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Apr 07
Apr 07
by Neil Patel Strategy with 26 Comments
Over the past few weeks I have attended several conferences including SES NY, AMA Hot Topics and Ad:Tech San Francisco. Throughout each conference I have encountered tons of folks who are
interested in building or buying links, but most of them are going about it the wrong way. Here is what you should not do:
- Same anchor text – if the majority of your incoming text links contain the same anchor text you probably are not going to rank highly for those terms. Search engines are getting more sophisticated and they can usually tell when people are trying to manipulate their search results.
- Home page links – there is nothing wrong with having tons of incoming links to your homepage, but there is something wrong when the rest of your site has no incoming links. This does not look too natural so you should try and increase the number of links to your internal pages.
- Growth – many of us are impatient (including me) which is why we want to grow our links 10 fold within a few days. Usually massive growth of incoming links smells of search manipulation, which is why you should try and grow at a natural pace. Granted you may get a burst of natural links rapidly from social sites like Digg, but if that happens there is really nothing to worry about.
- Cross linking – linking your own sites together if they are related is a good idea if you want to increase each sites traffic, but not search traffic. In most cases all of your sites are probably owned by the same person or hosted on similar C-blocks. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t link your sites together if it makes sense, but don’t do it just to manipulate search results.
- Leveraging forums – one of the easiest ways to get paid links or link exchanges is by posting on forums asking for links. But by doing this you just created a written record that you are looking to build links. This is probably not a good idea, since the last thing you want to do is to give the search engines ammo against you.
There are probably many more things that you should not do when building links, but these are the ones that most people have asked me about at conferences. What other link building tactics should people not do?
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Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this because I think a lot of people want to know how to grow their links the right way.
Thanks for the article. Its good to be reminded of these points again. Not using the same anchor text takes planning.
Nice post sir!
“What other link building tactics should people not do?”
Arm wrestling for links is never a good idea. Especially when your not huge…you loose every time, get no link love, and have a sore arm for days.
Snoop Bloggy Blawg I prefer to leg or thumb wrestle for links.
nice advice – thanks for sharing.
questions on the last one, SE smarts enough to understand your link exchange request on forum ?
another question is , is it good idea to have a link of your web site in your signature , and post alot articles and reply alot . will SE like this idea?
Hmm I made 3 mistakes out of 6. Show that I am a real dummy at blogosphere.
Thanks for sharing thos great infos.
Want to know your answer for the question of feelexit (who comment before me)
I recently talked about the fact that you are more likely to get significant link reciprocity from your own peer group and readers.
Concentrating your efforts on baiting A-list bloggers for a single link is in many cases a wasted effort, plus the A-listers might well take more notice if they see links to you from a B-lister.
Strange that I am writing this on the same day I got a link and mention in the Daily Search cast and on Search Engine Land
I thinks that that stuff of the anchor text is a problem, because everyone links you with the name of your blog, so you always have the same anchor.
Despite all arguments given in this article, I’m looking for help with link building. Please send offers if interesting, to liu@projectmaker.info
Despite all arguments given in this article, I’m looking for help with link building. Please send offers if interesting, to liu@projectmaker.info
This is a really interesting article very clear. Those small differences about buying (how not to buy links) are mentioned in a way that you can really understand.
Great post.
So much good info!
I’ve been reading a lot about internal cross linking and it seems to be something google like…
Very good points for the beginers but just one question.
It is about the point “Leveraging forums”. How will google know that with which sites the guy is exchanging links? Google might check the other sites which are already linked in that thread but generally most of the link exchange is done via PMs, i.e. one guy posts the request and others send PMs and they fix the deal.
So it is kind of 50-50 situation, it may work and it may not work.
Regards,
Deep
How much success do you get when requesting links ?
I just started emailing (10 emails this week) a few authority (web sites, blogs) got zero answers.
Do you offer freebies in exchange of a link e.g. with a higher much ranking site? This is for eCommerce site.
I am currently researching Online Marketing techniques, and your info about how to create backlinks is quite interesting.
I will try to use it for the promotion of my Blog Review Blog.
Thanks!
Hey Neil,
Great post. I have experienced PR increase from primarily cross linking my sites. I have heard people say this is not a good idea but I have found it helps increase PR. Usually the linking is within the text but it doesn’t always have anything to do with the content and the sites are not related. I have had one website and three blogs that increased pagerank by cross linking. Is this a mistake on Google’s part or is it a false belief about the Google Algorithms?
plz suggest me techniques for promotion
http://onlinebusiness-strategy.blogspot.com/
It’s difficult enough to get TLA to approve certain sites, even though there are other approved sites with lower page ranks and alexa rankings.
Sometimes, link buying is necessary to participate in the program.
my website, please add to your website,thank you!
nice advice – thanks for sharing
Hi, this is great advise, especially for someone who is new @ this.
Thanks
its nice advice.even I am trying the same
People always give info about how to build inbound links but never how not to, which is great.
Very interesting for Link building .
I use cross-linking, but my sites have different homes. I have a blogger site, my main site which is wordpress and hosted by hostgator, a myspace page, squidoo, gather.
Thanks for the tip on linking to interior pages.
Thanks a lot for this great information. I will be using them to build a ton of links for my blog.