Link building. If you have ever worked in SEO or online marketing, it is likely that this word just sent a shiver down your spine. Backlinks are an essential part of the SEO process, but in the modern environment it can be so difficult to determine what constitutes a good link that is beneficial to a website as compared to the sort that could put you in line for penalties.
It is an important distinction to be able to make because of those penalties. Many website owners have fallen under the Google hammer following the introduction of Penguin back in 2012. A manual link penalty from Google is a nightmare in terms of time spent getting out of the penalty and there are plenty of stories of websites being abandoned completely because the work that would be required to escape the penalty exceeds the amount that needs to be done to build a new website. Worse yet, should you escape you will usually find that your site no longer has its previous rankings, seeing as they were gained by manipulative practices.
Of course, cutting and running is not always going to be an option, especially if your website is part of a larger branding campaign and it has built up a reputation amongst users. That makes it all the more important that you understand links and, even more crucially, understand what any SEO companies that you hire are actually doing to achieve their results. After all, there are more than a few companies out there that will happily build terrible links for the short-term boost, only to leave their clients high and dry once a penalty hits.
So we come back to the central question – what makes a bad backlink?
Google’s Side of the Story
We’ll be focusing primarily on Google here as they still operate the most popular search engine in the world, with an estimated 72% market share. The company’s stance on what makes a bad backlink is pretty clear and essentially boils down to any links that are paid for or placed unnaturally on a website with the aim of manipulating search results in favour of your own site.
The term unnatural link is one that causes a lot of confusion, as some would argue that they place links on perfectly relevant sites, only to have them to be deemed unnatural. For our purposes, an unnatural link is basically going to boil down to any link that you have created yourself, either by submitting your details to a site or asking a webmaster to link to you. Natural links, on the other hand, are those that have been placed on websites completely without your knowledge, usually by virtue of the fact that your site has some useful content that is worth sharing.
I’m sure many of you will also have stories of websites that you have seen with clearly unnatural link profiles ranking high in search results. Unfortunately, this is more a sign that Google’s algorithm is still not up to speed enough to keep to the company’s lofty ideals when it comes to link profiles.
The important thing to remember here is that going against Google’s policy puts you in the firing line for a penalty. You may not get hit, but the risk often outweighs the rewards.
The Links To Avoid
So now that is covered, let’s take a more in-depth look at some of the links that you should try to avoid.
Reciprocal Links – Have you ever received an email from a site owner asking you to place a link on your site to them while they do the same on their sites for you? This is a reciprocal link and needs to be avoided. If somebody wants to link to you of their own volition that is great, but the act of linking back makes the link unnatural and essentially acts as payment for the link.
Paid Links – This works in much the same way as the reciprocal issue but it is often harder to spot by Google. Paid links are exactly what they say on the tin, as they are links that have been paid for using money or by offering products or services as an exchange. A classic example is giving away items to website owners in exchange for reviews of the product that link back to your page.
Article Marketing – There are legitimate sites, like SteemIT, where people can contribute content and then there are article farms. Such sites will usually claim editorial oversight over anything that is submitted, but in actuality you will find that little exists and that they essentially just allow for backlinks to be built. Poor quality content will abound and most pieces you read will be loaded with links to business websites, even when they don’t seem relevant. As a general rule, if you think your copy is good enough to place on such a site then it should be good enough to place on your own instead. As such, websites like Ezine Articles and their ilk should be avoided.
Forum Links – Now here’s where things can get a little more complicated. Linking people to useful websites on a forum is perfectly fine and actually makes for a relevant and natural link for the website that has been recommended. However, putting links to your own site in your signature or littering posts with links to your own site when they aren’t relevant to the topic at hand is an issue. Be careful with forum activities, particularly when linking to your own site.
Blog Comments – Much like with forum links, blog comments with links in them can be perfectly legitimate. It is the abuse of this ability to link that becomes a problem. Thankfully, a lot of blogs now tag outgoing links in the comments with a rel=”nofollow” attribute, which practically reduces their power to nil when it comes to affecting search results.
Crappy Directories – There are some directories that you need to make sure you are a part of and these will usually be specific to your industry. For example, the Gas Safe organization in the UK maintains a database of qualified companies and individuals that allows for the placement of a link. This is perfectly fine. However, there are also literally thousands of directories out there that are complete junk and exist for no other purpose than to create links. Such sites are extra dangerous because they are often parts of networks, so submitting your details to one could lead to them being placed on loads of other sites. That may not seem like a big issue until you hit a penalty and need to clean up but have no record of these sites that you never submitted to. They’re easy enough to spot as they will usually have terrible designs, awful logos and nonsensical names.
Footer and Site-Wide Links – This is one that catches a lot of people off-guard, especially website developers who want to advertise their services on the sites that they create. Placing a link into the footer of a website will result in that link being on every page of the site, making it site-wide. This essentially creates a link network that can come back to bite you. If you want to use footer links, make sure to tag them with rel=“nofollow” to show Google that you are not using them to manipulate rankings.
Adverts – Again, placing adverts on somebody’s website is fine, but you need to make sure that the links are tagged as rel=”nofollow”. Failure to do so essentially makes these adverts paid links, which can get you into trouble. Conversely, you should find that large-scale pay-per-click providers, like Google AdWords, won’t present you with this problem.
Widgets – Widgets have become a pretty common part of the modern web landscape, which makes it all the more important that you use them properly. Again, make sure you add the rel=nofollow attribute to any widgets to keep yourself safe.
Links From Foreign Websites – If yours is a small local business in the United States it would be unnatural for you to have a sudden influx of links from Russia, China or any other country. This is a common tactic used by less scrupulous online marketing companies and it can really bite their customers when it is discovered.
A Quick Word on rel=”nofollow”
You will have noticed that there were a few mentions of the rel=”nofollow” attribute in the previous section. This is an important attribute to keep in mind as it is essentially your way of telling Google that you have placed a link, usually for advertising purposes, and that it is not intended to manipulate your PageRank or search engine positioning.
Basically, you should use this attribute in your HTML whenever you create a link on somebody else’s website. If you can’t do it directly, make sure to ask the webmaster of the site to do it for you. It should also be applied to footer and site-wide links, as you can then still advertise your services without accidentally creating a link network that will get you punished.
It is also this attribute that makes it safe to share links on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Every outbound link on those sites is tagged as rel=”nofollow” automatically, making it safe to use them for pushing people towards your website through links.
The Final Word
Hopefully that gives you a little more insight into what you shouldn’t be doing when trying to create links to your website. It can certainly be frustrating to stick to these guidelines, especially when competitors appear to be getting rewarded for using bad backlinks. However, the penalties for getting caught out are immense so it is best to avoid creating the above types of links unless you’re prepared to deal with the risk.