Link Building FAQ

Here are five of the most common questions the WebDrafter.com staff gets about link building:

What’s a backlink?

Backlinks (incoming links, inbound links, etc.) are incoming links to a website or page. Every time you post to Facebook or tweet a link, you are giving the site a backlink.

What’s their importance in SEO?

The generally accepted theory is that the more backlinks a site has, the better it will rank on Google, Yahoo and Bing. While a good number of backlinks is still needed to rank high on search engines, recent changes have stressed quality over quantity, and sites with original, well-written content have begun to rank higher over ones with thousands of backlinks.

Is there good backlinking vs. bad backlinking?

Yes. One of the more popular, “black hat” tactics involves commenting on blogs and forums with good Google PageRanks (PR). You’ve probably seen these comments, the one that add nothing to to the conversation, are vague or have nothing to do at all with what is being discussed. Many so-called SEO practitioners do this only for the backlink, knowing the good PR gives them a valuable inlink. However, this is nothing more than spam and may hurt rankings (we’ll get to that in a little bit).

If you’re going to post on blogs and forums for a backlink, then find ones that cater to your industry or specialty and have a high PR. Become part of the conversation and offer your input. This way is much more enjoyable as you’ll find pleasure in building links, and much less frustrating to users who comment for enjoyment.

Can backlinks harm SEO efforts?

Yes. In February, JC Penney was punished by Google and lost many of its rankings. JC Penney hired an SEO firm who got them top placements for terms like “bedding” and “area rugs,” but the problem is that these links were done through blog spam and paid links designed to fool Google’s algorithm. WordStream had a great post on this debacle.

Links need to be built naturally and over time to be beneficial to your SEO efforts. You can’t just go on a massive link spree and do thousands of backlinks in a short period. Link expert Eric Ward explained it like this in a recent Search Engine Land post:

If a site launches in response to a disaster, like GulfOilSpill.org, then 4,000 links is to be expected and is totally natural. But if you have a two year old bingo site with 121 links and you suddenly add 4000 new links in a very short period of time, chances are your bingo site will go bye-bye. It’s not likely to have been natural. 

Should I buy links?

It should be noted that paid links don’t refer to advertisements, like those on Google AdWords. They refer to those that are bought and sold only for the PR.

Paid links can quickly give you high Google rankings. However, it’s not recommended you buy links, although there are plenty of sites out there that will gladly sell you one. There are two types of links out there: follow and nofollow. Paid links with the nofollow attribute (pretty much a way to tell search engines, “Don’t follow us”) are OK in Google’s book.

Google looks at paid follow links as cheating, and developers are working constantly to develop tools and ways to find these links. From Google Webmaster Central:

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results. 

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such.

Got link building questions? Get in touch with WebDrafter.com today about our link building services.