SEO Backlinks - case of study

[XEOManager]

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[94501]

Hi Luis,

I don't think it's a question of when so much as a question of proportionality.  If most of your link profile is anchor text rich, as with links from most guest blogs and other manipulated links, you lose.  In fact, it is so easy to look at a site's link profile and see the hand of anchor test manipulation that it is not hard to imagine Google's ability to see that as well.  Non-manipulated links are usually the site name, versions of the brand name, words like "here" and "this site." These are generally not the fingerprints of guest blogging. Also, even if you guest blog without anchor text, you have to give a good hard look at the site hosting your blog post and how polluted and spammy that might be. Cutts point is that in guest blogging you're giving yourself the link, so not exactly an external vote of how great your site is.

That said, I've worked on lots of sites with all kinds of spammy links in their profile (that I inherited) and it usually came down to a matter of proportionality and reducing the proportion of questionable links or at least not increasing it.

Best... Mike

[TheeDigital]

All things in moderation.  Submitting to a few local or niche directories is great, submitting to 200k that have nothing to do with your website or business is bad.  The same with guest blogging, try to keep within your subject matter area and on relevant websites and you will be fine, but getting too many keyword rich links on blogs that aren't even in your niche and you will be penalized.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Luis,

Since the launch of the Penguin algorithm in 2012 (and for some time before that), over-doing anchor text has been dangerous. It still works for some sites, but the likelihood of being penalised is greatly increased when commercial or non-brand / non-miscellaneous anchor text outweighs brand / miscellaneous anchor text in a backlink profile.

Directories were a popular way to build links in "the old days", pre-2009 or 2008. Many people had stopped using directories before then as well. As Richard says, too many links from irrelevant directories is a bad thing. It's super easy for Google to notice and either ignore or penalise. I would be very selective with my choice of which directories I wanted to be listed in and would take a very white-hat approach to directories in general. That is, don't get listed in one that you wouldn't want to be listed in even if you received no link or a nofollowed link. Some say that directory links should be nofollowed for safety - I'm not sure that just being listed somewhere with a followed link is really that dangerous, but it's safe to say that using directories for SEO purposes is not a good tactic in 2014.