The story goes that I met a very nice customer who asked me some SEO questions, and then some more and more. He is a subscriber of both Angela’s backlinks and Paul’s Backlinks. I say "nice customer" because I got some "beers" for answering all those questions, lol :D By and by I told him I can build Angela’s and Paul’s backlinks for him (actually I have a link builder to do that) and, he joined… ;)
Anyway, I am thankful to the customer because had he not asked those questions to me, I would not have been able to bore my readers on yet another sunny Saturday! On another note, his questions also made me revisit some of my old SEO articles too! ;)
Btw my "backlink building service" is not public yet, so in case you need it you need it please contact me! ;)
So, this article covers some of the questions he asked me and the answers I gave him. I wrote it with a view to help others in case they have similar queries on search engine optimization or backlink building! That said, it is possible that all my answers are not 100% right. It is even possible that some of them are entirely wrong! That is why I ask you to post a nice comment after you have finished reading this article (and please don’t fall asleep midway)! :D
Question 1: What is the best strategy to roll out the backlinks?
MY Answer: I think you need to read these articles first:
Step 1: Find a niche
Step 2 (OPTIONAL): Make a plan for link building
Step 3: Spread it out by using other traffic generation methods
Step 4: Test and track the performance of your backlinks
TIP: Give importance to nofollow links too
Question 2: It seems they (Angela) give out 30 links and create them (for all customers who outsource link building to Angela) within 7 -14 days, this may be too many links done too quickly in Google’s eyes, get the feeling they may just create all links in one day instead of spreading them out over 2 – 4 weeks (which is probably what I am looking for). How do you guys create the links, do they spread them over time?
MY Answer: It does not matter if you do it (link building) in 1 or 10 days. Since Google™ is not your personal search engine, it does not and cannot devote all the time in picking up your site’s external links (or say, backlinks). In a 24-hour period, Googlebot would devote some time to your site, then move on to next site and so on.
Thus, it is inevitable that by the time Google crawls your site and counts the backlinks you might have built only a few backlinks, say, 15. So, even if you build all the 30 links in a day, the other 15 are not going to be counted until the next crawl. Of course this is just an example!
Also, by the time you actually start building backlinks, not all 30 links are going to work for you! This is because link spammers are almost always the first to jump in and shut down some of these sites with their "questionable link building practices". Whether they do it out of malice or ignorance is something only they know for sure, but the fact remains that on an average, you may be able to build only 24-26 links out of 30, unless you start your link building campaign the very minute the backlink packets arrive!
Next there are blogs that won’t approve your comments instantly, and your links won’t be active until your comments are approved! There are also a few forums that require manual approval from the "forum admin" before you can add links to your forum profile. Thus, once again you get a bit delayed! ;)
So there is really nothing to worry about it UNLESS you are using a bot to build the links. Speaking of "bot, I use an automated software to distribute my "freewares" and yet, Google does not seem to have a problem with the backlinks generated thereby. The reason is again the same – the links are NOT created instantly as you would think – most quality software sites would manually approve your software before listing it in their directories!
So you see, far from building links slowly, you should actually build them as fast as you can! The more you delay, the fewer backlinks you have got to build (due to sites being shut down for spam)! ;-)
Question 3: Isn’t it better to have many different PR sites linking to yours?
MY Answer: While I am not exactly sure on that, I think you maybe right. It is good to have links coming from sites of different PR, barring the PR 1-2 sites of course. More importantly, it is good to have backlinks coming from different sources, such as social bookmarking sites, freeware directories, video sites, etc. The last part of the article In link building it pays to be different will tell you that!
Question 4: And one other thing Arindam, when pointing these links to one’s own site, I am in two minds if I should be pointing them to my money site or to my web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages etc that then point to my money sites. I guess it’s a personal choice, what’s been your experience on these, the way I see it is pointing high pr links to other web 2.0 properties that point to your official money page create a stronger link juice, and also if for whatever reason Google thinks something looks artificial with the links being created, they de-index or lower your rankings , which in this case would be a web 2.0 property which is fine, cause you can slap up another page in no time, but if it had to happen to your main site, this could be an issues, its kind of a way to protect your official money pages.
MY Answer: My views on this is same as the answer I posted for Question#5 of the 6 Ezinearticles Myths Dispelled article! In a nutshell, I point all backlinks to MY sites, that is, sites owned by ME. Why boost the PR of sites that already have high PR and more importantly, are not even owned by me? Now if you call me "selfish", "self-centered" or "stupid" because of that, I can live with it!
