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6 Types of Backlinks You Should Avoid

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SEO is constantly evolving but one thing seems to remain constant over time – Backlinks! Backlinks are the main backbone of SEO and it has played a major role in the way the relevancy of a content/site is ranked on search engines and as such has been considered very important in SEO. But not every backlink strategy is helpful, while some strategies could help you gain quality backlinks and rank for a certain keyword, other strategies will only get you penalized.

Backlink is a major ranking factor for websites on Search engines but Google and other search engines changed the game when they said its is no more the number of backlinks that points to a site rather the quality and variety of the backlinks that matters. However, not every backlink is helpful for your website. After Google penguin updates, many techniques for getting backlinks became illegal, so today in this article i want to show you the 6 types of backlinks you must avoid so as not to get penalized by Google or other search engines.

6 Types of Backlinks You Should Avoid

6 Types of Backlinks You Should Avoid

Exchanged Links

After penguin updates, Google has started to penalize websites that excessively exchange links. With link exchange, you are not only under risk of being penalized by Google, these links can also drive your visitors away from your website because Internet users tend to follow links. Even though there are workarounds to avoid Google penalties when exchanging links,I would not recommend link exchange. Usually, you can’t get relevant link that would boost your rankings in link exchange, but you can get penalized.

Paid Links

In its quality guidelines, Google has stated that paid links are type of search results manipulations and therefore, websites that buys links will be penalized. Google has blacklist of websites that sell links. If Google finds a blacklisted website linked to your website, you will get penalized. Also, it’s very hard to find relevant links for sale, so buying links is not worth the risk.

Comment Spam

Posting comments on relevant blogs can be useful to drive traffic to your website. They are also useful for your website rankings (although their value is low), but posting comments on a wrong places can harm your website’s ranking. Before posting your comment you should check these things:

1. Number of comments (avoid blogs with lots of comments)

2. Are comments moderated (avoid blogs that don’t moderate comments)

3. Does blog lists recent comments (recent comments listing creates site-wide links.)

You should also make sure your blog is protected from comment spam to prevent spammers linking to bad sites, which would hurt your website’s rankings.

Site-wide Links

Google hates site-wide links. Although, site-wide links usually don’t result in penalty (if they are not on penalized site), they will warm your website’s rankings, especially for keyword used as link anchor text.

Link Directories

Submitting your website to link directories usually don’t  result in penalty. However, these links are almost certainly useless. Relevancy of these links is very low because of number of different links in directory. Even reputable directories like DMOZ are useless. I saw that in directory many categories even don’t get Page ranks. So avoid any type of automated link directory submissions.

Profile Links

Although it’s very easy to get link back from various social network profiles, they don’t carry any value (and you’re risking penalization by Google). You may only include links to your website on social networks that you actually use, so your friends can easily reach your site. If you plan to open account only to link to your website, don’t waste your time!

Must Read: How to get quality backlinks from Google+, LinkedIn and Tumblr

Conclusions:

Avoid the 6 types of backlinks discussed above so as not to get penalized by the search engines. I have always encouraged manual and natural backlinks in this blog, publish quality contents and get natural backlinks for it, avoid any sort of automated backlink strategy, it won’t help you rank high, it will only bring you troubles from search engines. The relevancy of a web content is not determined by the number of backlinks anymore but by the quality and variety of backlinks pointing back to that content.

I hope you find this article interesting enough to share with your folks, use the share buttons to share this article with your friends so as to ward them to avoid the above listed types of backlinks. Let me hear what you think about the 6 types of backlinks to avoid, use the comment box below to share your views about this topic. Remember to subscribe to my RSS feed.

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Comments

  1. Interesting post. Bojan, its not only comment spams but the links from comment are not valued. Google looks for links from different domain names, different ip address linked with different anchor text. Because we are bound to use our name and the link is placed anchored with that name. So a huge number of links anchored on your name is valued very less by Google. This is my view, but will be happy if you have some resource to prove it wrong, I’d really appreciate.

  2. Hi Bojan,
    I don’t quite share your view of the things in this post. I agree that there are links we want to avoid put I don’t think that directories or exchanged links are a bad thing. As long they are from relevant sites with similar content I see no problem and directories can be used on a second level of backlinks (check out for example Pat Flynn’s link building strategy).

    I never heard about the fact of being penalized by Google for profile links. Have you got any further information on this?

    PS: Your CommentLuv plugin seems to have some styling erros, don’t know if it’s only me but maybe you could check? ;-)

  3. Google will value few quality links from multiple domains than a million links from a domain, they will compress it and see it as just one. Thank you for your contribution.

