Backlinks – use the wrong methods at your peril
Hmmmm, 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 work at the Backlinks clinic:
Authority – explained
The more authority your web pages have the higher you will rank on Google. Authority means that searchers trust you and your information. The great news is that authorities trusted by humans are also trusted by Google. A good illustration is the .edu and .gov domain extensions. These suffixes imply they are authoratitive sources of information and it’s an established fact that in the eyes of Google backlinks from these web addresses to your site will “pass on” authority to your site. Another perfect example is Wikipedia as the contents here are mostly added by by group of humans as opposed to a single person.
So it follows that authority is largely influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative sites link to your web pages then you receive their influence and in the eyes of Google you become more authoritative and hence the trust in your site by Google increases.
How Google determines what is and isn’t authoritative is kept secret for solid reasons and falls in line with Google’s thinking of “Do no evil”. The last thing the Internet needs is someone manipulating the methods that Google employs in its efforts to try and regulate probably the most significant technological asset of our times.
Backlinking methods you should avoid
And on this thought it’s valuable to state some common sources and methods of acquiring 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 examples are:
- Paid backlinks – hubs where people purchase and sell backlinks
- Comment spam – entries that contain links on web sites that are just not associated to the main content.
- Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or copied
- Fast growth – there are a large selection of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t dumb. Any sudden rise in the amount of backlinks is going to show up on Google’s radar, especially if it’s a brand new domain.
- Backlinks from unscrupulous sites – these are particularly henous as you are guilty by association – need I say more.
*There is another factor where I may be on dodgy ground, but reputable media portals seem to get a lot of authority and I have definitely observed significant quantities of the same article over and over again on different portals with no penalties, I am still looking at this, only as some of the results I am seeing go against the normal behaviors I usually expect to see. More on this is in a future article….
