Updated October 19, 2019. We no longer support link building. Ask about our Pay-Per-Lead SEO program by calling or clicking the link above.
It’s been a while since I have posted anything on here, as I have been pulled in many different directions and just haven’t had the time to do so. I’m moving to Orange County, California in order to help build our new website (it’s not officially launched yet, so I cannot tell you the URL) and, at the same time, to sign up new clients. But, I feel it is beneficial to all of you to learn about links.
Today, I was speaking with one of our prospective clients (whose site is constantly losing rankings on Google) and he asked me how much each backlink would cost. I gave him the answer and he was surprised that what I quoted him was a few times higher than what his current, so-called SEO company was charging him (I really appreciated his trust in sharing that information with me).
I asked him to send me the most recent report his previous company (ironically, based in India) had sent him. He did. All I had to do was click on the first link on the list and, boom, I landed on a link-spam/link-farm page (http://afaequipments.com/). I’m using a nofollow tag on this link so Google doesn’t penalize us for linking to this page.
Take a look for yourself. At the first glance, it looks like a legitimate business site. But only on the top of the fold. As you scroll down, you see a bunch of nonsensical text with over 150 embedded links in them. My prospective client’s link (who is now our client) also has a link within this page. Google will realize this page is a link-spam page in one-tenth of a second.
Let’s assume this company charges $20/link. Having 150 links on this page means they made $3,000, while giving their clients nothing in return, except for the chance of getting banned by Google.
I picked up the phone, called my my prospective client immediately and explained to him what he was getting from the Indian SEO firm. I compared that with some of the links we had built for one our clients and, a couple of hours later, he signed an agreement with us.
The links on the spam page each cost $20, but have absolutely no value. Now, let me tell you something even more interesting: I saw an ad today on my Facebook page advertising back-links at $0.15 per link. Oh, my God. You can only imagine what kind of links they would be. If I have time to learn more about spammy link-building techniques, I’d certainly research them.
This is not even “black-hat” SEO.
Guys (and ladies), if you want to purchase cheap links, please do yourselves a favor and save your money. Better yet, pay for Adwords instead. At least that won’t get your site flagged by Google.
Link-building is a sophisticated process that requires both the knowledge of SEO and Google algorithms, and has to be done manually and correctly. Otherwise, it will either have no value for you, or will get you penalized.
I’ll offer my consultation services for free to my loyal friends. Leave a comment here or contact me through my Facebook page and ask me your questions. I’ll be happy to help you if I can.
Best,
Ali Husayni
www.Millionairium.com
Great common sense here. Wish I\’d thguoht of that.
Yes reciprocal linking is no longer worth the effort, you\’ve got to provide linking structures that are supported by unique, well-written content distribution. There are a lot of ways to do this, some better than others, but a great one is the ever common, guest blogging. You get one way, relevant links from authority sites.
@Vikas Phonsa
We don\’t pay money to get our links on any sites (we used to do that). Google now recognizes this method and will negate the link or flag your site along with the seller\’s site. But if you want to do it, it\’s an easy way of getting links; you just need to build a relationship with the site that\’s going to give you a link and get the link in a way that doesn\’t trigger Google\’s flag bot. All of this said, I advice against it.
@Vikas Phonsa
Good questions Vikas,
Google is not perfect. They have worked for many years to create a flaw-less algorithm that weeds out spam and ranks sites based on relevance and popularity – both of which are manipulatable. I\’v seen it over the years that black-hat SEO firms constantly exploit legitimate optimization and link-popularity plat-forms and Google has to work hard to identify the spam links from real ones. The line is blurred in most occasions.
Here is an example: how many times should you use your keywords as your text-links? Traditionally, if you had your keywords repeated in all the text-links, your site would rank higher for them. Slowly, Google backed away from this to filter/flag spamming sites. So, it put a bench-mark – every few dozen text-links, you could have your keywords once. Even this was used and abused to artificially rank sites for certain keywords. Now, Google pays very little attention as to how many times your keywords are repeated as your text-links – as long as you have them mentioned once. So, the other links are either ignored or are considered spam.
Everyone thinks that incoming links cannot have negative effect on your site. This is logically correct, because what if your competition gets you bad links? That\’s certainly out of your control. But if you don\’t believe me on this do the following: get 100 links pointing to your site from directories and link-farms for your keyword. Within a month your site will be banned from Google\’s first 10 pages for your keywords.
Google is sophisticated enough to only flag your site for a certain keyword and not for the rest.
Couldn\’t your competition place your link on 100 bad sites and get you banned? Yes, they can and sometimes they do. However, for every poison there is an antidote. Build 1000 good links and the 100 bad links won\’t affect you (at least not as much).
Is this a glitch in Google\’s system?
Yes. But pay attention that Google is caught between trying to catch spam and degrade sites for using spammy techniques and at the same time giving value to good SEO techniques and links in particular – and all of this good stuff can be considered spam if over-used. So, you see, the formula is not perfect and the lines cannot be clear.
Now, to go back to your question… Build links naturally. Don\’t try to do it quick and easy. Link-building is hard and takes expertise and lots of energy and time. Participate in blogs, make relationships, network, become an expert, write articles and press releases, list your site in the directories. Before you know it, your rankings will start to improve. The methods we use and advocate on this blog are hard-proven. We don\’t charge for advice because we want everyone to benefit from our knowledge. We make money because not everyone has the time to learn SEO and professional will need our help. For those of you who cannot afford our services, you can learn it yourself and we\’ll help you do so.
