Back link SEO what not to do!

Back links are a part of SEO.  There is no denying it.  But it can go terribly wrong if you are not actually in control of it.  It is very tempting to sign up to a low cost link builder but don’t.  At best the links are valueless and at worst they will do you more harm than good.

What is the definition of a good link?  A good back link is one that has occurred naturally because your opinion or content is valuable to someone else, or believes it is of interest to their readership, with a shared interest.  Typically your content will be linked from a website related to your content or market sector.

What is a bad link?  Well there are many:

• Paid links – These seriously put your website at risk of being black listed by search engines
• Directory listing – Unless they are industry specific or have some form of qualification to join these are worthless
• Article submission – Single articles to a single publisher are OK.  Same article to multiple publishers are pointless
• Links from websites out of context to your own – It may be nice that your family provide a link to you but if they are not related to your content then again are pointless
• Creating multiple websites to exploit anchor text links – risky at best but remember a search engines check registration details, contact info and everything else that could link you as the owner.  So if you create multiple websites you must use rel=”nofollow” to all links to your other websites.  This prevents search engines from following the link.

For a horses mouth view of this subject watch the video below from Google’s Adam Lasnik.