Recently I’ve been asked to express my opinion about the subject of this blog post about common link building methods:
* Mass directory submission
* Bulk article submission
* Forum signature links
* Comment spam
* Link exchange requests
Of course sometimes these techniques *might* give some results but the way that they are generally approached makes the chance of any ranking improvement almost zero.
Overall the author of the post is correct in the context of what he says about these link building techniques regarding “the way that they are generally approached”. Let’s see in detail what happens in case of each one of the mentioned techniques:
- Directory submissions: if we take a look at automated directory submission services that offer you to submit a site to a gazillion of directories/search engines/whatever they call them for $20 or so - this is useless waste of money. The way they collect the directories/search engines/other places to submit to is by scraping the search results for something like “submit URL”. They do not analyze the quality of the sites they find, nor do they check if the submissions ever appear on the targeted sites. Moreover, directories in
general have long lost the value they once had - hence it requires a long and thorough research to find the ones that are still worth using. The more valuable ones are niche directories - but there are still some general directories that Google sees as authority that still give good links if you submit to them. Local directories are also good - but everything needs to be checked at the level of each given directory and generalising is of no use here.
- Bulk article submission - useless unless you modify the article at least slightly for each article directory and only submit to a few carefully chosen quality article directories. Moreover, I’ve seen many times how backlinks acquired by a site through article submissions disappear due to the particularities of the article directory site structure. Article directories do not have the same value they used to have either any more - but some still preserve their authority status.
- Forum signature links - if you are using these on a forum where you have hundreds or thousands of posts they may be useful for direct traffic - if the link really appeals to the forum users - but not as backlinks. Neither Google nor Yahoo count more than a couple of links off the same domain. However, I have found some forums to be good for indexing new sites if you place a link into the profile and make a dozen posts or so. Again, depends
on the forum and on the individual tactics used.
- Comment spam - if done intelligently (and manually) might be good for direct traffic again - but not if it is automated. Blackhats use it in its automated form for getting mass amounts of links as Yahoo doesn’t care about the nofollow.
- Link exchange requests - again, depends. Reciprocal link exchange definitely doesn’t make sense - but we have been getting some really nice links with more complicated schemes (3-way, 4-way, etc.) It all boils down to what sites you target with your link exchange requests, how you word them, how your schemes are set up, etc. I for example always stay away from any pages marked as “Link Exchange” and the like - the more natural it looks the better. And of course 99% of the linkexchange requests you get into your mailbox sent by other people can simply be deleted right away.
Finally, let’s not forget that every link can have two kinds of value: it can pass link juice and improve a site’s rankings, or it can bring direct traffic to a site. The best links are the links that manage to accomplish both goals - no matter what methos was used to acquire them.
). But what I see every now and then is a lot of people are not doing it right. I see webmasters using something like: