Backlinks, how and where to get backlinks, should you buy backlinks, where to buy backlinks, backlink attributes, link building methods…all discussed here
LAST UPDATED 4/12/2012: This page used to be a rant on a crappy backlinks related product I bought but has now been rewritten as part of the true content curation people should be doing to the content on their sites as they get bigger.
Hopefully after reading this you will have a better understanding about link building, why you need to get backlinks, how get backlinks, effective backlink building, and so on..
What is a backlink, what are Backlinks?
In simple terms, backlinks are like votes from other web entities stating that the linked-to url is about “something”. The BETTER your votes quality is deemed the higher your rankings are. Votes quality can be anything, could be high PR backlinks, relevant backlinks from trusted websites,or whatever. Nobody knows exactly what backlinks will be deemed the best kinds to get, we’re all just amateur/master guessers.
Where do backlinks come from?
INbound backlinks , also known as IBLs, which are Links In from other websites to your own website
OutBound LinkS , also known as OBLS- which are “votes” or links you send out to other websites. These could be affiliate links, references to your Twitter account, links to other websites of yours (AKA cross-linking) .. just anything you link to that is not inner linking.
Inner-linking, also known as inter-linking is where you reference something on your own website.
Backlinks, also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, are incoming links to a website or web page. In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node.[1]
Search engines often use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the most important factors for determining that website’s search engine ranking, popularity and importance. Google’s description of their PageRank system, for instance, notes that Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.[2] Knowledge of this form of search engine rankings has fueled a portion of the SEO industry commonly termed linkspam, where a company attempts to place as many inbound links as possible to their site regardless of the context of the originating site.
Backlink attributes..
When we use the term attributes in regard to link building we are referring to NoFollow and DoFollow attributes, meaning that a NoFollow link tells the search engines one thing whereas a DoFollow backlinks tells them to treat it in a different way.
In the marketing forums you will hear lots of talk of people only focusing on DoFollow backlinks and totally disregarding the NoFollow backlinks, and this is a bad idea.
NoFollow backlinks can pass traffic trust and Page Rank and are a required mix of link attributes you should seek. Many of the more trusted and stable content directories are NoFollow link-givers, and since they retain their link juice by not DoFollowing they tend to pas s ore trust than link juice.
Link juice basically means “power” behind a given link to another website.
I recommend that you focus on building backlinks without regard for the follow attributes as it gives your inbound link portfolio a healthy mix, however, when getting backlinks form DoFollow entities, your focus should be to get traffic from those links, not just link juice.
Are backlinks necessary for a successful website?
Yes, because traffic has to come from somewhere, no website will exist as an island, but please know this… they are not the end-all be-all for having a successful website. They are not the end-all, be-all website promotion tool. If you get backlinks via email newsletters, that will bring traffic to your site, and even if that email newsletter site referenc eisn’t an indexed link, it still brought traffic.
We need site/link references to be made known to someone, something in order for that site to exist. A website basically does not exist unless someone knows about it.
2 Main schools of thought for building backlinks…
- Get backlinks that bring targeted traffic
- Get backlinks that raise rankings, despite the relevancy of the link sources
1- Getting backlinks that bring traffic to your websites requires some brainpower, and doing this has minimal up-front value, less immediate effects, but it’s a method with long-lasting effects.
Why? Because in order to ascertain where to get backlinks that would bring traffic, you will have to find related websites and find ways to get backlinks from them via blog comments, guest article writing, blog roll additions, and sometimes even by linking to them and receiving a pingback if your site and the linked-to site are blogs.
2- Get backlinks that raise rankings, sooner rather than later….
This is where article marketing, or content syndication comes into play. There’s dozens of ways to build backlinks in massive volume, creating what is known as link velocity, and many times these methods get DoFollow and NoFollow backlinks.
One other thing I would like to add here is… if you submit an article to an article directory and build backlinks to it for a while, it will then gain either rankings or PageRank, and despite what many people think about article directories as backlinks sources, to have an article directory article you submitted 2 years ago giving you a Pr3 backlink is quite valuable, even if the backlink is NoFollow. The article you wrote gained PR and is probably getting some traffic therefore it’s going to pass some Trust and link juice despite the NoFollow attribute.
