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6 Types of Backlinks You Should Avoid

April 17, 2013 By Bojan 45 Comments

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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Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Internet Tagged With: backlinks, Google, search engines, SEO

Comments

  1. Suresh Khanal says

    April 17, 2013 at 6:41 am

    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. Robert Weller says

    April 17, 2013 at 8:15 am

    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. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 17, 2013 at 8:31 am

    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. kunleMyk says

    April 17, 2013 at 1:38 pm

    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. Navneet says

    April 17, 2013 at 1:56 pm

    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. Ryan Biddulph says

    April 17, 2013 at 2:37 pm

    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. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 17, 2013 at 2:41 pm

    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

  8. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 17, 2013 at 2:42 pm

    I am glad you found it useful….thanks for your comment.

  9. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 17, 2013 at 2:43 pm

    The best link building strategy remains natural backlinks built from the quality of your content.

  10. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 17, 2013 at 2:45 pm

    Adding quality comment to a quality content will not only improve your backlink but will also drive traffic to your site.

  11. Robert Weller says

    April 17, 2013 at 2:53 pm

    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”

  12. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 17, 2013 at 3:16 pm

    Surely, i am glad you understand it better now. Mind sharing the link building strategy that has worked for you here with me?

  13. Robert Weller says

    April 17, 2013 at 3:24 pm

    Sure, it’s “THE one” from Pat Flynn which you can find here http://bit.ly/ZngvX5

  14. Robert Weller says

    April 17, 2013 at 3:26 pm

    Sure, it’s “THE one” from Pat Flynn you can find on his blog here http://bit.ly/ZngvX5

  15. Bojan says

    April 17, 2013 at 3:48 pm

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

  16. Bojan says

    April 17, 2013 at 4:07 pm

    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!

  17. Bojan says

    April 17, 2013 at 4:10 pm

    Thanks to everyone who commented!
    I appreciate your time to share your opinion with us.

  18. Karnal Singh says

    April 17, 2013 at 5:28 pm

    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. Ashish says

    April 17, 2013 at 6:43 pm

    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. anis says

    April 17, 2013 at 8:23 pm

    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 !

  21. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 18, 2013 at 12:17 am

    Checking it out….and will comment about it when am done.

  22. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 18, 2013 at 12:18 am

    Already checking it out…

  23. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 18, 2013 at 12:21 am

    Yes page rank used to matter a lot but in 2013 i am thinking Google is going to implement author rank and give it a higher effect than page rank.

  24. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 18, 2013 at 12:25 am

    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.

  25. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 18, 2013 at 12:59 am

    Thanks for your comment.

  26. Shameem says

    April 18, 2013 at 6:21 pm

    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

  27. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 18, 2013 at 7:34 pm

    The truth is that most profile links are nofollow and as such cannot contribute to the PR of your site.

  28. Bojan says

    April 19, 2013 at 2:28 pm

    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. Anish Sangamm says

    April 20, 2013 at 7:34 pm

    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)

  30. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 20, 2013 at 10:33 pm

    I totally agree with you, yes you can obtain a dofollow link from LinkedIn by simply following the guide i published a while ago on this blog post http://netmediablog.com/how-to-get-quality-backlinks-from-google-linkedin-and-tumblr

  31. Suresh Khanal says

    April 21, 2013 at 3:46 am

    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. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 21, 2013 at 6:36 am

    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. Bojan says

    April 21, 2013 at 5:06 pm

    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.

  34. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 21, 2013 at 5:54 pm

    Thanks Bojan for stopping by….thanks for your contribution to Netmediablog.

  35. Yash Vardhan says

    April 23, 2013 at 9:26 am

    Greaat tips, we should also avoid forums that teach black hat techniques. anyways, will try to follow these tips!!

  36. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 23, 2013 at 11:21 am

    I am glad you found it useful and thanks for your contribution about the blackhat forums

  37. Karthic Gurnani says

    April 26, 2013 at 7:34 am

    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.

  38. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    April 26, 2013 at 10:34 am

    Thanks Karthic Gurnani for your awesome contribution i hope you return always to Netmediablog to add more value via your comments.

  39. Karnal Singh says

    May 15, 2013 at 4:12 pm

    Link building is important for maintaining good reputation for the website.You have covered donots of link building very well…

  40. Nwosu Mavtrevor says

    May 15, 2013 at 7:24 pm

    Thanks for your comment…

  41. marilyn cada says

    July 8, 2013 at 2:04 pm

    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

  42. Jeremiah Chi says

    August 11, 2013 at 7:43 pm

    Thanks alot for the link building advice.
    Now i know the backlink strategies to avoid.

  43. Professor Bob Boyd says

    September 12, 2013 at 10:03 pm

    Thanks for the tips Bojan! The Link Directories and Profile Links I still do. Its getting hard to create backlinks now.

  44. poornima says

    December 12, 2013 at 11:36 am

    Thank you for your post. Can you Please tell me how we can find spam comments…

  45. Belajar says

    August 18, 2014 at 2:01 am

    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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