What's been your experience with profile link-building?

[skycriesmary72]

What have your experiences been? Short Term? Long Term? There isn't a lot written about it, and I'm wondering where it falls in the order of things.

I was very hesitant to jump in, but have launched a few campaigns, both for local geo targeting phrases, and national accounts. Surprisingly, I've seen a surge in rankings, but also wonder how short lived they will be.

I've noticed the links still don't come up in tools like open site explorer, but I'm able to find them when searching for the unique username I used while building the profiles.

The sites I'm listing on have no relevance to industry, unless by chance, although the PR's I'm using are all 4 or higher.

Is this considered gray hat?

[AlanBleiweiss]

Consider the source. Is it a profile on a site that's highly relevant to the target web site?  Is the link in the profile tagged with a nofollow?  How popular is the site the profile is on? How well optimized is the site? How well optimized is the profile page?  How far down the link structure is the profile section?

All of these are factors in determining whether it's worth it to even bother if you're just looking for links.  And even with all other factors considered, profile pages should always only be considered a minor link building opportunity.

[skycriesmary72]

It's not relevant to the target web site, but the PR's are all 4 or higher, and do follow's. The anchor links are placed in the bio or signature section.

Again, I was very skeptical before the campaigns started, but wanted to test it out, and so far, the results have been very good. My main question is if this boost will stick.

[AlanBleiweiss]

The PRs are all 4 or higher? really?  You called Google and asked?  Because if you didn't, you're relying on that mythical TBPR (ToolBarPageRank) that is a) wildly inaccurate b) several months old c) a shiny object that routinely causes people to lose focus on what matters regarding SEO.

Whether the boost will stick is not something any of us can know - every site, every link and every market is unique.  All I know is in my own personal experience working with clients, it's not a high quality long term strategy, and if it is done, should only be a small portion of the overall link building effort.  If too many links come from this source type, search engines will see a big red flag and you will suffer as a result.

[skycriesmary72]

Alan, thanks for your input, it's appreciated. I can imagine the only way you'd suffer for it is Google dropping any kind of juice that your getting from such links. They can't put you in the sandbox, as what would stop competitors from doing that too each-other?

[AlanBleiweiss]

In theory, you're correct - the premise being they'd not want to risk penalizing innocent site owners.

In reality, Google makes mistakes all the time.  Some bounce back, others don't.

Also, Google is constantly changing their rules.  And based on rule-changing patterns I've studied over the past several years, if a technique even appears to be in the shady category today, it's very likely to be a primary target tomorrow.  Because of this, I prefer to focus on methods and tactics I believe to have a much more resilient long-term potential.