Effect of backlinks on Hub traffic

1. 85

   NateB11posted 12 years ago

   My understanding is that wrong backlinks can devalue a Hub. Backlinks are supposed to be natural, as far Google is concerned, and I'm wondering if certain backlinks can decrease traffic on a Hub. Let's say, for instance, you have an RSS Feed of your Hubpage as a widget on your blog; and you've posted links to your Hubs on a Tumblr blog with appropriate hashtags. Will any of this devalue your Hubs or subdomain and decrease traffic to them?

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2. 72

   LeanManposted 12 years ago

   Google adds very little value to links in the sidebar or the footer of a blog such as the widget you are suggesting although it is unlikely to harm you unless your blog is also selling links and other naughty practices.
   Links from "free" sites are generally less valuable as they are too easy to manipulate, however if you stick to the better known sites then it is unlikely that they are going to be classed as a "bad neighborhood" as far as your links are concerned.
   The best thing to do is look for something that will actually drive traffic to your hub rather than worrying about the value that Google will assign to the link. Just don't overdo it as far as promotion is concerned as it is obvious to Google when you place hundreds of links yourself and they just might to decide to penalize you.

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   1. 85

      NateB11posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Makes sense and good to know. Sounds like it has to be really bad tricky tactics to make Google devalue a site for links. Sounds like a good idea to concentrate on what drives traffic, seems more likely to be a couple appropriate keywords in a title would be better than thinking about links. It's also good to know that Google is most likely looking at obvious over-promotion, which I don't do fortunately.

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   2. 44

      Writer Foxposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Ditto the above.
      
      Links from other sites which you control will have little effect on your Google search rankings, but can be useful for traffic.  In moderation, and without spam anchor text, Google will be ambivalent.  (To learn more about when Google penalizes for spamlinks, read my Hub about Google Penguin.)
      
      On the other hand, good banklinks from sites you do not own are a significant factor in improving your rankings on search results.  If you intentionally solicit backlinks, you must consider the cost-effectiveness of building backlinks to individual Hubs, i.e., will the time value expended equal the income potential of the Hub? If you want to spend your time building backlinks, use guest blog posting instead of article marketing on free-for-all article sites like Ezine.
      
      Building backlinks to your subdomain is problematic because your HubPages' subdomain is not set up the way subdomains normally function on other websites and most people's inventory of Hubs includes a wide range of topics.
      
      Over time, your significant Hubs should receive natural backlinks on their own.

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3. 78

   Greekgeekposted 12 years ago

   I have generally avoided building backlinks on the principle that Google defines webspam as "practices for manipulating search rankings," so sooner or later, planting backlinks for backlinks' sake could backfire.
   
   However, links on the internet do actually serve a useful purpose: they help people find things and figure out what things are connected/relevant to other things.
   
   For that reason, I use Hubpages Groups and manual links within the body of hubs to link to related, relevant hubs IF they are actually of use to and of interest to the readers of a particular hub.
   
   I also will occasionally share and link to my own stuff on the social networks where I particpate. However, "participate" is the key. I really AM part of those communities, contributing to and sharing in the group, mostly linking to other people's stuff. I'm not going to self-promote unless I'm quite sure tht, ey, my friends or followers really would be interested in this.
   
   It's a hard line to walk, because you have to be very aware of how people get fed up with other people self-promoting. But the point of social communities is to be social, and sometimes it relo is okay to say, "Hey, look at my thing!"
   
   So what does all this have to do with Google? Well, linking to relevant content or sharing stuff around with friends is NOT linking for the purpose of manipulating search rankings, but is aimed primarily at honest-to-gosh other people. That's fine. The relevant links help Google identify what's relevant to your topic. And the social links, shared in good faith, can establish which of your things people really like. Moreover, if the social profiles and/or other pages are tied to your author profile on Google, they can help show Google what your niches are, what you tend to write about, and what you're known for.
   
   I don't think that can hurt.

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