Where to get backlinks and how to get backlinks?
We’ve covered the basics of backlink building here (what backlinks are, why you need them link attributes, and the 2 schools of thought for backlinks generation) so the question really is.. “how do you want to go about building backlinks to your websites?”
The answer is generally dependent on your budget and number of websites you need to promote.
First, here’s a list of some backlink types and sources
Directory submissions- I would use these mainly for adding link variety
Blog comments- done manually for traffic generation or using tools for link dropping
RSS aggregators- add your websites’ RSS feeds to get picked up by the RSS aggregators
Social linking, signals (Facebook, Twitter, Bookmarking, Social News sites like ReddIt etc…)
Forum marketing- done naturally, or outsourced or forum-spamming
3 way links, X-way links, reciprocal links, article marketing, guest blogging, content syndication, press releases, blog roll additions, widgets creations, themes and templates sponsoring, sponsorship of blogging contests, blog networks, wiki/.edu/.gov links, forum profiles, web 2.0 platforms, micro-blogging,etc….
There’s lot of ways to generate backlinks as you can see and while this list above might seem lengthy, there’s still more ways that I’m sure I missed.
Buy Backlinks, Yes, No, Maybe So…?
Let’s be nit-picky and be clear that whenever you use service or a tool or a person to build backlinks you’re buying backlinks via money invested or time spent, but what is most often thought of when buying links is mentioned has to do with buying link placements.
PPC advertising is link placement and an important part of many search engines business models, but if we as webmasters buy backlinks from certain websites, whether its via banner ads or text links, that becomes a shady area, meaning that paid link placements can and will always be used to game the search engines and Google in particular has been always warring against that.
Where to buy backlinks?
Depends.. are you buying link insertions and/or placements to improve search engine rankings or to get traffic to your sites? The answer to this will help you define and refine your backlink-buying options.
Many people opt for the more immediate effects of buying link placements via link building services or networks. This is usually the method Do-It-Yourself-ers (DIY-ers) go for because it’s easier and has more immediate effects and usually the backlinks generated are permanent in nature.
When buying link placements in highly noticeable websites, this is usually deemed as a rented link since the link-sellers are monetizing their site traffic by selling ad space or backlinks. This method is usually reserved for people who are tracking the referral traffic form the paid rented links and watching their conversions closely.
What I’ve written so far should give you a pretty good overview on what backlinks are, how to get them, if you should buy them where to buy backlinks and so on…
Hope this helps,
Thanks,
Dan
{ 65 comments… read them below or add one }
But, i am capable of getting 10,000 Permanent Backlinks everyday. So, is this still useful for me?
Guys, if you like 1K Permanent Backlinks from 1K Forums at just $10, click on my name
. You will also get 100 FREE Backlinks.
Hi Link Building Services,
normally I delete comments with keywords as names and usually also delete comments that don’t add value, but I am going to provide some value here with my reply:
#1 – Your sales page doesn’t have Page Rank
#2 – Your site has 819k Alexa
#3 – You’re offering xrumer blasts it seems
XRUMER = forum spamming tool and is quite powerful since its auto-creates forum profiles and can also sent private messages to members of some of these forums. It’s very powerful software if used properly.
XRUMER blasts = links from unique forum profiles created by XRUMER
The links aren’t all permanent since many get deleted by forum owners, therefore it’s a numbers game really. Nothing wrong with that.
And just like Brute Force Linking Loophole and other methods for making profiles links, you need to have a list of urls to then ping or do whatever it takes to get them indexed.
So you might be providing a valuable service there, there are plenty of xrumer blasting services out there, and I’d be interested in yours if you had a method for getting all those profiles indexed and all the links credited, and more importantly…if you had a method for cascading the links profiles so each one linked to the other.
Thanks,
Dan
P.S. If you DO reply please add value to the conversation
Do not use Xrummer or ScrapeBox directly to your site. I made that mistake a few years ago and ended up having to stop using those domains.
