Is back linking still effective?
-
I know after the Panda update it seems that back linking is a no no but its hard to believe that its not still effective. What about paid links? Are there any trusted sites out there? Thoughts?
-
You are not kidding, that post from pointblank is amazing, so many ideas I had no idea I could do thanks
-
It depends on your industry / niche - for example if you're in the web design industry, a site like sixrevisions or designfloat would be ideal.
To help you with your linkbuilding, here's a phenomenal post by Jon Cooper:
http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
That should give you more than enough tactics to start getting some decent, trusted links.
Hope that helps you Cesar
-
Here is another idea that I have come up with that I have not seen come up in discussion. In google chrome you can connect with your gmail account so all your bookmarks can be across all your computers. Any thought on google reading these bookmarks as well and a positive to your site. I have a "bookmark us" on my site for some time and after looking at that I started to wonder if google would be using that as well.
-
What are some of these trusted back linking sites?
-
Thanks John.
-
Thanks Nicola, glad I could help : )
It is scary to avoid using anchor text links - but bear in mind you can always include your keyphrase around a brand name link, I think there's some merit to this as Google will use surrounding text in the absence of anchor text.
-
Now that you have explained it in more detail I would say I agree with you. I'm currently working on a site and I am getting some links with specific anchor text such as [portrait photographer] or even [London Portrait Photographer] as I don't think that is unreasonable or out of the ordinary from what a "normal" person would do, I'm also getting some links with solely their brand name: probably 50:50
But most of the links my client already has are of their brand name (which makes my job a little more complicated as the brand name doesn't say what they do as a business, neither does their domain name) so if I couldn't use ANY anchor text I would be nervous.
But your explanation and reasoning seems sound to me! thumbs up
-
Hey Nicola,
For me it's about keeping the backlink profile looking natural - if your backlink profile is made up of more than 50% direct match anchor text (as in your target keyphrase) and it matches your title and H1, I would imagine you'd see an over-optimisation penalty. I think Google is getting much smarter at figuring out what links are there to manipulate rankings, and direct match anchor text links are a pretty strong signal of that. Sure they help you rank in the short term, but over do it and you'll almost certainly be punished for it. I don't think people ever (or very rarely) use your target keyphrase anchor text naturally, they're far more likely to use your brand name. So by using your brand name for links, you're still increasing your overall domain authority and gaining the benefit of strong links, whilst at the same time keeping your backlink profile looking natural and strengthening your site against future updates.
Not only this, but it's been fairly well established that Google prefers to rank brands, and brand name links are a strong brand signal, along with high quality content and robust about us and contact pages.
We only use brand name links for our client along with high quality on-site content and well optimised sites, and we've got them ranking for some exceptionally competitive keyphrases. Whereas I know lots of other SEO's who use lots of direct match anchor text links and while they were ranking very well, the majority of them suffered quite badly after the over-optimisation penalties and the Penguin update, as well as receiving GWT warnings.
Perhaps suggesting to ONLY use brand name anchor text links is a little much, but I would certainly use them more than I ever would direct match keyphrase anchor text. I also use random linking phrases such as 'read more', 'click here' or the overall subject of the content I'm linking to, again to keep the backlink profiles looking natural.
Hope that explains what I was saying a little bit : )
-
John
Why have you suggested to only use "brand name as the anchor text"?
I don't understand that?
-
I'm not sure what you mean here, backlinking isn't a no-no, you just need to be more careful about where you're getting your links from and the anchor text you use. Personally I'd stay away from paid links, but there are a huge number of trusted sites out there.
Aim for high quality links from sites that are in your industry or niche, use Domain Authority to gauge the power and trust of a site and make sure you're varying your anchor text (in fact, just use your brand name as the anchor text). Use content to get your links too wherever possible - get an infographic designed, produce a useful tool, or write an in-depth, well researched article to try and gain links. You can either use your content to guest blog on high quality, relevant sites, or publish it on your own site and promote via social media and other avenues to encourage natural linking to your site.
Here's a post I wrote on creating content that might help:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic
and this is an excellent article on link-building for those new to it:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building
Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
When conducting a link building strategy does it matter the country the link is from?
We are a UK business and if we have links mostly from US based blogs and websites does this penalise us. The links are from relevant websites and topics. Should we be focusing on .co.uk sites
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing1 -
Unnatural Links To Your Site — Impacts Links warning, Should I do something?
Hi, I got: "Unnatural Links To Your Site — Impacts Links Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole. " I don't see any dropping at rankings, could the best solution here to be, just to leave everything as it is and be more careful with the link building in the future? Or is there a danger that Google gives further penalties if I don't act on this one do something? I am little afraid that if I start removing links, my rankings will drop, even though they have remained same if don't do anything? Any help is appreciated.
Link Building | | pok3rplay3r0 -
Does link wheel still work ?
I'd like to ask if link wheel still work ,if yes, when i can see results?
Link Building | | engmtamous0 -
Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?
I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same? http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test+page.html
Link Building | | lucek0 -
We were penalized for a specific key phrase due to incoming links. How long to come back?
We were penalized for a specific key phrase, I had included a link using that phrase to the targeted page in a header on another site. This resulted in hundreds of identical lincoming links using that key phrase to the page, so I'm guessing that's what did it. I've since rectified the problem but about how long do you think it will take for the penalty to be dropped? We were knocked down about 10 places.
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
Are you careful about linking back to sites that link to you?
Suppose that a trusted website added you to their recommended links page. Do you worry that linking back to them from a page on your site will diminish the value of the original link?
Link Building | | Charlessipe0 -
Link value
Hi I have some links from blogs to our ecom website. My question is if anyone knows what happens if you have several different blogs on .blogspot linking in to you. Does that make them loose value because they are on the same domain? I can probably quite easily have 5-10 blogs on blogspot all with PA of 35-40 link in to us. Is it worth striving for or should i strive to get blogs that have their own domain to link into us instead ? Or equally important ? Dan Lærum
Link Building | | danlae1 -
Newbe question - What is the most effective link building strategy? (white hat)
Hello, I was just wondering what is the best way in terms of time-spent/results to create links to your site. I just saw a couple of videos on article syndication and article spinning and was wondering if this really works. Cheers Luca
Link Building | | Lvet0