As for your "link juice" and "slap" questions, I don’t believe in them. I keep doing crazy things all the time, that too, with impunity. I even have the guts to do something as crazy as this (in sharp contrast to Wikipedia which has kept all its external links nofollow, the last time I checked). After all, if Google can do crazy stuff like counting nofollow links, I guess I am also free to do similar weird stuff, as long as I don’t cross the legal boundary! :D
At one time a SEO guru said that nofollowing external links is the way to do boost website traffic because it pumps the website’s entire "link juice" back to the website’s inner pages instead of transferring them on to external sites; the reason why Wikipedia’s articles rank so high is Google is because it has made all external links nofollow! At one time I believed that and followed Wikipedia.
And next time, yet another SEO guru said if you have too many nofollow links on a page (more than 50% or so), you would be penalized by Google.
Nuttie Guru says, let us stop following all "SEO gurus" and do what we feel like with our sites!
You would think that making all external links "dofollow" would reduce my incoming traffic, but on the contrary, I am noticing a boost in traffic instead! ;)
As for "Google Slap", it is my belief that folks who actually get "slapped by Google" are mainly either-
a) Affiliates using Adwords™ to direct link to their affiliate links, or send people to a dumb squeeze page with no real content around
b) Webmasters "selling" their websites’ pagerank using text links ads
c) Bloggers writing on a pay-per-post basis, or those writing "paid reviews"
d) Bloggers or webmasters putting too many (usually uncloaked) affiliate links on their sites or blogs
In short, sites that are "unfriendly" in Google’s eyes get "slapped" from time to time, and I would be a fool to think the "slap" is even permanent, unless of course the site owners make no honest attempt to adhere to Google’s terms!
Good, content-rich sites getting slapped by Google? Umm, not sure about that! Not saying that those sites are not/won’t be subject to "Google slap", but until I get "slapped" how can I possibly believe it? ;)
Also, in my humble opinion there is nothing called "PR slap". Some people believe that if the PageRank™ of their sites go down it means that they been "slapped by Google". That is wrong. In fact, it is possible that the PageRank of the sites linking to them may have gone down considerably, which in turn affected their sites’ PageRank. It is NOT a "slap"!
I have seen the PageRank of several of my sites going up and down all the time. I would be crazy to think that I have been "slapped by Google" just because the PR of my site has gone down. Similarly, if 3-4 months later Google increases the PR of my sites it would be foolish to believe that the Google has "forgiven" me for my online marketing "sins". Come on guys. We are humans with a thinking brain!
On another note, PR hardly affects traffic; in fact, if your site has enough backlinks pointed to it (high PR backlinks I mean), you will have a steady stream of traffic that would only increase over time even if you don’t update your site for years and/or your site’s PageRank goes down to ZERO! I am not theorizing here but merely stating what I have experienced! ;)
—————–Start of DIGRESSION——————————–
Pagerank™ is Google’s proprietary technique, NOT a web standard, so Google may do what they want with it. In fact there I was reading an interesting article on FreshEgg Blog that Google may even sell rights to their PageRank technology by the year 2011!
Right now it seems none of the links on their blog is working. If the above link does not work then you can read the information from the following screenshot I managed to capture from Google’s cache (the image is very big so please wait for it to load fully)! Additionally, this old article on Pagerank still makes an interesting read for SEO geeks!
—————–End of DIGRESSION——————————–
Question 5: Currently I am thinking of sending all these high PR links (Angela’s backlinks, that is) to my money page, but then again, instead of getting 30 links a month to each page on the money site, I can also spread the 30 links out to say, the money page and three web 2.0 properties (that is, social bookmarking/networking sites), sure the money pages will have less links to them but then pages like Squidoo, Hubpages also get some good links coming to them to help push them up in the SERPS which will help give me multiple exposure on page one. What’s your take on this?
Answer: My take on this is same as the answer to question#4 above!
Question 6: If I want 30 links to go to just one website but different inner url pages, then I can do it as follows:
Priority 1=> Web page 3=> Build 12 links for XX inner page url
Priority 2=> Web page 2=> Build 10 links for YY inner page url
Priority 3=> Web page 1=> Build 8 links for ZZ inner page url
Won’t 12 links to one page, 10 links to another and 8 links to another be too few links for one month? Should not it be 30 links to each inner page url each month? Or is that too many? Will 12 to one page , 10 to another and 8 to another is enough as they are from high PR sites be fine, if so then that’s great.
