by Dr. William Sen
| Founder of blue media
SEO Backlink Building Strategies in 2024
Best and Negative SEO Building with Google
by Dr. William Sen
Backlinks are quite easy to come about. In fact, on many websites such as Fiverr, eBay, Freelancer, people offer to sell thousands of backlinks for meagre sums. The belief is that backlinks aid SEO and improves your website however. However, this only appears to be true on the surface.
The negative effect of backlinks is not always pronounced. Backlinks can in many ways be subject to punishment by Google. Backlinks are one of the many things website owners try to boost their chances to rank high on Google, but Google frowns on them. Website owners commonly employ backlinks to circumvent a strategic and natural SEO, also known as artificial backlink building.
Actually, there is nothing worse than using an artificial backlink strategy on your website. The truth in this statement will be highlighted in succeeding paragraphs.
Why Does Google Hate Artificially Built Backlinks?
Google began a full onslaught on artificial backlinks aka link farms in 2003—and this is why it is surprising that we are still discussing them in 2024. After the Florida Update in 2003, Google started to build more and more sophisticated and highly advanced monitoring and control mechanisms to tackle people creating links based on a strategic link building effort. The SEO world changes rapidly so it is important to note that these changes do not happen to everyone at the same time, which is why we still have people in the practice of using backlinks today despite the dangers.
It is impossible for Google not to recognize purchased backlinks. How Google detects bought and unnatural backlinks is quite simple and direct. Google keeps track of the history of a website and recognizes the type of backlinks that are created over time. When backlinks become introduced rapidly within a short period of time, Google will raise the red flag—and that’s just the beginning of the disaster.
Google guidelines are simple and in line with the aim of creating a fair platform for all users. Google wants backlinks to be allowed to develop naturally without any external or strategic influences. The use of automatic methods to add backlinks to websites is not encouraged. Google wants users to put backlinks based on their importance to them.
Google does not entirely frown on backlinks but wants website owners to develop their backlink plans in compliance with Google’s policy. Therefore, building backlinks that meet all the set criteria in the policy is not a task that is straight off the bat. It requires high SEO skills and attention to detail, which will be discussed as we go on.
The onus still lies on you to carry out the steps that will be outlined properly because any deviation from the steps may be drastic for your website.
How Google Punishes Errant Websites
When Google detects irregular, illegitimate backlinks on any website, Google will send warnings to the site’s administrator through the Google Search Console—this is called “Manual Action”. If that happens, your website will already be ranked down drastically. It usually starts from a drastic loss of traffic, and the entire can be lost in the Google space completely. That’s what SEOs call “your website has been hit by Google”.
A website that has been hit by a Google Manual Action may not be easily recoverable and will in fact take several months or years, as man SEOs have seen in their experience by trying to help many clients get off the hooks of these penalties.
How to Clean Up After a Manual Action
And the cleanup process is one of the most demanding SEO tasks. Apart from the difficulty involved, it also takes considerate amount of time ranging into months. This time could have been put into other productive SEO strategies, and that’s why the cleaning process can be entirely frustrating for both the client and the SEO team running the cleanup.
- Identify Bad Backlinks & Create a Disavow List
First, you have to identify all URLs with artificial links and compile them in a list. The format of the disallow file is described in Google Webmaster’s Guidelines: goo.gl/KwdEaA - Uploading the Disavow List
After this is done without missing any of these illegitimate backlinks, the list will be uploaded in the so-called disavow format at Google’s Search Console under Disavow links at google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main. This authorizes Google to stop considering the listed links when ranking your website. - Write a Reconsideration Request Message to Google
The next step will involve sending a personal message to Google called the Reconsideration Request. Write 1 or 2 sentences, but and not more:
“We have identified all links from dubious external URLs and ask you to reconsider the uploaded disavow file. Thank you.”
Lifting the punishment to your website is supposed to be easily finalized in these three easy steps, but first of all Google staff do not respond to issues arising illegitimate backlinks in a timely manner. And when the Google staff eventually checks, they will be left to decide if all of the illegal backlinks have been listed on the disavow list. In many cases, the response from Google always describes an incomplete disavow list hence the refusal to lift the ban and remove the punishment.
