Backlinks methods you should avoid
Phew, this is a multi-faceted subject and I need to emphasise it’s not an exact science. But here is what I have learned in my research at the Backlinks clinic:
Authority – explained
The more authority your web pages have the higher you will rank on Google. Authority means that people trust you and your information. The great news is that authorities trusted by people are also trusted by Google. A good illustration is the .edu and .gov domain extensions. These domains imply they are authoratitive sources of content and it’s an established fact that as far as Google is concerned backlinks from these web addresses to your web pages will send authority to your web pages. Another shining example is Wikipedia as the contents here are almost always authored by by tribes of people as opposed to a single source.
So it follows that authority is very heavily influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative web pages link to your site then you receive their apparent trust and in the eyes of Google you become more authoritative and so the trust in your content by Google increases.
How Google determines what is and isn’t authoritative is confidential for good reason and falls in line with Google’s philosophy of “Do no evil”. The last thing the web needs is an individual or a group manipulating the mechanisms that Google employs in its efforts to try and regulate probably the most significant technological resource of our times.
How not to get Authority and Backlinks
In the same vein it’s valuable to state some ‘black hat sources and methods of creating backlinks that Google not only disapproves of but appears to be moving aggressively to ‘’categorize as illegitimate authorities. In no particular order of severity, the prime offenders are:
- Paid backlinks – web sites where individuals purchase and sell backlinks
- Comment spam – entries that have links on web pages that are just not associated to the main theme.
- Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or copied
- Rapid backlink growth – there are plenty of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t stupid. Any sudden increase in the number of backlinks is going to show up on Google’s radar, specifically if it’s a recently registered domain.
- Backlinks from ill reputed web pages – these are particularly destructive as you are guilty by association – need I say more.
*There is another factor where I may be on dodgy ground, but reputable press portals appear to get a lot of authority and I have definitely observed significant numbers of the same article over and over again on different web sites with no penalties, I am still monitoring this, only as some of the results I am seeing go against the consistent behaviors I usually expect to see. More on this is in a future post….