Answer: It does not matter if a link goes into your homepage or inner page or "back page" (okay that is a term I coined to mean "useless" pages) as long as the domain is same in all cases! There is nothing much absolute about it. You can take one look at the page Angela always links to in her backlink site profiles; she hardly ever links back to her site’s homepage.
But due to the effect of the PR of her "About me" page which is PR5 as of this writing, the PR of her site’s homepage has become PR 4! Not bad at all, if you ask me. In fact such strange things have happened to me as well; I think I even shared it in one of my long boring posts but right now I am too bored to dig it out! ;-)
Question 7 (this one goes to my blog readers): Still reading this article eh? When will you post a nice comment? :D
(But on a serious note, there is one more question that I might post in a future article, if at all possible)
Thanks for the great article Arindam. Form my own experience I came to know that creating linkwheel is the best way to rank well in Google. Then we can use Anjela’s backlink for all those Web2.0 site. All Web2.0 site will have dofollow links pointing to money site.
I have one question for you. If webmaster delete all backlinks created from high PR website then what will happen? Will it have any negative impact on money site?
Good article and information as usual! I stayed awake all the way through it. LOL
Arindam – I’m new to all this. I’m relatively bright, but no overly so. I’m am awash in information. I do subscribe to Angela’s list . . . but now understand it, and it’s value, so much more. Thanks for the great info!
Hi Arindam,
One of the things you say that make so much sense to me is “try it and see”, so that’s exatly what I intend to do.
I’m building some new sites using the Backlink Bully techniques, and I’ve also subscribed to Angela’s packets.
I intend to point all the links to my home page; I’ll give you a report back in a month or so.
Please keep the interesting posts coming – they are anything but boring!
Best wishes,
Bruce
Arindam,
Although I am extremely prone to falling asleep at the keyboard (especially after a long day at my J.O.B.), I have never (so far at least) fallen asleep reading one of your informative (and amusing) posts.
Keep up the good work.
With all the talk about backlinks, I find it interesting that no one mentions the “elephant in the room” –
Peter Drew’s BruteForce SEO…
I have extremely mixed feelings about that approach. On the one hand it epitomizes everything wrong with the Internet.
e.g.- the proliferation of junk sites and pages of useless links in the SERPs
On the other hand I must admit to a morbid curiosity as to how powerful it might be…
Very curious as to your opinions on it.
Cheers,
Ken
Thanks everyone for their nice comments :)
@ Ken,
I wouldn’t want to comment on the Brute force seo software, as I have not purchased it (and probably won’t ever). In fact I have not purchased a single SEO item of Peter Drew till date (I hope that is a “good enough” answer).
Yeah that guy is very good at creating buzz. I have been watching him right since he started posting WSOs on the old wf. That is why he is able to sell so many copies. After all, most people buy stuff with their “emotional brain” ;)
@Bruce,
What is Backlink Bully? Very funny name :)
A FIVE STAR rating Arindam for posting this comprehensive article about (SEO) Search Engine Optimization and the importance of understanding the basics of linking.
Thanks again for your educational site.
Michael Searles
@Michael,
Glad you liked it. BTW, you have not predicted my “luck”…yet! ;) (kidding)
Below is a distillation of some extensive statistical testing conducted by a respected professional marketer and SEO researcher. Each finding has been independently corroborated by at least one other researcher doing their own independent statistical testing.
1) All inbound links are good and the more the better.
2) You can never have too many links and none will do you harm (bad company just doesn’t help).
3) High authority domains do generally bring more link juice than low ones. However, PR is only an approximation of authority and is updated infrequently (quarterly at best).
4) Most other off-page factors (including “relevance”) are not significant statistically – they may be correct, but in practice their impact is swamped by the dominant effect of link volume and authority.
The above findings support Arindam’s advice completely.
I have paid plenty for my SEO experience. You would be better advised to save that expense by just following Arindam’s advice and ignoring the other siren calls.
Steve
@Arindam –
PS
a) There are some recent suggestions that outbound link rationing no longer has much effect. Worth testing?
b) An article debunking on-page myths next?
@Steve
Wow. Talk about crazy coincidence, lol. Or maybe all wise seo geeks think alike ;)
I got into Angel’s link program recently. Without reading it I never would have thought about her methods. Very interesting approach and cheap. ;)
I agree with Greg re: Angela.
