Quality SEO Services engage in a solid linking strategy that appeases search engine spiders and avoids the threat of a client’s site being blacklisted or banned for impropriety. Not just black hat tactics, but amateurish mistakes also, can result in less than desirable penalties. Google has a very time consuming reconsideration process. Here are seven link building techniques that should be avoided like the plague.
1. Rapid backlink generation
Generating links at a breakneck pace rouses Googlebot’s suspicions because it looks unnatural. Build links at a slower, more natural pace to satisfy Googlebot and other spiders. If using a paid service to generate backlinks, keep tabs on the progress and make sure link count doesn’t leap from a hundred per week or month to a couple thousand in the same time frame. A slow and steady pace wins the race.
2. Using IBLNs
This is considered a black hat tactic. Independent Backlink Networks are not only costly, but Google staff are constantly on the lookout for IBLN users. When Google discovers sites that are part of an Independent Backlink Network, the entire network using it tends to gets blacklisted or banned. Matt Cutts or another influential person may also write a post about that network’s members. IBLNs are expensive, and the network members could be publicly exposed.
3. Redundantly using keywords in anchor text
Do not use your keywords for each instance of anchor text on a page; spiders pick up on that. It is far safer to use other words for the majority of links. A site about horses, for instance, should have anchor text containing equestrian-related words and keyword synonyms, instead of the keywords themselves.
4. Low quality links
This is one of those phrases that seems to mean little, but can make a noticeable difference. Sites with a thousand links that Google considers low quality do not rank as favorably as sites with 500 links Google deems high quality. The total number of links is important, without question, but some low quality links that are here today will be gone tomorrow. Higher quality links have a better chance of remaining accessible for longer stretches of time.
5. Using site wide linking
Site wide links are promoted as a viable option and readily available, even though as early as late 2010 Google rendered them basically worthless. Google ranks site wide links, no matter how many there are, as one link. Because of this, they aren’t really useful anymore.
6. Site scraping and content repackaging
Scraping sites for their content and using software to slightly alter that content via synonyms and sentence restructuring is another futile attempt at tricking search engine spiders. It no longer passes the smell test and produces a bad result. Googlebot is coded to understand when it encounters slightly rehashed content. Steven Baker, a software developer at Google, states that Google’s web search ranking team spent over five years building a “synonyms system.”
7. Phishing
Making a page look identical to a well-known page for the purposes of stealing personal information? The FBI agrees, there are better ways to generate revenue than “electronic social engineering” to get someone’s information. Offer a product, service, or provide an experience people want, and they will be more likely to give up some of their information.
Google tells webmasters it is a bad idea to pay for links. Sites that build links over time are doing so naturally, and by the book, regardless of whether those links were gained freely or paid for. IBLNs are expensive and risky to consider, unless one has cash to spare on an endeavor that ends badly if Google catches on. Avoiding the use of the other five link building techniques above will keep Googlebot happy. Keeping spiders happy makes life a little easier for hardworking webmasters.