When Backlinking Hurts more than it Helps – Avoid Penalties
Aggressive Link Building can Hurt Your Short Term Exposure
I have recently become aware of the importance of non-aggressive linking practices to avoid being penalized by the Google gods. Since so much of your website’s exposure relies on the organic traffic that Google generates it is a good idea to avoid any practices that would flag your site for penalty or review.
I am actually in pretty good shape. Pseudorant is a new site, that doesn’t really focus on one thing, and acts more as a tech journal than an online business. My site recently got penalized for (what I assume was looked at as) aggressive or spammy link building practices.
I wanted to share my mistakes with others to help them avoid the pitfalls I created for myself when building up my website.
While this may be common sense to some, others may be completely unaware of these issues. Following the practices many people recommend, while being unaware of the specifics, can lead to potential problems for aspiring webmasters.
Below is a list of “recommended” practices and the specific details behind them. Most resources will recommend a method, without discussing the details behind the methods that can lead to penalties with Google.
5 main examples of these types of recommendations are:
- List your site in directories
- Use keyword rich anchor text in backlinks
- Make use of social bookmarking sites
- Use link bait to generate back links
- Linkbuilding is the most important thing to focus on
Now these things may sound like good advice, and they are if you understand the details behind them.
For a new webmaster it would be a bad idea to focus on this list in its current form. So let’s take a look at each suggestion on the list and elaborate on the details needed to make them work successfully.
01. List your site in directories.
This is an ok idea. It gets you back links, and is a linking practice that you can control. There are several details to be aware of when building directory links.
Quality over quantity – Crap links will do more harm then good. The more crap links you have coming into your site the more you raise red flags with Google because of “Link Trust” issues that your site starts creating.
“Link Trust” is when Google weighs the number of spammy inbound links to your site against the number of quality in bound links to your site. If the majority of your links are not “quality” links, link trust flags start going up with Google.
When looking at a directory there is a lot of criteria you want to weigh to decide if it is worth listing there. What other websites are listed in the directory? Are the valuable resources or pure spam?
There is a great video that outlines considerations to make when listing in directories. It is available at Aaron Wall’s SEO Book website entitled “Directories & Link Building”.
There are many other issues that affect the quality of directory listings. But as a webmaster the quality of your links should be the most important factor to you over the sheer number.
02. Use keyword rich anchor text in backlinks
This is another great suggestion. You want to use keyword rich anchor text so your website can start ranking well for keywords that are important to your niche. Once again there are several important details that are left out of this general recommendation.
Do Not Use the Same Keywords or Link Format – Search engines are merely algorithms designed to dig through text on websites and make comparisons to determine how the data relates to the site.
One pattern that is very easy for a search engine to pickup is links with the same anchor text used over and over. Let’s say you are listing your site in directories and you create a text file with your site title, description and keywords to copy and paste in order to speed up the submission process
This will actually hurt you more than it helps in the long run by creating patterns that the search engines recognize as “Unnatural Linking Patterns”. A natural linking pattern is what occurs when people actually link to your site. Because we all think differently and describe things using different words, your site will naturally get referenced using many different keywords and anchor text.
If all your anchor text is the same because you have used the copy / paste for all your backlinks, this is another thing that will raise a red flag with Google and can lead to a penalty or site review.
03. Make use of social bookmarking sites
Social book marking sites are great. They allow for a sense of community and enable users to suggest valuable sources of information to others. This does not mean that any source of information is welcomed.
Do not join these communities in order to force crap information onto people. Take the time to learn how the community works before posting self promotional articles that people could care less about.
If you need to promote something, decide what is important and let people know. If the community thinks it’s important they will tell others without the need for you to constantly “reinforce” that the information is important.
Remarkable information is usually worth remarking on. If you do not get the desired outcome it is a sign that you need to spend more time working on your content and less time promoting yourself.
04. Use link bait to generate back links
This method has been recommended by a lot of people. Even Google’s Matt Cutts has discussed how this can be a good link building practice. The thing to keep in mind here is that successful link bait can inadvertently bring attention to other issues on your site that may have raised some red flags in the past.
I had an excellent learning experience with this recently when I posted an article that sent a portion of the Open Source community into an uproar. The ironic thing was that the article was not geared to be link bait. It was simply me following the advice of other guides that said “be yourself”.
Unfortunately when I am “myself” I can get very candid to the point where I can paint an almost black or white picture about any given topic. This is not the case with how things really are in life, but because of my OCD tendencies this comes very naturally to me. It becomes very easy to hone in on what will set people off without even realizing it.
The article I wrote generated quiet a bit of interest and a lot of negative comments. Since my intention was never to make Pseudorant a political platform I felt it was best to remove the article. If I was going to get front page exposure on Linux.com I would prefer it be for something more valuable than a sporadic rant.
I am not sure if the numerous backlinks that were created from the article in a short period of time threw up another red flag, or the fact that I took down the article which may have appeared to be a bait and switch technique. Either way, the post generated enough traffic and exposure that Google put a lock down on the back links coming into my site.
I assume I am currently in the 30-60 day penalty phase associated with “spammy” link building practices. Since Pseudorant only receives several hundred hits a day (half through referring sites) this has not affected my overall traffic much. It has decreased by about a third. The most noticeable thing is the back links I was tracking through my blog are now gone.
05. Linkbuilding is the most important thing to focus on
This is very true, but also the most important concept to understand the details behind.
As I mentioned before, focus on “natural link building” methods. While having traffic in the short term is great, depending on how you generate it, it can raise a lot of unwanted attention from Google.
In the ultra competitive area of blogging it is unrealistic to tell someone not to worry about traffic or page rank. This is something people who have established sites can say because they don’t need to worry about it. For those who don’t receive any daily traffic, tell me where the motivation is to keep writing articles if no one is reading them.
You need to reach a happy middle ground to generate traffic and avoid red flag linking practices.
Some of the best suggestions I have read talk about creating link worthy content and it’s true. Creating content that is worth linking to is the best practice you can follow for long term success because it creates a natural linking pattern throughout the internet.
If you pursue a link building campaign make sure to research all the details behind the methods you are using before jumping into a hay day of directory submissions. A good place to start would be doing some solid SEO research, and avoid making the mistakes I have made by learning all these great things after the fact.
Hindsight is 20/20 - Reflecting on What I Have Learned
Some people may read this guide thinking these points are obvious and others may discover some of the practices they have used are worth reevaluating. I am by no means an authority on SEO, and if you really get serious about this kind of stuff you should definitely start researching different SEO topics in detail.
I am just relating the things I have learned (and continue to learn) by trail and error, to help others who are in the same boat. With so many blogs being created each day I can see how many people may mistakenly think that the 5 point link building guides out there are the holy grail of getting exposure for your site.
The best idea is to always try to blend in with the competition. If your competitors have 100 back links you don’t need 25,000. Remember the best links are naturally occurring, quality links because they last longer, provide more benefit to your site, and help you avoid the potential pitfalls I have outlined in the article.
I hope you have found this article useful for researching link building practices that are recommend on different websites, and to help you plan any approach you may take for driving traffic to your site in the future.
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Link Bait is the best ,, But hard to implement..