So, how do you get legitimate back links ? Do you have relationships with websites/blogs etc that take money to put links ( to your clients ) on their webpages ? Is this considered legitimate by search engines ?
Also, if my competitor puts a bunch of incoming links to my website, on many bogus websites, can they negatively affect the rankings of my website ? Cause that seems similar to the situation ( regarding in links ) that your article mentions and I find it hard to believe that search engines would punish a website for rogue actions by competitors or others trying to harm a site. If google indeed penalizes a site for bogus in-links, is there a way I can control who links ( in-links ) to my website ?
Thanks in advance.
Vikas
Exactly-Google can never ban you for who link to you(incoming links) but can ban only for bad outgoing links(who you link to) since no one has control over who links to them but one has full control over who they link to.
Thanks…
I am glad you have been so bold in writing a blog for this SEO issue because a lot website could still be damaged by this unscrupulous and deceitful SEO services.
@Ali Husayni Thanks sir for your reply at my post.
Dofollow sites such as dofollow blogs, forums, dofollow social networks and social bookmarking websites are the other great ways to increase website traffic and link popularity. As a link-building expert at Master Google, I should note that, our team gets quality back links from all of the above and the results are great!
@Salman Qamar
Theoretically you are right. But I\’ve seen it more than once that if you get links from TOO MANY bad sites, your rankings will decrease.
@puspa mustikaningkapti
The best way to get quality links is to hire a professional SEO company that is able to \”guarantee\” improvements in your rankings.
Other things you can do include:
1- Directory submissions. Here is a list of good directories to submit your site to:
https://www.millionairium.com/Lead-Generation-Articles/the-best-free-paid-directory-submission-list/
2- Writing Articles and Press Releases for your business. A couple of posts on these subjects:
https://www.millionairium.com/Lead-Generation-Articles/30-best-press-release-distribution-sites-revealed/
https://www.millionairium.com/Lead-Generation-Articles/top-10-article-submission-web-sites/
3- Finding quality blogs that give you do-follow links. (We\’re not one of them).
4- Visiting Forums and getting involved with them.
It is surprising for me that such type of link make a negative impression on seo. It is a good post for beginners (like me) because i was going to buy links from a Pakistani company which is offering Rs.6 per link (14 links in $1 or $.07 per link). You secured me. Thanks.
I agree with the rest of you except the $10 link company. 😀
@floral
Links we generate (with the exception of Directories) cost our clients between $30-120 each – depending on where the links are coming from. Directory links are less expensive.
@VJonDalalStreet
The Page Rank (PR) is most of the times out-dated and not very accurate. We normally don\’t pay too much attention to this number. What we care for is ranks on Google SERP\’s.
I understand you can be penalized for having outbound links to bad neighborhood sites. What I don\’t get is how Google can penalize you for an incoming link. If this was the case, couldn\’t your competitor buy a bunch of bad links and point them at your url?
I am a beginner blogger who finds your address from google adsense ads. When I read some posts about SEO on this blog, like I was the ants that get the sugar. By the time I decided to subscribe to your blog, it\’s because a strong desire to learn and practice of online business by using blogs. Unfortunately I\’m still an amateur so do not intend to take the SEO consultant who would pay is very high. But I want to thank him for his dedication to share your knowledge with a lot of people out there. Success always
Hello Hussaini,
Yes this is a good post and Blog.
Kind Regards.
Zulfiqar Ali.
Skype ID: alizulfiqar52
Thanks for sharing this Ali Husayni.
Not only one Indian SEO firm, doing these link farm methods. Many of them without leaning the SEO in proper manner doing this chap and unforgivable things. This will leads to a bad name for other Indian SEO people too.
I don’t know how they are getting clients. But one thing I can say, who are all wants cheap SEO will get the same Cheap SEO deliverables from the bad SEO persons like this.
Thank you for informative post! $20 per link is not cheap and it is risky as you explained; it is a mistake that need to be learned. I can get the highest quality at only $10 per link.
From my success and failure in SEO, I believe that SEO is all about branding and posting worth sharing contents; This is what I have learned from recent GOogle result pages, most of the top ranking site now are authority/ brand domains and Mut cutt, Jeremy Shoemaker also confirm SEO=Branding in 2011 and beyond!
When we thin SEO as long term success and branding our result will be improved!
All the so called SEO Experts (?) need to read this. Also, I think most of them take advantage of the ignorance of clients who only know \”more links\” means good. Companies don\’t educate clients but keep them in dark so that they earn more. I am almost sure the Indian company referred to must be from Andhra Pradesh, India.
I myself still do not understand how much influence a link to a blog or website, then where should I look for a link if I have to always buy? how much should I buy links for your blog or website I get a page rank? if the pagerank is calculated from the number of backlinks leading to market to your blog / web that means the content is not important.
please give me the enlightenment that I could understand about SEO and hal2 around that support it
Hi,
Could you please check and let us know what is wrong on our site since it is stuck @ PR2 for quite a while.
Thanks
good information, my blog only for fun and learn to write good information for the people (especially in Indonesia). give me advise for my Blog. Thanks.