Link Building And the Moral High Ground
When you decide to tackle a new keyword or niche, you do one of 2 things first, check how many searches there are for that keyword every month or check the competition and their rank in the SERPS. Once you’ve found a keyword or phrase that you think will pay dividends, it’s now time to look at the sites that are occupying the rankings. There are a handful of sites that you just can’t avoid, About ,ehow, Wikipedia Youtube, Amazon and a few others. There isn’t really much we can do about these sites, just learn how to beat them I guess.
What I’m seeing now more than ever are thin affiliate sites, many with only a handful of pages and these are the sites you should look to beat, once you’ve reviewed a few you will soon learn how to spot them. In most instances they will have an exact match domain of the key phrase or as close to an exact match domain as possible for the keyword you’re about to target. They’re prevalent in every niche where there is the potential to make money, so that pretty much every niche.
Once you begin to dive into the factors that are making these sites rank it’s clear that they are manipulating their link graph, finding a site that is only 4 months old with half a dozen pages but has over 4000 links isn’t hard to do. Quite simply; that level of links for a domain of that age just doesn’t add up and there is only one answer, comment spam and lots up of it.
To me there are 2 different types of comment based link building, a sentence long comment left after the searcher has read the post title and comments that add something to the post, these type of links are typically found on sites that are running commentluv. The later I have no issues with as they are giving in order to receive. The first type is where I have problems as it’s clear they are simple trying to gain the system and from what I can see it’s working the SERPS don’t lie, these sites are getting the rankings they want and they are putting very little effort in.How hard can it be to jump on Mechanical Turk and how hire someone for peanuts that can just about string a sentence together in English, very easy and very cheap.
The real question I want to ask is do we follow what we know to be the right way to build links, do we ensure we are producing the best content possible so we know that our readers will find what they are looking for on our site. Or do we follow the crowd and start to spam every blog that will allow a comment and where is Google in all this.Why are so many of these sites that are clearly rubbish and don’t offer the searcher any value still ranking, I thought Google was now smart enough to filter out the sites, most stick out like a sore thumb and they are operating in some of the most profitable and well publicised niches on the internet. So do we follow the crowd and build a site that could quite easily get burned by the next Google update or do we stick with building links that involve time and effort, do we build relationships with other sites in our niche?, do we spend hours crafting a guest post so we can get a link back to our site?or do just take the easy option and throw a comment at every blog that will except one?
Neil Is a marketer by profession and is currently plying his trade for eMobileScan, a leading European mobile handheld computer specialist.
Category: SEO
About the Author (Author Profile)
Shiva Chettri is the editor and owner of Netchunks, a premier blog about Webmaster and Blogging Tips. He intends to make the web a friendlier place by sharing stuffs and articles which will help other webmasters and bloggers to becomes successful. His other interests includes Web Designing, Wordpress and Music of almost every genre. Send +Shiva an email at admin@netchunks.comSubscribe
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- 3 Secrets of Successful Blogging | Netchunks | September 7, 2011
Twitter: esoftload
says:
i my blogging career i learned there is no shortcut for sucess… link building should be done slowly and in effective way…..
I have to totally agree with her. Link building should be done slowly or else search engines can penalize your blog by taking it as a spam.
Techfudge recently posted..Facebook- Introduces Download your information feature
Actually it’s not always comment spam to get thousands of links
Here’s a secret for you. For example, my site which is about a month old has more than 50K links 
But that’s just because I have a few huge sites, each of them cross-link each other in header from each page (kind of like “These sites are all made by me: …. …. ….”).
Slava recently posted..Dolina Zeleneho Plesa
The only way you will get through link building is to do it nice and slow. The scamming techniques don’t work towards getting what you want.
Thanks guys, I really just wanted to see what other people thought, I’m starting to think that if you can beat them join em, so I’m going through up a cruddy affiliate site and see what happens
I agree with you buddy. But link building takes lot of time. Depends on the post and popularity others will link to your site.
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Speed of getting the links versus your domain authority and age is the real problem.
It is no problem for digg.com getting 1000 links a day but a new site that is just a few days old may be getting penalized because its just not natural to get that many links in this low amount of time and google knows exactly what is natural and whats not. They have analyzed billions of sites since 12 years.
I use various different types on link building and while I do try and use keywords I leave well thought out comments. If you look at Niel Patels Site quicksprout, He allows keyword which you may think is spamming but the people on there leave good comments or they are deleted. He has never been burned by google and has a great PR. So if people can do it without one liners, I don’t see the problem.
Every blogger should know about link building. But they should understand that it is not easy to get overall night. It is a slow process and one of the useful way in link building is through good commenting.
Link building is not a one day task. Should be done slowly and effectively.
Shabnam Sultan recently posted..Download Google Googles app for your iPhone
I’m with you on the longer and harder method. You have to be able to live with yourself at the end of the day. I have weeded out many comments that are not worthy on my sites and because I suspect they are paid visitors to leave a one liner I often spam them. This only takes them onto the list of Akismet’s spam directory and they will have hardly any hope of getting an article through again (legitimately) when they next visit sites.
I would advise against paying for these kind of lists. Visit blogs yourself, read the posts, respect the author’s time and effort and leave a well considered, quality link that you can feel proud of. After a few years – yes years….that’s how long it takes to build up your blog legitimately…you would have done it properly and taken the morale high ground.
You can always make money online in other ways, even at the same time as building your blog. But blogging is a quality and quantity endeavour. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to do it properly, your blog won’t last. Your readers will feel it in their bones and your blog will become a ghost town. (Worse case scenario of course. Too dramatic?)
Somone recently posted..Premium Thesis Skin “Fresh Coat” on Display at Thesis Theme HQ
what can one do if others dont link to them , so to publicize your site , google said use text link , and spread your links gradually
Sourish recently posted..Iphone 4 and Rest of the World – Infographic
That is a really good question and to be honest there is no black and white answer. My process has always included a combination of link building tactics, one of which is blog comments.
I mostly do this to network with other bloggers, but I’d be lying if I said the backlinks wasn’t also a motivating factor. In the end though getting high rankings and traffic won’t mean much if it is not met with quality content that informs and engages the readers.
Charleston Marketing recently posted..Best Web Design Tip For Changing Website Features
Twitter: webmaisterpro
says:
The right link building way have always been the same. High quality links, if possible one way from high PR relevant pages. Everything counts, so don’t limit yourself to this – reciprocal, blog commenting and forum signatures have good value too.
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Twitter: sureshpeterss
says:
slow and steady win the backlinks
this is fact of backlinks 
sureshpeters recently posted..SEO – A info for beginners
Lolz nice one suresh
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I am presently working in my company as SEO and still to work on the link building. Link building is look like very easy work but it is not going to easy. It works slowly and most of time very much effectively. Thanks for sharing this wonderful post. Thanks so much.
yes I agree slow is best method of adding backlinks to your Website/Blog anything too fast will obviously be penalised, whilst also appearing very unatural too.
Nice article…
great share……..
Crunchynow recently posted..Protect WordPress Admin area with Login LockDown Plugin
Well I agree Link Building is a good way to improve rankings but i think Content is the King. The Content on a Blog determines its fate.
Usman recently posted..How to Use Sn0wbreeze 21 To Jailbreak ALL iPhones- ALL iPod Touches- iPad And AppleTV Running iOS 41
Link building have always been the evergreen of SEO, more links higher rankings. Actually I think that SEO is about 95% link building.
More back links is always better, never stop link building as this is the best way to achieve higher SERP. Build links everyday, I don’t think that you need to put limit, just try to diversify links – relevant, link directories, article directories, profile websites and forums.