Is back linking still effective?

[cbielich]

I know after the Panda update it seems that back linking is a no no but its hard to believe that its not still effective. What about paid links? Are there any trusted sites out there? Thoughts?

[DesignbysoapLtd]

I'm not sure what you mean here, backlinking isn't a no-no, you just need to be more careful about where you're getting your links from and the anchor text you use. Personally I'd stay away from paid links, but there are a huge number of trusted sites out there.

Aim for high quality links from sites that are in your industry or niche, use Domain Authority to gauge the power and trust of a site and make sure you're varying your anchor text (in fact, just use your brand name as the anchor text). Use content to get your links too wherever possible - get an infographic designed, produce a useful tool, or write an in-depth, well researched article to try and gain links. You can either use your content to guest blog on high quality, relevant sites, or publish it on your own site and promote via social media and other avenues to encourage natural linking to your site.

Here's a post I wrote on creating content that might help:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

and this is an excellent article on link-building for those new to it:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

Hope that helps!

[RankStealer]

John

Why have you suggested to only use "brand name as the anchor text"?

I don't understand that?

[DesignbysoapLtd]

Hey Nicola,

For me it's about keeping the backlink profile looking natural - if your backlink profile is made up of more than 50% direct match anchor text (as in your target keyphrase) and it matches your title and H1, I would imagine you'd see an over-optimisation penalty. I think Google is getting much smarter at figuring out what links are there to manipulate rankings, and direct match anchor text links are a pretty strong signal of that. Sure they help you rank in the short term, but over do it and you'll almost certainly be punished for it. I don't think people ever (or very rarely) use your target keyphrase anchor text naturally, they're far more likely to use your brand name. So by using your brand name for links, you're still increasing your overall domain authority and gaining the benefit of strong links, whilst at the same time keeping your backlink profile looking natural and strengthening your site against future updates.

Not only this, but it's been fairly well established that Google prefers to rank brands, and brand name links are a strong brand signal, along with high quality content and robust about us and contact pages.

We only use brand name links for our client along with high quality on-site content and well optimised sites, and we've got them ranking for some exceptionally competitive keyphrases. Whereas I know lots of other SEO's who use lots of direct match anchor text links and while they were ranking very well, the majority of them suffered quite badly after the over-optimisation penalties and the Penguin update, as well as receiving GWT warnings.

Perhaps suggesting to ONLY use brand name anchor text links is a little much, but I would certainly use them more than I ever would direct match keyphrase anchor text. I also use random linking phrases such as 'read more', 'click here' or the overall subject of the content I'm linking to, again to keep the backlink profiles looking natural.

Hope that explains what I was saying a little bit : )

[RankStealer]

Now that you have explained it in more detail I would say I agree with you.  I'm currently working on a site and I am getting some links with specific anchor text such as [portrait photographer] or even [London Portrait Photographer] as I don't think that is unreasonable or out of the ordinary from what a "normal" person would do, I'm also getting some links with solely their brand name: probably 50:50

But most of the links my client already has are of their brand name (which makes my job a little more complicated as the brand name doesn't say what they do as a business, neither does their domain name) so if I couldn't use ANY anchor text I would be nervous.

But your explanation and reasoning seems sound to me! thumbs up

[DesignbysoapLtd]

Thanks Nicola, glad I could help : )

It is scary to avoid using anchor text links - but bear in mind you can always include your keyphrase around a brand name link, I think there's some merit to this as Google will use surrounding text in the absence of anchor text.

[RankStealer]

Thanks John.

[cbielich]

What are some of these trusted back linking sites?

[cbielich]

Here is another idea that I have come up with that I have not seen come up in discussion. In google chrome you can connect with your gmail account so all your bookmarks can be across all your computers. Any thought on google reading these bookmarks as well and a positive to your site. I have a "bookmark us" on my site for some time and after looking at that I started to wonder if google would be using that as well.

[DesignbysoapLtd]

It depends on your industry / niche - for example if you're in the web design industry, a site like sixrevisions or designfloat would be ideal.

To help you with your linkbuilding, here's a phenomenal post by Jon Cooper:

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

That should give you more than enough tactics to start getting some decent, trusted links.

Hope that helps you Cesar

[cbielich]

You are not kidding, that post from pointblank is amazing, so many ideas I had no idea I could do thanks