Google Guidelines on Spammy Backlinks

1. 89

   Will Apseposted 14 years ago

   I'm just reading through Google's WebMaster Central site
   
   Given all the talk about backlinks it is worth hearing what Google has to say.
   
   Quote:
   
   FACT: Abusing comment fields of innocent sites is a bad and risky way of getting links to your site. If you choose to do so, you are tarnishing other people's hard work and lowering the quality of the web, transforming a potentially good resource of additional information into a list of nonsense keywords.
   
   FACT: Comment spammers are often trying to improve their site's organic search ranking by creating dubious inbound links to their site. Google has an understanding of the link graph of the web, and has algorithmic ways of discovering those alterations and tackling them. At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy linkdrops which would count for little or nothing because Google is pretty good at devaluing these types of links. Think of all the more productive things one could do with that time and energy that would provide much more value for one's site in the long run.
   
   http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … -spam.html

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   1. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I suppose it comes down to what you mean by "abusing".  People who go to unrelated sites and add comments just to get a signature link - that's definitely spamming. 
      
      Posting a meaningful comment on a site about a related subject - I think that's OK.

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2. 89

   Will Apseposted 14 years ago

   I reckon any kind of backlinks campaign is now pretty much a waste of time.
   
   Unless the links are genuinely natural they have a chance of doing you harm
   
   This is good news for writers and web content creators. Offpage SEO is tedious and does nothing to improve the web. If Google can get their bot right, the only thing we need worry about is page quality.
   
   The SEO 'experts' who subvert the search engines and promote second rate sites won't be missed.

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   1. 0

      JeanMeriamposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I don't think backlinking is a waste of time. It depends on how you go about it. I have posted backlinks to hubs in forums. I posted my temper tantrum one to a parenting forum where someone was stuck about what to do. I have been lead to other people's writing the same way and I found it helpful. 
      
      And I have started writing ezine articles. I think google is looking for relevant links.
      
      Spammy to me is the post on here a while ago with all the links to the dvd ripper download. It was irrelevant.

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   2. 58

      Mark Knowlesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I wish you were correct. Unfortunately - you are not.
      
      This thread should have been titled "Google guidelines on comment spam by spammers using 10 year old techniques."

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      1. 89

         Will Apseposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         There are paid for link services that can produce natural looking link structures and I know several hubbers who use them. They are easy to spot if you use the yahoo backlink tool. The sites giving the links have a uniform feel and quality. I haven't looked at your backlinks Mark and I won't. My point is, if I can find paid for links then Google probably will too.

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         1. 58

            Mark Knowlesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            LOL
            
            No - your point was "I reckon any kind of backlinks campaign is now pretty much a waste of time," which I totally disagree with. Sadly - because you can take it from me that I hate pissing around making links.
            
            Sure - dumping thousands of comment links of random blogs is not going to work, but there are some things that work now and are going to be difficult to discount.
            
            But - if you can demonstrate some sort of skill in attracting traffic to a competitive, money-making niche, I will be quite happy to take your advice.
            
            If you don't want to share your secrets in an open forum, I totally understand, but - I am always keen to learn something new, so feel free to PM me with the success you have had.

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   3. 78

      MyWebsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      "Offpage SEO is tedious and does nothing to improve the web."
      
      If you believe and follow that then you will never hit page one on Google for anything competitive. That is just wrong.
      
      Linking one web page to another related web page helps the user to find more related information on the topic. It helps each web page to rank a little higher in Google too.
      
      If the web didn't have links how would you find more information if there we no such thing as a search engine? The web would be full of dead end roads.
      
      I guess all links are spam given your obvious bias against those who understand and use SEO.

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   4. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I agree with you, Will.  I have major ethical problems with most of the ways of getting backlinks, especially article writing (which basically means regurgitating the same old information multiple different ways).  I wish it wasn't necessary - but I do think "offpage SEO" is still vital for success, unless you stick to HubPages.
      
      Mark Knowles is a good example of a Hubber who was convinced that quality writing would win out in the end - and has now been forced to concede that's not the case.

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      1. 58

         Mark Knowlesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Unfortunately - yes. Although - it does depend. I have some pages here and other places that work very, very well with almost no links, but they are the minority and take a long time to come to fruition.
         
         When I work out how to only write those in the first instance, I will stop doing the other thing...
         
         But - you want traffic to a competitive subject - you better do some research to find a non-competitive keyphrase - or build some links.
         
         I will agree that the research and the link building is tedious. Extremely tedious.

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         1. 69

            thisisoliposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            You can have successful webpages without ever building a single backlink, I have several pages which did incredibly well without any backlinks at all.
            
            To be honest the Hubs I backlink the most are the ones which have already started to rank well in Google, or even hit the first page for my keywords.  It's a lot easier to strenghten a strongly built SEO hub than it is to strengthen a hub which hasn't got anywhere.

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3. 69

   thisisoliposted 14 years ago

   While I personally don't backlink excessively I do se the value behind backlinking campaigns. 
   
   It's sometimes hard to find an SEO company which will do a properly focused backlinking caampaing for you, and many will spam your website giving you a net detrimental effect.

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4. 80

   skyfireposted 14 years ago

   Lol, no further comments.

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