Brilliant, but man is it labor-intensive…
(Although she is loosely connected to 2 other backlinkers (on the Warrior Forum – can’t remember their names right now).
One does his own different links (I think about 50 per month), the other has some sort of semi-automated process that can be applied to Angela and friend’s links.
All are fairly inexpensive.
Being lazy, I signed up for Bruteforce Linking Loophole.
Unless you can afford to outsource it, (and pay for a 2nd license) –
its shall we say tedious.
Fairly automated, but if you were doing a lot of keywords for a lot of sites…
Is it really better than let’s say –
Unique Article Wizard?
I just don’t know…
As to results –
too early to say.
What I find kind of funny/sad is that some of these gray/black hatters, become so obsessed with the number of backlinks and dominating the SERPs; that they stop talking about earnings.
Hmmmm…
What good does it do you to dominate page one, if there hasn’t been a PPC ad on it for that keyword –
for the past 10 years!?
Bragging rights?
@Ken and Greg
Yes it IS labor intensive, but even though I have outsourced some, I prefer to do the rest myself so that I can keep myself updated with that stuff! ;)
BTW, if you want to use my backlink builder you can contact me. My rates are cheaper than that of Angela or Paul! ;)
Speaking of automation, I am all for automation wherever possible. Having said that, the line needs to be drawn somewhere. There are stuff that must be automated for higher profits (like autoresponders, membership creation, etc.) and then there are stuff that are best left manual or semi-manual, like article writing, link building, squidoo, etc. We all need to use our discretion in these matters! :)
>>Bragging rights?
Hehe, actually the problem with most IMers (a year ago you could count even me too) is that we get too technical and analytical when approaching such stuff. You can build links for a week and then you get impatient and curious “Oh, wonder how well my site is faring”. However 1 week is too early to gauge the power of SEO. SEO traffic is something that only gets better with time, just like wine. I would say, wait 1 month minimum before checking any results at all! I have said it so many times but people keep doing the same mistake again and again. Cannot help it! ;)
Another thing is that newbies mostly focus on building MFA sites rather than good content rich sites. It is not that they cannot, they either feel that they cannot build “good sites” for they are “newbies” or maybe they are plain lazy!
Then they get too technical when building backlinks:
“Hmm, if I use xx keyword in anchor texts I would rank for it.”
“Is long tail keywords better than short tail ones”
To an extent anchor texts CAN help, but if your site does not have quality, keyword rich content, hmm…
IMO backlinks do half the job, the other half being content. You don’t need to build anchor text links for each and every keyword you wish to rank for, IF your site has good keyword rich content.
Like I have never built backlinks for this blog with “namecheap coupon code” keyword but I consistently keep ranking for it (without quotes) in Google, first page rankings at that. There are so many such instances I could quote but I guess I don’t want to write a long boring comment ;)
If you don’t wish to get too technical, why not devote a single anchor text link to a minimum of 3 packets of Angela (you may need more if your niche is very competitive)? See if you don’t get ranked for the other related, long-term keywords too!
I know many will disagree with me, saying content does not matter, backlinks are all that matter. Well, no arguments with them. I say what I see, and like everyone else I learn with time!
Google webmaster tools has added several different stats you should take advantage of, like the keywords you are ranking for (the keywords through which people are finding your site), the position you are at for these keywords, the CTR rate for each keyword, the number of backlinks you have per url, etc. A good reason for submitting your sitemap to Google and keeping track of the data. ;)
http://flexiblewriter.com/getting-real-about-backlinks-part-1
Speaking of content you don’t need to build a huge content site at once. Start with 10 articles, get some traffic, analyze your income, and outsource the rest if feasible! :)
As for backlinks, no matter what X guru says or Y guru says, you should take nothing at face value. Test, test, test. Testing pays big dividends! :)
One more thing: if you want to rank for “money” keywords here is a free guide (or you can read Chris Rempel’s reports too):
http://flexiblewriter.com/finding-a-profitable-niche-seems-to-be-the-most-difficult-part
Great stuff, I just bought your backlinkin software btw and it was really awesome! thanks a lot
I take that back (about me being lazy). ;-)
I don’t mind working, but I just don’t want to replace one mind-numbing job with a mind-numbing business. ;-)
(At least over the long-run.)
I agree with what you say about content –
which brings up one of my favorite Rants.
