Core Web Solutions Articles

One of the primary tasks of SEO is generating backlinks. To do this right is no easy task for even seasoned experts. Its time-consuming, rigorous, and just plain hard-work. Often, such work is farmed-out to link-grunts who do all the tedious work for you. Over the past several years this work has evolved into such menial tasks as submitting links to thousands of free directories, blog comments, social bookmarking, forum posts, and article syndication. All these can be valid backlink generators, however; when these things are done wrong, they can backfire.

Let’s look at Free Directory submissions first. Seems reasonable to submit your site to free directories and generate some one-way backlinks. But can it really be that easy? If you pay someone $500 to submit your site “manually” to 1000 free directories are there any assurances that this method is effective? Even worse, are you sure that there is no negative impact for doing it? Even if you found a grunt willing to do it for $100, are you sure about this?

The answer is: you cannot be sure about any of it. You have no real idea what all these directories really are. Are they long-term, or temporary? Are the real, or fake? Its a gamble. In the worse case, some directories are bad neighborhoods, or penalized sites of which you have no way of knowing unless you research each one. If they are “bad sites”, you do not want to be associated in anyway. Why risk it? Do you really think search engines are not aware of all the garbage directories out there? This tactic is just throwing money away.

How about Blog Commenting? The idea here is that you can comment on many blogs and include your URL so that when the comment is published it generates a backlink. Sounds nice, but; its a load of crap. First of all, most blogs have “nofollow” comment backlinks, so your link is fairly worthless even if it gets published. Second, most REAL blogs will spam your comment if it is the typical meaningless generic nonsense like,

“I love your posts. This topic needs to be discussed. Thanks for the great blog!” (URL link: www.viagrasuperhugesale.com)

Do you really think blog owners who want to build a solid web blog will allow this nonsense? Third, any blog that is deliberately set up with “do follow” URLs in the comments and advertises to SEO forums that they are a “do follow” blog… are not real blogs. They are non-authoritative and built for SEO purposes only. Also, most of the “services” who do all this blog commenting for you do it on ALL worthless blogs. Don’t you think Google and the others notice phony blogs and phony comments? Do you think they are stupid? Do you really think you can fool them?

As for social bookmarking and article syndication, the same principle applies. Namely, creating a bunch of fake posts on a forum, making phony profiles on social sites, or syndicating the same exact article on a bunch of crappy article sites DOES NOTHING POSITIVE, and may even be negative.

Am I saying that these things at their core are not solid SEO tactics and techniques? No, actually they are. The problem I am pointing out is in the execution. It is human nature to want the fast-track, the easy way; and such phony methods serve that end. But, they pollute the Internet with SEO spam. There may have been a time when this sort of “backlink blitz” worked well, but that time is gone. All of these tactics are good only if they are done correctly. What is the correct way? Ahh… that’s for me to know, and you to find out.