  4. I just have to say, great post… Your insight on this topic has helped me a lot and I can take a few pointers from you when writing my own stories and blogposts and stuff.

  5. Hi Bojan ,

    As far as the post is concerned you have done a great job mate . This post will help those newbies who spend more money on building links from spammers and bots rather than spending them on getting a good host , premium theme and essential plugins . Yo! Great Job .

    Regards ,
    Navneet

  6. Hi Bojan,

    Be smart. Comment spam is a turn off and quite repelling to readers so you know Google frowns on this approach. Intend to make an impact wherever you comment to grow quality backlinks to your website.

    Thanks for sharing the helpful tips!

    Ryan

  7. Profile links will only increase your backlinks but that doesn’t mean that iw will help your search engine rankings. Profile links have been devalued by Google and other search engines. You can use them to diversify your link profile and get a few links with generic anchors to diversify your anchor texts even more. In conclusion i would say, have them in your link building strategy, but don’t rely on them to give you good rankings

  11. Yeah ok, that sounds like a good compromise. It’s obvious that a variety of links makes the better profile than a bunch of exchanged links only. I guess the the key to it is not the link “building” but the link “strategy”

  15. Google gives greatest value to the first link from one domain. Every next value carry less weight.
    Thanks for comment!

  16. Recently, I did a quick test. I have account on Seomoz.org, which is ultra-authority website. My profile is indexed by Google, had Pagerank 3 on last update and link is do-follow. Rankings for my main keyword increased only by one position when I pointed this link to my website! (and my competition is not very strong)
    Using profile link is simply not worth it because:
    1. As far as I know, Seomoz gives you the strongest profile link. Although it helps a bit, you have to earn 200 points before it gets do-follow. It took me 4 months to get 200 points. You can earn many more, even stronger links in that time. Other, weaker profiles simply won’t help you.
    2. Some people reported that their rankings dropped after they got 100+ links from profiles.
    3.Most of the profile links are nofollow, so you’re wasting your time :(

    If you’re active on social networks do include link on your profile to help your friends getting to your website, but don’t rely on profile links for link-building… and thanks for commenting!

  18. You have nicely guided the viewers on back linking.I want to ask you if page rank of website helps significantly in coming up in the google search.Some says these pagerank is not of much use- is it correct…

  19. Hi Bojan

    Yeah you are right , one must not use social network only to promote his site. I think Organic traffic is the best way to generate the income online. Even google adsense has the higher payout on organic search. Link directories are the waste of time.
    Keep up the good work

  20. This is surely a good article Bojan thanks for sharing it
    these are some types of backlinks that everyone should avoid thanks for sharing !
    I really find this post useful Have a great day !

  24. Am glad you found it interesting and useful, thanks for visiting and commenting, i hope you come back always for such interesting contents. You can subscribe to my RSS feed as well.

  26. Hey bro i agree with your points but question from my side if we have profile links do really it hurt what about having our website link on pinterest,twitter and youtube.some source really pass PR juice why we need to miss them

  28. Some profile links do pass link juice, but not much juice is passed at all. It is not worth your time. One good guest post will help you much more and it takes around the same effort.
    Thanks for comments people!

  29. I agree with Nwosu. I have also noticed that most profile links are no follow hence there is no use of such links. I think Linkedin is do follow ( correct me if I’m wrong)

  31. Hahaaa.. Bojan! It looks all links are bad now. I wonder if there is really any good strategy to build up links. I know Google likes only natural links.

    Currently, guest blogging has emerged as a good source of quality links, and doubt how long it will work. I smell, Google will come up with another Ox or Bull update to penalize these links too! :(

  32. Author’s Rank may soon become the major thing in SEO…i smell Google wants to improve their social media Google+ by forcing every author to claim their authorship.

  33. I believe link building will turn into providing exceptional services and content, so ultra authority sites like CNN, Wall Street Journal … will link to you because you are exceptional.
    Also, I agree that Google do everything possible to make G+ more popular, so I agree that AuthorRank will play major role in future of search.

  37. There are very few blogs that matches the title very well. About Link directories, I believe niche directories still play some role. No offence though even if it doesn’t create any value. And as you guys said, G+ is trying to force every Author to be on their site. Although that looks as selfish move, they know that authors keep writing and so G+ will get more activity going. Let’s see how much value it brings to the table.

  41. lol. i laughed when you said about the Bull or Ox update. it also made me wonder what kind of “animal” again that Google will use next time

  45. I like what you share now. I hope everything you’ve shared to get a good response from the visitors flickr. Thank you so much.

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