Since then I’ve been using LinkVana, LinkFool, and TheHoth for all my backlinks. The reason I use the 3 services is I think each have their place. LinkVana is great for new domains trying to rank for difficult keywords. The Hoth is great for taking a website from spot #1 to #2. LinkFool provides a critical core for all my sites and I always keep this service running on all sites.
Either way there’s a ton of bad services out there now, I think it’s best to test and find what works best for your sites.
Jason, thanks for the comment, it’s a good reminder for me to update this article with better methods to achieve the same goals
Dan
Daniel,
Since Build My Rank has went down the tubes what other backlinking services are out there? I am scared to join anything because of Google’s hammer! I am a member of LinkVana, however I am tentatively waiting for the slap. I’m not sure what RSS’ing is and I have seen a lot about this lately. Just wondering if there is any other backlinking services out there..? Also, what is your take on the company called LinxBoss?
I think XRUMER is what made that post lol. I don’t think I would use a service like this on a WH site. I wouldn’t be above adding in a few profile links into the mix though. Thousands at a whack would look just a little to spammy. Now profiles linking into my LFE blog network or web2.0 properties this would be useful.
Hey Dave,
the comment wasn’t made with XRUMEr as this person also made a post touting his service at a BH blog.
XRUMER can be scheduled though, so he’s kind of advertising it wrong, he should be touting that his service delivers scheduled, time-released backlinks with varying anchor text, or with the same anchors.
Speaking of profiles links, it’d be nice to combine to automated cascading profiles links, Terry Kyle-style… should be possible
Please excuse my ignorance, or newbie-ness, but I’m having trouble with this….
“to make individual feeds out of all your sites’ URLS and submit them to 20 aggregator sites”
Where can I find these aggregator sites? Everytime I google this, all I get back are news readers. I don’t want to read, I want to FEED!
Thanks in advance.
Hi Dan,
Your aff link above is not working. Even though it is showing as a link, it is not clickable.
Cheers
Raj
thanks dan. I actually am giving RSS power a good try, thanks to your newsletter. Quick question—do you recommend setting up the cron job if using the plugin on a blog that has a few older posts?
In otherwords, is it really necessary?
.-= Anthony´s last blog ..How To Setup & Use Yahoo Pipes =-.
Hey Tony,
supposedly their newer versions of the software fixed the old cron job issues, so it makes sense to set up sone scheduling for submission of all older posts.
Once done, it’d be a good idea to disable the cron job.
hi this is really nice post .I am also member of warrior forum.But before we look for the quantity we should also look for the quality of the links.
Hi Rohn, thanks for stopping by.
You can look all you want for quality links, but lower quality are easy to find and get and can be automated, therefore both types should be used.
Anyone who limits themselves to just one method (manual, safe, automated, low quality, high quality, commenting, article marketing, Web2.0 site builds etc…) is doing themselves a dis-service.
Do you honestly want to buy something from someone who is comment spamming anyway? seems pretty unprofessional and kind of desperate…
Chris decent point there….
But comment SPAM doesn’t bring direct traffic that buys anyways, just backlinks that increase SERPs.
And increased SERPs and high rankings come from backlinks…
And people who will buy from you an unaware of how you got such high rankings, nor do they care.
Done properly though, blog commenting pays off
Thanks for the feedback,
Dan
I guess as long as your hosting company doesn’t shut your site off for link spamming. I previously worked in the security department for one of the largest hosting providers out there and we would suspend sites daily for link spamming.
Hey, Thanks for the article, But will i get really upto 1000 backlinks a day? I think google will push my website to sandbox, if they see that i get 1000 backlinks per day.
Need your help.
You could…but the real goal of this article was to show you the myriad ways to get backlinks.
A normal sane person wouldn’t try to get 1000 backlinks to something if he/she was already ranking well for it
I like what I’m reading but most of it is over my head since you rely on a lot of jargon words and phrases that make you look brilliant, of course and makes me feel stupid.
MY MESSAGE TO ALL YOU “GURUS” out there is PLEASE DON’T TALK OVER MY HEAD! I love to learn but if you can’t put it in layman’s terms you are missing a lot of readers who won’t bother to get honest with you.
