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backlinking related questions

by monere
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,

1) has anyone ranked a webpage using only blog comments and forum profiles (the usual backlinks that SEOs call "garbage links" and which everyone is afraid to point directly at their website) by pointing them directly at their website?

Could it be that all the backlinks coming from blog comments and forum profiles are deemed as spam only because they're easy to get/automate? Is there any proof that pointing only this type of backlinks to a new website will "kill" the website? I guess I could run this test myself but since I don't have the resources or the will to do it, I am asking around instead , hoping that others have tested this post-penguin

Cause if these backlinks are truly seen as spam, then I suppose that all the websites (blogs and forums) that (willingly or not) provide these backlinks could be seen as spam sites, too. And not rank anywhere in big G for any term, just because of this reason alone...

2) has anyone (preferably users with real, aged accounts on high authority websites - PR5+, like stumbleupon, reddit, digg, etc. - that they use daily) willingly and knowingly bookmarked pages with spun, non-readable content and had their accounts terminated for this reason?

Does anyone on these giant bookmarkers actually keep track on what users with authority (aged, and with PR) accounts use their accounts for?

I don't know if this question is relevant or not to anything, but I felt like asking it anyway

3) what types of backlinks do you people point directly to your websites and which types you purposely avoid using and why?

4) does anyone have proof that blog comments and forum profiles (used so much on fiverr for backlink pyramids) hurt a website?

How does google determine that a PR4 forum profile is spam and a PR N/A squidoo lens for example is legit? Does this only have to do with domain authority? And if this is true, how come then, there really are forums with PR5+ and yet, the backlinks coming from them (through forum profiles) are considered spam links? What happens to the domain's authority in this case?

I might have more questions than these, but right now my head is spinning from all the info I'm reading in the WF. Everyone has their own opinion of what a good link and what a bad link is. I don't know what to believe anymore and which SEO service to go with...

Do I really need all those backlinks on high PR pages, all those expensive DMOZ yahoo, and business.com directory submissions, hundreds and hundreds of blog and web2.0 accounts, all those 500-1000 drip fed social bookmarks using aged accounts, and etc etc in order to rank a small, 5 page website at number 1 in google, for some lousy 3 keyword phrases, each with a measly 500 exact match, monthly searches volume? Or a simple link pyramid comprised of blog comments and forum profiles will do it? Questions, questions, questions ....

Anyway, I'll end this here cause my head is spinning hard from so much SEO stuff.
I just hope to find some simple and honest answers from people who tested all these things in the Penguin era

Cheers!
#backlinking #backlinks #bookmarks #pyramid #questions #related #spam
  • Profile picture of the author TheContentAuthority
    Monere,

    1) It is unlikely that you will increase your PageRank by leaving links in blog comments as these are often nofollow links. They are however still of value because people click them to travel to the website they lead to. Some websites blog comments are do follow but they are few and far between.
    Here is more about comment marketing as an inbound tactic,

    Comment Marketing as an Inbound Tactic - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz

    2) I don’t have a ton of experience with social book marking but I know that legitimate bookmarks (or at least those that appear as such) can be powerful signals for ranking.
    3) I’m not sure what most people actually do in terms of backlinks but what they should be doing is getting authoritative high PR websites to link to their content and they should get this to happen in the most natural way possible. Spammy links or links deliberately created by a webmaster (i.e. paid services or link exchanges) can cause a website to be penalized or even deindexed.
    4) I cannot provide you any proof as to why Google labels links from forum profiles spam.
    I can relate with your comment that all the information both on this forum and on the web can be dizzying sometimes. There also seems to be a lot of conflicting information. Whether or not you choose to listen to what others are saying, you should always keep one very basic thing in mind when it comes to SEO. Search engines are trying to balance the needs of three competing interests. Those of the user, those of their advertisers and their own interests. Google operates in a manner that protects the interests of these parties and they also are in business to deliver a good product. Users hate to find spammy websites that do not contain useful information. Focus on making your website popular in a natural way by having excellent content and building it in a way that makes it open for search but not designed for search.
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    • Profile picture of the author monere
      Originally Posted by TheContentAuthority View Post

      Monere,

      1) It is unlikely that you will increase your PageRank by leaving links in blog comments as these are often nofollow links. They are however still of value because people click them to travel to the website they lead to. Some websites blog comments are do follow but they are few and far between.
      Here is more about comment marketing as an inbound tactic,

      Comment Marketing as an Inbound Tactic - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz

