Create a blog just for backlinks?

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The #1 site for one of my main keyword phrases is currently a hubpages article. So I was going through it's backlinks, and found that they had created a blog site with numerous short posts that included links to all of their different niche websites and article directory articles. It didn't look like an autoblog, because it only included about 25 posts all with apparently self-serving links. Somehow it's PR2 with very little content.

This seems too simple, and something that Google will eventually sniff out and penalize for? What if the blog site is on a completely different web host from the other sites?

It must be beneficial, as the hubpages article only has 3 total backlinks, 1 from their self-serving blog, 1 from ezinearticles, and 1 from a larger autoblog. It's not a very competitive keyword phrase, but it still got it to #1.

What is this called and does it work in the long haul?
#search engine optimization #backlinks #blog #create
  • You know, the number of backlinks isn't necessarily what determines where it lays in the search results. It's mostly about three things: quality of inbound links, whether or not your website has authority, and sometimes the popularity of the keyword vs. possible served pages.

    I'd wager that Hubpages wins the pie mostly because of it's authority, so if you want to outrank them you're going to have to get quality links. In other words, being linked to from a website with a decent PR in the body of a piece of content. The best route to go about doing that is guest blogging for someone, or creating content in manner that social bookmarking communities want to see it.
    • [1] reply
    • You're right - Hubpages has incredible authority, but what I'm trying to determine, is whether or not I should start up my own blog site and fill it with simple posts for backlinks to all my sites. I searched the forums for discussions about self-serving backlink blogs, but couldn't find anything, but I don't know exactly what term I should be using. Seems like a mini link farm?
      • [1] reply
  • Same here. I registered to numerous free blog sites and then create a post while pointing back links to my my money site. It 's working fine to one of my site.
  • There's actually a plugin that will do this for you automatically It's called wp syndicator.

    It automatically posts a snippet of each of your posts to various web 2.0 properties that you have configured ahead of time. Instant backlinks to every single article you post.

    Works great, especially if you take the time to promote the web 2.0 sites.

    Lee
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Heard of wp syndicator before...
      have no experiences with it yet.
      does it work great? need more reviews!
    • Thank you, I've just checked it out and it looks pretty good. As I have over 30 blogs it should be a massive time saver. It's always worth wasting some time on here every day
      • [1] reply
  • It's more of a function of the level of trust and the relevancy of the anchor text that counts...
  • I don't mean to bash anybody here, because I do some of the stuff we're talking about in this thread, but a quick question:

    Wouldn't it be better business practice and maybe even more ethical if instead of creating artificial sites for the purpose of backlinking to a "money site", we actual go out and create content or otherwise legitimately obtain links from existing authority sites? A more organic approach?

    I think it's the argument of "What are you adding to the web? A signal (actual clear content), or just noise (spam, garbage, minimally useful stuff)?". Dan Thies talks a lot about that distinction.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Ryan, you led right into what I wanted to say...

      "Creating a blog just for backlinks" NO

      "Creating a network of blogs and other web properties to promote and spread worthwhile content" YES

      Aggregating good content is a value added service. As more and more digital sewage is pumped onto the net, sorting the good stuff out is more and more valuable.

      If you study your radio theory, one way to improve the signal-to-noise ratio is to filter out the noise. The other is to pump up the strength of the signal. Self-syndicating good content to various web properties is one way of doing both.

      Your signal is stronger, because it's available in more places. Some of those places will garner their own audience, counting on your actions as a filter.

      The backlinks are yet another signal booster...
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • I can see the value in syndicating your articles and posts, if you have quality content. But what is the difference between syndicating to an account on a Blogger or tumblr blog, and setting up your own domain simply for rehashing content and providing links to all of your "money sites"?

    They always to have names like thingsithinkabout.com or johndoeconversations.com. so they can contain random posts and articles. My original post was to ask about the viability of these types of sites.
    • [1] reply
    • The blogger, tumblr, weebly etc.... blogs already have some "authority" because they are on trusted platforms. Kind of like how people submit to ezinearticles because it already has some weight with the search engines.

      Having said that, It is also a good practice to create your own properties (that you have on your domains and hosting) that also have authority which you can use for links. The problem is that it takes quite a while to build up a domain that has this authority so piggy backing off the authority of the web 2.0 properies is common practice. If you are really thinking about the future though, you will want to start your own properties that you can build up to use for links as well.

      This is good to do too. Have you tried doing it though? It's not really that easy to find existing authority sites that want your content unless you are a super duper writer. And then when you do, they want an original unique article so you are only getting 1 place to post your article to. Most people don't see the bang for the buck here (I'm not saying it isn't there, just that most people don't see it).

      Lee
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • I created a blog so as to rank for the same terms and dominate the results, and it is working pretty well for me so far.
  • I'd like to learn more about how to do this, and especially what not to do when setting up a blog site like this. I'd like to steer clear of looking like a link farm and having Google penalize or de-list my sites. I've heard of IM'ers getting all of their sites delisted by Google for building link farms using auto content.

    So far I see:

    1 - Set up new domain with catchy title like yippeezippeetalk.com
    2 - Write a short post each day, include 1 backlink to a niche site of mine
    3 - Promote yippeezippeetalk with backlinks through articles, directories, social bookmarking, etc

    That seems way too simple to do any good - what am I missing?
  • One of my main tactics is to create an EDU blog.
    I do all I can to increase the authority of that EDU blog....and then I remove all it's "extra" links and provide myself a very powerful high PR low OBL do-follow link...which packs plenty of punch!
    • [1] reply
    • Maybe a dumb question, but is there a way that anyone can do this?
  • IMO benefits to created our own 'blog domain' is that this blog will also had chance to be monetized as well, some paid reviews, affiliate maybe? other than just article submission and backlink-ing
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    Create a blog just for backlinks?

    The #1 site for one of my main keyword phrases is currently a hubpages article. So I was going through it's backlinks, and found that they had created a blog site with numerous short posts that included links to all of their different niche websites and article directory articles. It didn't look like an autoblog, because it only included about 25 posts all with apparently self-serving links. Somehow it's PR2 with very little content. This seems too simple, and something that Google will eventually sniff out and penalize for? What if the blog site is on a completely different web host from the other sites?