(Hmmm- how much ranting will A allow before blacklisting me…?)
Anyway – the Topic is:
How people take the Facts and make totally unfounded conclusions, and run with them.
Two examples –
1) In one of StomperNet’s Videos –
http://www.stomperblog.com/warning-advanced-seo-technique-does-not-work/,
I think (imho) that they totally shredded the concept of google using LSI (latent semantic indexing).
Does that mean the the principle of related (synonomic) content is dead?
Of course not!
It just means – stop worrying about it.
If an intelligent 6 year old can understand that your article is about a dinner fork, not a fork in the road –
then the search engines will be just fine.
2) The lastest Hot Buzz-
Pagerank of Backlinks is All-
whether they come from sites in related themes is – Irrelevant.
(Or so they say.)
But even if that is The Truth (for now), what happens when the big G fine-tunes its algorithms a bit more (and they will, that’s a given) to lower the weighting of non-relevant backlinks (another G-Slap coming)?
Whose sites will surge up?
Those who were getting backlinks from related theme sites (as well as other non-related ones).
So again stick to common-sense principles and you will survive.
Q. Do you know what one Google insider called the Google Slap?
A. A “tax on stupidity”. ;-)
—————————————
By the way I am most curious about your-
“…backlink builder you can contact me…” remark
Hi Ken,
Bring lazy is nothing wrong (I am lazy too), but if a person is both lazy and stupid then no one can rescue him. IM is all about working smarter and not harder, so for that purpose we do need some automation tools anyway. Not all automation tools are useful though, and some are downright harmful, the “friend adder” softwares for twitter or myspace are examples. ;)
Rants are fine as long as you stay on topic and..the rant is useful. Even I rant once in a while. ;)
About the backlink builder, I meant you can outsource the backlink packets of Angela and Paul to me if u want. Contact me with your details: http://nuttiehelpdesk.com/
Wonder how could Alexa collect my site data when I have banned their robot from my site. Hmm :)
PS. Another good source of fast info-
Alexa.com
e.g.-
http://alexa.com/siteinfo/flexiblewriter.com#keywords
sorry about that link, i didn’t realize you were exclusding alexa
may i ask why?
maybe alexa can use the pre-site data –
by tracking all their outbound links and correlating where it is all going?
Hi Ken,
No need to apologize. :) I banned their bot because it is one big bandwidth eater, which won’t have been a problem if it gave me any considerable benefit in return. Another reason for blocking them is that I don’t want them to keep archives of my sites lol. In case u don’t know, ia_archiver is a common bot for alexa, amazon and wayback machine. I think I mentioned it in the seo meta tags article :)
http://flexiblewriter.com/decoding-seo-meta-tags
Anyway, I bookmarked your link. It is another interesting proof that you don’t need to build anchor text links for every single keyword you want to rank for. As you know, ppl in this industry keep asking for proofs and screenshots all the time (thank goodness I don’t sell info products :D )
@Alex,
Thanks. I am not surprised you get those same questions, lol! Betcha you also get questions on duplicate content too. I must confess that answering same questions again and again tends to get boring, so that is why I post them all on my blog. Next time someone asks those questions again, I know where to send them (and u know too)! ;)
Great post with excellent answers. I often get these types of questions relating to backlinks.
I’ll refer your post to others.
Alex
Hey Arindam.
Thanks for these six Q&A’s – this is some good information that debunks a lot of the myths that are spread around the net by those that either don’t know any better or don’t do it themselves to actually learn what works and what doesn’t. I appreciate the fact that you are firm in your responses with what you have actually experienced while not being afraid to say “I think that is true” if it’s something that you’ve not actually experienced or researched.
Thanks for an excellent post.
Hi Arindam,
Been meaning to ask you –
How do you implement your “do follow” policy for positive multiple contributors?
Is it done by hand, or some easier / automated way?
Thanks
@Ken
Lucia’s LinkLove : http://money.bigbucksblogger.com/
You know it is one of my fav plugins (apart from YARRP). Why? It has not been updated for years, and is yet compatible with all the wp versions I have used it so far. It is one plugin that never gave me one damn trouble..yet :)
Arindam
P.S. Sorry for the delay in reply
I think links are just like friends. The more diverse the better and the higher functioning or ranking the better too.
I’m sure links building is not an exact science and it is evolving all the time. The fact is that building back links form dofollow sites will benefit your serps. Just do it!