What is the point of getting many backlinks from one site if Google counts only one link?

You just hit the nail on the head

And to post such questions in the SEO Forum, rather than in the Main Marketing Forum: Adsense / PPC / SEO Discussion Forum

(By the way, article directory backlinks are worthless: the Panda updates made sure of that).

So using this logic, if I put a dollar in my retirement fund can I just hope to have a million dollars when I retire? Of course not....

We must be active participants in anything we want to accomplish in life. Getting websites ranked is no different.

Fact is, links make a difference. I didn't create the rules of the game I just play the game as it was given to me.

To tell someone to just build great content and wait, and hope, is "honorable" advice, but it wouldn't be classified as "good" advice.

This is why I rarely visit the Main Marketing Forum anymore. Content is King is taken to extremes.

I don't understand how getting free targeted traffic is stupid. Why not add another highly targeted traffic source? What's wrong with a site gaining some traction?

So you haven't heard of Google penalizing sites that are completely white-hat? Google Says We Will Improve After Mistaken Unnatural Link / Google Issues False Unnatural Link Warning Again: DMOZ

Google isn't quite as good as getting rid of spam, from an SEO POV, as they want us to believe. Some blackhatters make a ridiculous amount of money.

More to the point, organic traffic is often the best source of traffic for many websites and niches. If done right with a private network, where's the risk too, particularly when it passes a manual review?

Anyway, I hope Mike Anthony, Yukon or Mike Friedman chime in, as they can make this point far better than I can.

That you "main forum" guys failed at link building doesn't mean that everyone fails.

The front page of Google has a much larger audience then anything else, and how do we get there? Right, by building solid links our selves, instead of waiting ages.

If you didn't fail at link building before you wouldn't be talking like this now.

There is no Google to blame as they are really not that hard at all to figure out.

Small example. Let's say I have a small business that sells fitness equipment, with big giants all around me crushing the market prices. My costs are extrodinairy high due to PPC that causes me to turn only a small profit or break-even at worse. This doesn't leave room to start importing containers myself from China, the market is swallowing me.

Now if there was SEO done on the site that drove a ton of free traffic I could save a lot of money and make the move to start importing containers instead of being dependent on dealerships, and thus increasing my profit margin and be a high competitor in the market.

Without the free organic traffic it would never be possible to keep up (unless there was a great starting capital available already of course) but you know how difficult it is for a starting company to get a business loan, that's why SEO/ link building is an essential part, especially for start up companies. They can't just sit there and waiting.

For IM guys the same applies really, sure there is no must and most have a job on the side but there have been numerous examples of people creating 300 page large sites and in the end they bring in like $15-30/month in advertisement revenue while with solid link building they could've made at least a 100 times more.

In short, not building links is leaving huge amounts of money on the table and building crappy links will get you nowhere. People should not say: "Quit building links" they should say "Quit using all those worthless softwares that create links".

I get the impression that the no link building comment is classifying all link building as spam, which it's not. I have plenty of same niche sites (not same sub-niche) that point links back to my own domain/pages because I asked for those links (SEO). Those same links also generate direct niche traffic.

My traffic also builds links back to my site/s, been happening for years without asking traffic for the link building help, which is what your describing instead of webmasters building links. There's no reason for a webmaster to not do SEO If they're looking for traffic on the SERPs.

SEO example...

I rank self hosted video thumbnail images that send traffic directly to my site/page (not Youtube, etc...), that's SEO & I guarantee the majority of webmasters don't have a clue how to optimize those video thumbnail images in Google SERPs. Thing is, I didn't sit on my hands waiting for traffic to show up, I went looking for traffic, I researched how to get my video images to show up in Google SERPs, I did the work to make it happen.

With the video thumbnail SEO example, that's all optimizing on my end. The video thumbnail image will attach to any internal page I want that's indexed in the SERPs. I do the thumbnail image SEO to help increase CTR in the SERPs, the images stand out on a search page full of text/links (draws attention).

My point is, those video thumbnail images would never show up in Google SERPs unless I did SEO.

The whole stop doing SEO is ridiculous for anyone that cares about ranking their page/s in the SERPs. I realize there's a lot of clowns doing crappy link building & calling it SEO but that's them, that's just the type of person they are, it's not the SEO everyone else is doing. It's just as easy to do quality SEO as it is to create quality content, do the research & make it happen.

I'm all for quality content & retaining traffic, it just makes everything so much easier.

It was.

I've been doing this for 10 years and 1 day, so I win. :rolleyes:

Regurgitating what others have said is exactly what you did.

You provided no evidence to prove it to be good advice.

Yes. Like the misinformation you are dumping here.


You seem to think that your way is the only way that works, and that your way fits every single business model.

It's utter garbage. If I opened a restaurant tomorrow, I'm not going to just sit around hoping people find it. I'm going to advertise it. I'm going to do everything I can do to get the word out about it.

If I had a dental office, I would not just hope and pray that Google ranks me higher than my competitors. People do not just link to a dental practice on their own. I don't care how good the content is. I would place the website in every business directory I can find. Yelp, Yellowpages, Manta, MerchantCircle, etc. I'm going to get in all of them.

People have the misconception that link building is all about building garbage links, which it is not.