Look, I NEED this info, but the way it’s written is over my head!
Tone it down please!
Really Great Resource Man. But is it safe to get 1000 backlinks a day?
Yes, if link velocity is maintained
Hi,
With LinxBoss closed and LinkVana not yielding good ROI are these techniques a good alternative to get 200-300 backlinks/month?
I try a variety of of things. From blog and forum posting and commenting to directories and social bookmarking. If rss works as well as you suggest I am thinking I better look into and explore it more.
Hi Ray, nowadays RSS is better for just helping get things indexed. RSS in its optimal effectiveness heyday was good for gaining added link juice to a site/url but it is so easily automated and can so easily be done in massive proprotions that the links they provide end up getting de-indexed. Which makes sense since the search engines have SO much to keep track of, for adding things to their index, and for crediting links to you/your site.
wow this sounds great. although i’m don’t have any knowledge of RSS and how they work I’ll still try. thanks alot
Dan,
I believe people get to caught up in getting a ton of links a day, and then quitting their link building methods. I tend to do them over time and create days in which have spikes so it looks more natural. Like you I mix up nofollows with other methods, too.
The rss aggregators thing is kind of new to me so thanks for that! One thing that people commonly overlook is having valuable content that is very unique. This in turn requires that you don’t have to build as many backlinks to your website.
Oh yeah, Scrapebox is a great tool for for harvesting good blogs to leave value on and also prospect for a guest post. Might check into if you haven’t already
Garen
But comment SPAM doesn’t bring direct traffic that buys anyways, just backlinks that increase SERPs.
XRUMER = forum spamming tool and is quite powerful since its auto-creates forum profiles and can also sent private messages to members of some of these forums. It’s very powerful software if used properly.
XRUMER blasts = links from unique forum profiles created by XRUMER
The links aren’t all permanent since many get deleted by forum owners, therefore it’s a numbers game really. Nothing wrong with that.
Dan, what is your view on tier 2 backlinking (i think its called). so creating a 100% unique artcile and submitting it to 3 of the top article directories EZA etc.. then link blasting the article urls over a ‘safe’ period of time to the point where the backlinks (sent to your $ site) are of high value?
Have you had any success with this method?
I have quite a few articles that now appear on EZA and I’m wondering if instead of focusing on the amount of backlinks I should be focusing on juicing up the backlinks from these articles?
thanks,
J
Hey James, something we should ALL consider, myself included… is the CTR of the articles, what’s point of spending time ranking an article if the CTR is low and doesn’t bring traffic, and might possibly bring more link juice to linked-to-from-article site….
Improve the CTR if possible, then spend time ranking it, so there’s actually dual benefits from your efforts (more juiced-up links, and some real traffic gen)
If you found this answer helpful, and it should because it saves you a lot of money, please go here and read this(Shameless plug for donation!)
Thanks,
Dan
how to get a high quality back links?
And for a new blog, which is better between the “back links to the main page or post page? please help me,,? thank’s
One word destroys all of your methods. SENukeX.
I can do every one of your methods and plenty more while making it look natural for only $147.00 a month. Not advertising cuss I have nothing to do with the company but don’t let people over charge you for services do it yourself!
That’s entirely possible. I’ve had yearly licens eot nuke x for last 4-5 months or so and it’s not that impressive. The SEOs I know use nuke x stuff for linking to outer tiers, not direct linking, but maybe that’s because they’re going after truly tough terms to rank for, not the typical ” but cat snatching posts”, kind of keywords.
Nuke X can generate slots of links, yes agreed….
Just wanna say thanks for the info here. I’m going to dig a little deeper. I’ve gotten one of my site up to 70-80 organic hits per day (I do not pay for any advertising) and that’s mainly through trading links, 100+ pages of key word friendly content, appropriate header tags, etc. However, I have another site which is a landing page for a product I sell (workout/nutrition program…I know, those are a dime-a-dozen but mine actually works and its easy to follow) and I’m having a hard time bringing it up as fast as the other one. I write my own articles and post them as pages (that seemed to help my other site in regards to content). I was considering paying for backlinks but I’m going to dig deeper into the suggestions here first.
