Notice: Be Skeptical of Certain Website Link Building Offers

Contents

What to Look Out For
So What’s The Problem? She Has Links To Her Site Right?
I still don’t get it, why is that bad?
How Do They Do It Exactly?
How Do I Build Links the Right Way?
I Know There Are Things I Can Do To My Site Now to Help In The Meantime Right?
So What Now?

Having a high page rank can greatly improve your website visibility and potential. A factor that can increase your Organic Search Results is how many unique sites link back to your website. But there are methods that people use to attempt to exploit the search engines to gain an advantage.

As always, there are people and illegit businesses that try to find website owners that are not web savvy to propose offers that seem very appealing, and then use methods that exploit the search engines to try and show information as if they have gotten them results and try to continue to charge large ammounts of money. One of these attractive things that appeals to everyone is your page rank and position in the search engines. Everyone wants to be #1 which makes it pretty easy to be susceptible to “Snake Oil Salesmen”.

What to Look Out For

Today a client forwarded an email communication from a person named “Tilt” who had proposed to generate hundreds of links to her site for around $1,000 a month. She was apparently skeptical, and rightfully so, but the guy was persistent in long messages of assurance at which point she had agreed to move ahead with. Later he apparently followed up with “Page Position Reports” which showed that with the main relative keywords her position had increased in areas. That can sure seem promising.

My insight into the issue was sparked at a meeting where it was brought to my attention that she had paid someone a lot of money to build links back to her site. When i checked in google with the “link:yourdomain.com” as the search, there was only 1 result. I could see the swift transition of dismay on her face as we met.

The reason for being copied on the email today was because she had contacted the person via email and expressed her frustration. The person responded saying

“I bet your website guy tried to search for backlinks via Google or MSN?

They are known for hiding 99% of the backlinks and the only accurate way to find most of the backlinks is via Yahoo using command linkdomain:yourdomain.com”

He was right, yahoo showed about 145 incoming links to her website. I guess I stand corrected! Or is this another attempt at pulling wool over the eyes?

So What’s The Problem? She Has Links To Her Site Right?

As I looked at the link references I instantly saw a problem. I noticed that a lot of the originating sites had nothing to do with her industry. When clicking the links they went to totally trashed and unorganized sites with a bunch of links etc. I knew it!

I still don’t get it, why is that bad?

The reason why no links showed up in google is because they have highly developed search engine technologies and spiders that can tell most of the time if someone, or a site is intentionally trying to exploit them and provide no value as a site, you may get away with it initially but google will fix it shortly down the road. So naturally these sites get flagged and anything to do with them ignored in the search engines with possibilities to have sites banned. – OH CRAP!

Yahoo apparently is behind the curve a little on identifying these items which makes it a prime target to refer people who bought into the “service” to portray results. Which explains the comment above that the person sent to my client.

How Do They Do It Exactly?

The term used for the diverse spam methods online is called “Spamdexing”

Often times there are networks, or applications that scan the web for susceptible forms on the internet that they can bypass and submit information to a results page which lists the information publicly. Many websites experience this with contact or comment forms on their website where the comment is jibberish but there sure as heck is a clear website link reference.

Another, as in this case, is called a SPLOG. It is a Spam Blog in which people buy lots of domain names, setup a basic blog with no real content with the sole purpose to have spammers submit comments with keywords and links which get posted for the search engines.

A good article is provided on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing

How Do I Build Links the Right Way?

For the most part…. you dont. Here is the best way to get links to your website:

Keep focusing on providing quality content, services, and information to your viewers.
Take advantage of social networking, put yourself or your company out there to interact with people.
Continue to build your PR and go out of your way here and there to really make a viewer/customer smile.
Find websites that provide business directories, social forums, social bookmarking, and listings that are relevant to your industry and include your website information. Join & Participate and provide value with the content you post.

These are just a few, but the key focus is to provide quality, and value with your presence on the web and become a social butterfly on various websites and social networking services like Twitter.com, Facebook.com, Myspace.com etc.

As people find value in you, your company, or website… they will write about it, tell others, put links in their sites to yours. It is a wonderful thing, and how google intends to website positions and ranks. The big popular sites that get thousands of visitors a day did not get there by trying to exploit their results, but people found value in what they provided and had to offer.

I Know There Are Things I Can Do To My Site Now to Help In The Meantime Right?

Yes, absolutely! Building links the right way can take time to market people to find value in what you provide. However, you probably already have potential in your site to increase rankings just based on the content you provide. Google has guidelines, and provides tips on how to make your website friendly for the search engines to better index your content. This is called “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO. It is a process of getting your website to meet the standards of what the search engine spiders look for and how they rank sites, and to do so without trying to exploit them by focusing your content specifically for them instead of providing value to the viewers as well.

So What Now?

If you have been contacted or approached by someone offering to do things mentioned in this article, please contact us by phone or mail and we will be glad to consult you as to it’s legitimacy or red flags. There are plenty of legit people and businesses that can help your website increase rank and viewership the right way including ourselves, so don’t presume every offer by someone will be done with bad methods.

I know website owners, especially businesses, get bombarded with offers with regard to their website. Please feel free to contact us and ask questions anytime you receive such offers as we value our customers, viewers, and business owners alike and would rather be available for consultation rather than them become a victim.