites!

A strong SEO strategy to cover your tracks is the most important thing - even if your site is "white" hat.



I think the legal department should redefine this terms, it seems like spamming shouldn't be just email, but how should you define "spam"?

You enable the site's profile for public view, you enable the links and dofollow, clearly you are inviting people to join and put links there. It is very hard to determine legitimate users and so call "spammer" (which is no clear definition yet), until after a period of time (a year or so), these members are consider dormant - inactive, and you can do a housekeeping to remove them.

Until you can define spam - there is no way you can determine for sure who is "spammer" and who isn't.

BTW, how do you get links? Are you yourself is as white as you should be? Did you spam the search engine for links?



Are you sure you promote your sites using pure white hat method? Like guess blog posting, valuable blog comments, forum marketing, video marketing and social media marketing?


I agree. The easiest way - nofollow all those links! The member still get to access those profiles and visit other member's site, but you'll receive a lot less spams!

The best way to counter non-active members - the so call spammer, is to disable your public view, that's the most effective way.

Kok Choon

Excellent post.