Again, thank you
I am kind of hoping you can answer this question, if I manage to get a 100 backlinks a day, how much articles do I need to write a day to avoid penalty.
To get 100 backlinks a day, probably 3 articles a day spun well and distributed to a good network. There’s more to SEO than just sending out backlinks fodder, though.. To avoid a penalty I suggest going the safest route, which would be to add content to new site, if site is new commensurate with link velocity. You could also work on building more powerful backlinks juice by focusing on tiered linking, ie. sending links juice to your links that are direct linking to your sites.
Read this and this
That was a great knowledge about getting more backlinks…thats for that, though I have no idea about RSS..
Dan,
I’ve been doing a lot of research and I’m just wondering why I would ever want to get more than 7 backlinks a day? I thought that was considered “spam” to Google? I’ve always seen sites that get a ton of backlinks within a few weeks get bumped to the top of the search results but then after a few months they’re nowhere to be seen. Could this be because of the amount of backlinks they get in a short amount of time?
Thanks!
Hi Mike, thanks for the question and comment.
the reason sites getting hordes of NEW links get pushed back is due to an unseemly link velocity, ie. a site that’s new, or has hardly any backlinks all of a sudden getting tons of new links.
If your site has 10k credited backlinks and averages 100 new links a day, then going up to 150 new links/day won’t hurt… But a brand new site with 10 backlinks getting 25 new links a day or even a month will get pushed back in the SERPs for a little while, USUALLY, and will rebound eventually (USUALLY)
Thanks,
Dan
Breaking big news is probably the best way to get incoming links because the majority of bloggers who report on the news will also include a link to you as it’s source. Some blogs have perfected the scoop post to the point that they’ve really launched themselves into the A-list as a result of them.
Isn’t Google working pretty hard to crack down on links coming from aggregators?
Yes I think Steve is right about his comments on google. The only real way to build links now days is through hard work.
nice post..
very good
good indeed
i enjoy reading it
visit
NEWSBARREL « REALTIME NEWS !!
I am thinking if all these tecnics with Xrummer has future. I am sure is the first think that google is fighting with
VERY interesting post.
I have a new website online, wich went up to #2 google result in my country, but suddenly went to google oblivion (end of new website bonus from google, I guess). I guess I have to build backlinks now to go back to the first places. Any other idea?
So has an update to this article been published at all?
I belive more in content rather than links. If you spend same time in writing content, instead of submitting links, you will get your traffic.
Webdirectories are no longer efficient, and meny websites lost their rankings together with webdirs going out of business.
As negative as it may sound, in these days, if you want to have a backlink empire, you must first find a way to trick Google. In my working experience in the online environment, I came across douzen of backlink building software, all that promise number one on Google and that will bring you tons of money. Also, it is clear that if you are to do things by hand it will take one million years before you’ll get any rankings. But there is no need to spread around the web bullsh@! content. I believe in an equilibrum. {BUT, every body has their own backlinking tricks, and they do link building in their way.
Google has the monoploly and its all about the dollar
They don’t have the monopoly, they’re just #1 search engine, still, for now…
If they don’t fix what they did recently they won’t be #1 for very long, much longer…
The point of backlinks building is how trust the place.
I’ve used pinterest to optimize my site and the result was amazing my site was jumped from #234 to #9 in few weeks time.
The trick is we must got our website pinned and repinned by many people this is the hardest part. Most of pinterest users won’t doing repin when they aren’t like what we pinned.
I do simple thing to outsource it on fiverr and got my site pinned by more than 70 people, I don’t know how can he did it just search by typing pinterest on fiverr and you will find it.
As I know currently pinterest is best for SEO for these reason:
1. Once our website pinned it has 3 backlinks counts
2. Google interest in social media signal so it will not tagged as links farm
3. Currently pinterest links are dofollow even the image
4. Even not support anchor text (except the url link), it’s still perfect for placing our keywords in description. Google will READ it!!
5. Obama The President and Mark Zuckerberg now pinning on Pinterest lol.
Thanks that interesting and useful.
