Will Testimonial Backlinks Work?

[RafeTLouis]

Hey guys,

I am pretty new to the whole SEO thing.

I did have an idea though.  There are things that I like, IE restaurants in my neighbourhood.

If I did a testimonial for say, my local pizza place that I really like, with a backlink to my site, would that be useful.

IE "Jimmys pizza makes the best pizza in the neighbourhood by far
-RafeTLous president http://www.mybacklink.com"

Assuming the page has good domain authority would that be helpful?

[DirkC]

Unless you're selling pizza's yourself, these links are not going to help you much

This strategy is not really going to work - most sites make links on testimonials and comments nofollow (just to avoid that other webmasters are just going to post comments to create links). Not that nofollow links are necessarily a bad thing (check https://moz.com/blog/the-hidden-power-of-nofollow-links) - but these kind of nofollow links normally add no value.

You might want to check this link https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building and all the resources you can find here: https://moz.com/blog/category/link-building

A lot of reading & studying to do - it might be a relief for you that even experts sometimes get it completely wrong http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-failures

Good luck,

Dirk

[RafeTLouis]

Ok, i'm promoting lawyers.

So I wouldn't post a comment in the comments section.

I would contact the pizza place owner who knows me and say "Hey, I really like your pizza!  I'll do a testimonial if you agree to make the link Follow"

So if I got a follow link for a lawyer website from a pizza place, would that be valuable assuming the pizza place has good domain authority?

[DirkC]

With Penguin in mind, a link like this doesn't look real natural to me. Even if you don't pay for it, it still looks like paid link.

It would be different if this pizza place would have a blog, where they would discuss about their legal troubles with their neighbours, and they would mention what a terrific job your lawyer has done to defend them.

I refer again to the beginner's guide (sorry for that). Link techniques that used to be good and are considered bad practice now are

• Blog comments that are not moderated
• Press releases with optimized anchor text
• Article directories
• Guest post signatures
• Advertorials
• Embeddable widgets
• Infographic embeds
• User profile pages
• Guestbooks
• Forum signatures
• Directories that are not moderated

Source: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building/types-of-links

You also might want to check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en - one of the (negative) examples is quite close to what you would like to do

• Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature, for example:
  _Thanks, that’s great info!
  • Paul
    paul’s pizza san diego pizza best pizza san diego_

My advice would be - don't do it.

rgds

Dirk

[RafeTLouis]

I really appreciate the help!!  Which one on the google page do you think it looks like?

So if I'm promoting a lawyer website, and I get a link from, say a newspaper, the newspaper is not about lawyers, so does that help?

What if I wrote content on everything you need to know if you are making a will, and I get links from retirement homes.  These sites are also not about lawyers, so would this help?

[DirkC]

Hi,

The example I quoted in my reply about Paul's pizza (it's not exactly the same - but quit close)

For the newspaper: if it's just an ad random links (e.g. in the footer) it doesn't look really natural. If the newspaper is featuring an article about a legal issue and it's quoting your law firm in the article, than the link would be quite natural.

For the retirement homes: Google is quite aware that if you're in a retirement home you have entered the last phase of your life; so it's not really unnatural for a retirement home to feature some articles on your final "bucket list" - which could include content on how to make a will. If on these articles they quote your law firm, or if the content is entirely written by your law firm, it would be quite logical to mention the original source (or even better - put a canonical url pointing to your site).

Basically - natural links are quite easy to detect. Just ask yourself: if no link building for SEO purposes existed, would the publisher include this link? If he would, it's almost certain that it's a good link. If he wouldn't, it's not really a good one.

rgds,

Dirk