Jun
17

For those of you who have done link building campaigns on an extensive scale would admit that the exercise by itself is a risky process because, the results are always based on experimentation. There are no hard and fast rules but experiments. For the same reason, I’m questioned by clients by - Why can’t I and Why don’t we try this - type.
My suggestion and advice would always revolve around not following any pattern while doing link building campaigns. Google has been very clever in detecting patterns in SEO campaigns and if found “guilty” put you in trouble so it’s best to stay away from patterns.

  • Sudden increase in the number of backlinks
    This is a major problem with link building. Frustrating sometimes it is, when we know that we can’t wait for the competitor but beat him on what he is at the moment, but at the same time, gets none of the backlinks indexed. So patience takes a back seat and on we go with aggressive link building, sourcing links left and right. Only to know that, we aren’t indexed at all because of extensive link building. Clever Google eh?
    The only solution here is to make the link building campaign look as natural as possible. Take it slow and steady one by one, documenting each link you collect and monitoring the progress. Haste makes serious waste!
  • Very similar anchor text across all backlinks
    This is yet another mistake due to excessive keyword anxiety. It is natural for webmasters to cling on to the primary keyword and try getting as many links as possible. Technically, this is right, the more keywords you have in your anchor text, the better. But as far as Google is considered, dude thinks it’s un natural. And discounts all those backlinks you sourced.
    In this situation, it’s a great idea to use variations of your primary keyword to source links. Keep ready more than one variation of the primary keyword. Ex:- If your primary keyword is “Rabbit”, you might want to use “White rabbits”, “Red Rabbits”, “Rabbitery” and “Rabbittabittoo” as your anchor texts assuming they aren’t totally different keywords.
  • Extensive links from the same site with the same anchor text
    Yet again, an un natural phenomena as seen by Google. Why would a site add your text link to all it’s pages with the same anchor text? Unless you are connected in some way, this probably is the best example of a text link purchase/sales. Okay, Links discounted !
    So be clever, ask the webmaster to link to you contextually, give them different sets of text and keywords to embed the link without causing much “un naturality”.
  • Increased number of links from brand new sites.
    Okay, let’s guess why this would happen.
    - you went on a link buying spree with the cheaper sites.
    - you build a network of blogs yourself.
    - your friend runs the site.
    Either way, this seems to be un natural. Mix up your link building campaign with both old and new sites, do not stick to one category of them

Essentially, link building can be a fairly simple process if you look at it at a long term perspective (say 6 months or so), and it’s much effective that way too. But if you want quick results, quicker backlinks and immediate SERPs rise, then you’re doing something to game the system however good your intention is. And Google sometimes read your mind as well, so be careful about that guy.


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  1. Lets say I put ten links on my blog all pointing to my site with different anchor text. Google will count all these links, but will all of them pass benefit to my site in terms of ranking.

    As far as your third suggestion is concerned, do you mean sitewide links ?

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  2. I think sidewide links and links in the page footer are not counted by Google. Google count the links in the page content. If each link has a different anchor text, they all will be counted on my opinion.

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  3. Mani -

    Another great post. We’ve been coming around to the opinion that the real key is to have “crowdsourced” links activity that is very organic in appearance.

    That last word is important. :-)

    -OT

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  4. The system (meaning Google) is constantly gaming us by changing the rules often and without notice. Why shouldn’t we try to game it?

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  5. I agree that the links well embedded within the page content are of greatest value, but surely the links in the page footer should be of some, although much smaller value.

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  6. How about if backlinks come from some free template that we design and distribute it? Usually all the anchor text from it is same.

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    Mani KarthikNo Gravatar Replied:

    Templates, Wordpress themes and footer links are not valuable as they were once. In fact there was a banning spree from Google on designers selling themes with footer links. They are seen as “paid” links because the link will or may link to a totally irrelevant/different site from the content.

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