At some point the fiverr people doing this stuff won’t have accounts to use for stuff like PINs and Plus 1s and what not, but it makes sense to use them while they work…
Have you tried doing Plus 1s on fiverr?
Hello Daniel,
What’s the latest word on Senuke X. Do you still use it? I will talk to you soon. Thanks.
I ended up buying yearly license, but not using it. Had a buddy use it and he said, video distribution module is great, seo effects of using everything else is OK for link velocity to rank lower comp keywords and phrases. My “buddy” is an seo provider, so I trust his feedback.
Try a nuke4me service, and go from there, would be my suggestion. If it works, then you probably will see financial benefit from it via your site performing better, then it’s a matter of, do you want to do this yourself, if/when you know it works, or do you want to save time on learning curve and leverage someone’s expertise and have them rank more sites for you? Know what I mean?
For those looking into RSS, I would review and try CaRP Evolution.
this is an app by white hat developer thats been around awhile.
his site is GeckoTribe, that application goes beyond RSS as can parse and post the RSS feeds in summary and with proper strings for front page you can add Amazon,Ebay,Clickbank .. it’s all there.
hope don’t mind post, not selling this as have no affiliate link
just trying help .. also allot great info on RSS there and how use
Wordpress Plugin for it.
-Brett-
I’m finding that backlinks aren’t everything. They’re important, sure! Content, keywords, valid source code and then a few quality organic links from similar sites seems to be the required combination to acheive decent rankings on the major search engines.. Great article, short & to the point.
Thanks.
Also, it is clear that if you are to do things by hand it will take one million years before you’ll get any rankings.
well im a newbie to backlinks and readind though all your comments i am totally lose
i have inquied to see if i could get my website marketed by a company and was shocked they wanted 8K to much monies for me.
so it seems back to learning about backlinks, and keywords whic i find so hard, i did come accross traffic travis anbody heard of that ??
thank s
Thanks for such useful information. Can we please tell me if we should go for paid backlinks ?
In my opinion, if you’re going to pay/buy backlinks they should bring immediate traffic so think along the lines of paid banners or prominent link blurbs on relevant sites that are getting traffic.
Thanks for this helpful information. I’m building a site and I’m trying to get information about how to build backlinks. If I did the manual commenting on blogs what’s the minimum that I should post? I wasn’t sure if say 5 a day is good,or if I should be posting A LOT more than that….
I don’t think “velocity” matters much when doing manual blog commenting. If you WERE to do manual commenting, I’d do it for trust-building and traffic generation purposes, which means finding good blogs (high traffic and very relevant) and taking part in the discussions there, same as if you were trying to get forum traffic
Thanks for the information, Daniel. I am knew to this and most of what you are talking about is a little over my head. Eg, what is link velocity? What are RSS feeds? Perhaps this Is not the article for this type of thing. Do you have Seo for Dummer than Dummies?
Seriously, I do have some questions:
1) if I share my articles on twitter and Facebook, do these provide backlinks? I’m thinking no.
2) how does forum posting get links?
3) if I blog everyday with keyword friendly material, will that improve rankings?
Thanks in advance. I realise I am very much a novice.
Hi Danielle,
Link Velocity
RSS Feeds info
Q1- Sharing articles on Twitter and Facebook could garner/generate traffic and social signals, and the link value is minimal but social signals are the key bnefit there
Q2- forum posting, same value as social sharing but you’re getting niche-relevant links if posting in niche-related forums. You can get traffic via signature files and/or articles written for the forum
Q3- yes blogging daily, or even just frequently will help, but it’s not as simple as, “write every day and target all your keywords, then stop once kw list is filled out content-wise”
Hello would you mind letting me know which hosting company you’re using? I’ve loaded your blog in 3
different web browsers and I must say this blog loads a lot quicker then most.
Can you recommend a good internet hosting provider at a fair price?
Thanks a lot, I appreciate it!
“Sharing articles on Twitter and Facebook could garner/generate traffic and social signals, and the link value is minimal but social signals are the key bnefit there”. I agree with the “traffic from social networking” value but why do you say link value is minimal? I see backlinks from social media sites in my Google Webmaster Tools.