      2) I don't have a ton of experience with social book marking but I know that legitimate bookmarks (or at least those that appear as such) can be powerful signals for ranking.
      3) I'm not sure what most people actually do in terms of backlinks but what they should be doing is getting authoritative high PR websites to link to their content and they should get this to happen in the most natural way possible. Spammy links or links deliberately created by a webmaster (i.e. paid services or link exchanges) can cause a website to be penalized or even deindexed.
      4) I cannot provide you any proof as to why Google labels links from forum profiles spam.
      I can relate with your comment that all the information both on this forum and on the web can be dizzying sometimes. There also seems to be a lot of conflicting information. Whether or not you choose to listen to what others are saying, you should always keep one very basic thing in mind when it comes to SEO. Search engines are trying to balance the needs of three competing interests. Those of the user, those of their advertisers and their own interests. Google operates in a manner that protects the interests of these parties and they also are in business to deliver a good product. Users hate to find spammy websites that do not contain useful information. Focus on making your website popular in a natural way by having excellent content and building it in a way that makes it open for search but not designed for search.
      1) I never went for PR anyway, I don't know why this craziness with hunting pages with high PR. If I can rank a page at number #1-3 in Google and still have PR0, I am fine with it. Besides, I just read yesterday on Flippa's blog a post in which they quoted someone who left Google's webspam team saying that relevancy is more important than PR, and this even more after Penguin. Now, since this statement comes from someone who worked for big G's webspam department you might tend to think it's true. Unless it's intentional lie....

      Plus, I have seen websites with low PR (0-2) ranking above authority websites (like Wikipedia and stuff) which even had PR5+ on the actual page that was ranking. That really makes me think that other factors are more important for ranking a web page in Google, and not the PR of a page. And ranking high in the SEs is the only thing a marketer is trying to achieve anyway, I presume.

      So, I don't really care about how much PR is passed to my pages so to justify going for high PR websites. If I can rank a website using only blog comments and forum profiles links, I'd do it, but I need to know first if these backlinks can hurt your website, should you go straight and ONLY for this type of backlinks.

      I still hope that someone tested this post-penguin and shares his results.

      2) Yeah, that's what I think too. But, what exactly determines if a social signal is crappy or of high quality, and what makes social signals weight more than others (in case they really weight)?

      3) "authoritative high PR websites" >>>>>>>>> how can one determine the authority of a website, especially for niches he has no clue about, hence they don't know who the authorities are in that specific niche? Is PR the best (probably it's not the only indicator), but is it the best indicator of a website's authority? Cause if it is, then I will start hunting for high PR backlinks, too

      Also, I've heard many times that we should not bother with SEO altogether (that's what MC says too, all the time) and to focus on content and etc., etc. That would really simplify the things for everyone since backlinking and SEO is a continuous and at times, boring task to carry, but, last year for example I wanted to go MC's route and not bother with backlinks and stuff and see what happens. So, for 2 month I only focused on posting good content on my website once a week, without bothering with getting backlinks, bookmarks or anything. The only thing I did was to post content and ping each post with the cbping optimizer (or whatever the plugin is called) and half year later, I still had zero traffic, zero money made from the website, zero rankings for the keywords I was targeting. Which makes me think that only focusing on your website and user experience is not enough to earn a living in internet marketing (or SE marketing, more precisely). And no, the website was not in a hard to rank niche. It was about "sectional couches" if I am not mistaken....

      So, what makes a website be seen as authority? PR, domain age, number of indexed pages, all of these? None? Something else?
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  • Profile picture of the author indiahelly
    Nice post.
    Thanks for sharing your information.
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  • Profile picture of the author K Mec
    Hi Monere,

    I have do not have big sites, I am having sites with 300 to 400 visitors in a month. They are very narrow sites and ranks with the power off exact domain name match.
    I have tried many costly softwares earlier but have not seen any remarkable difference.
    And the most boaring part of backlinking is, it is a continuous process so I am avoiding always.
    I have comment kahuna which I am using sometimes for blog commenting.
    One thing you can do is, you can convert your articles in to pdfs and share on doc sharing sites. This is less time consuming task and having good long term backlink also.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nelapsi
    If you don't know what the authority websites for a niche then you clearly have not done your research on the niche. Maybe this is just me but that is the example of idiotic moves. I don't write an article without knowing all of the other sources have related to a subject that way I can offer my users 1 stop reading. This way they learn over time, when they see my site link.. they only need to go that THAT site and not 3 or 4 others.

    If you are building a website for a niche and have no clue who and what are the authority I fail to see how you can succeed. I mean these are the exact same sites you will need to link as you grow and build yourself in the niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author thomco55
    Originally Posted by monere View Post

    4) does anyone have proof that blog comments and forum profiles (used so much on fiverr for backlink pyramids) hurt a website?
    !
    yes i am giving you a website for the blog comment. just try one time and comment on the blog. then get the great penguin panelty...........

    "http://pw0nd.com"
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    • Profile picture of the author monere
      Originally Posted by thomco55 View Post

      yes i am giving you a website for the blog comment. just try one time and comment on the blog. then get the great penguin panelty...........

      "http://pw0nd.com"
      The website is PR3. It's true that it doesn't look very attractive, even for automatic blog commenting but I don't understand. Why would a backlink from a PR3 website hurt my own site? Seriously!

      Unless all of the backlinks coming from this domain name are closely monitored and purposely flagged as low quality/spam/whatever by almighty G, then why would be a bad thing for me if someone from pw0nd.com referenced my website on their domain name? That's absurd!

      If somebody with a website considered to be garbage decides to reference a good website on their domain name, then this should only help the good website (even if for the only reason that it would receive a PR3 backlink). It's not like the good website links to the 'bad neighborhood" website, to be flagged as bad neighborhood, as well.

      As for me commenting on this website, I don't think I'll take any chances
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