The process then needs to be repeated with the disavow list expanded to cover more of the links and sometimes even legitimate links, until Google accepts that the disavow list is complete and accepts the Reconsideration Request.
Most clients usually think that they can successfully run the backlink campaign on their own, and that is just how they make the case more complex. It can take up to 20 or more Reconsideration Requests. The requests are usually this much because in many cases, you will not be able to tell which links are illegitimate as discovered by Google. To attain more success, you need to carry out an extensive research, so you do not end up deleting chunks of legitimate links. The best way is to steer clear of the enticement of using these illegitimate backlinks as the trouble that comes with them far outweighs the supposed rewards.
The trouble does not end when Google accepts the reconsideration request. It takes up to an average of one year to get back up and running as expected. The lost keyword rankings will need to be built from the scratch as they will most likely be deleted from the SERP. It is also very difficult for such websites to rebuild Google’s trust again.
What Google wants is simply for you to leave backlink building to the users. If you must be engaged in backlink building, work only with SEO professionals who are in their elements and fully understand the consequences of what they do. These SEO experts will definitely have a firm understanding of Google’s policy as touching SEO backlinks and should also warn you about the risks involved. The primary fact remains that the risks of building SEO backlinks far outweigh the benefits.
Building Clean SEO Backlinks
Backlinks are only necessary on a website when the content on the links aligns with that of your website. Even with this in mind, it is important that you should avoid guest book entries or large entries in directories as they completely discredit your website.
Suppose your website focuses on food recipes, and a food recipe blog writes a topic and links the article to your website, Google considers it as a relevant backlink as expected. However, if such blog is in the practice of covering different topic areas and the articles are usually linked to a relevant website each time, Google will know that the blogger is in the practice of selling backlinks. Links from such blogs will become red flagged by Google under negative SEO and most likely again lead to a Manual Action.
Many websites thrive on selling backlinks and while you may be tempted to use their services, they are the exact kinds of websites you should avoid when it comes to backlinks. Also, never ever engage anybody at Fiverr, Freelancer, UpWork, eBay, or similar websites to engage people to do the backlinks for you. Most industry experts believe that before settling to use backlinks, you should have a list of potential partners who would supply backlinks to your website.
Find Potential Backlink Partners
A website that is suited for building backlinks must be one whose concept and entire operation is not built around selling backlinks. In fact, it is better if such sites have never been used to build backlinks.
The websites that will be on your list are expected to comprehensively possess some important features, which includes:
- Relevant content
In addition to the fresh backlink building prospect, the content that will be covered on the website should resonate with your topic. - Low Spam Score
You need to ascertain the spam score of the websites you intend to use to build the backlinks. A website with a low spam score is very beneficial, while a site with a high spam score is not fit for building backlinks. There are several websites such as moz where you can check the spam score for websites. - Domain Authority
The Domain Authority (DA) of the website is also an important feature that you need to check, which is also an index used by moz.
You will definitely need to get in touch with the website’s administrator to get started with the backlinks. A written letter is adequate for this. However, you will still need to motivate the website’s administrator in different ways to get them to place the backlinks for you, especially as you would want to be in control of the backlinks.
Can You Run SEO Successfully Without Backlinks?
Sure that this will be the question on your mind right now. So let’s get straight to the point.
Websites can get high rankings without backlinks. Although backlinks still remain important for SEO today, they should never be the pillar upon which the site’s SEO lies.
Here is what this means:
The best SEO strategy should incorporate high-quality content. There are many examples of websites around you with very good SEO results despite the few backlinks they have. Backlink building may hold many promises for SEO, but it is not the only factor that is important for a successful SEO campaign.
On a Final Note…
Google’s preying eyes are always on the lookout for backlink building. The practices that triggers Google’s hammer can be avoided. However, most website owners do not know them. Google’s monitors are always heavily focused on websites that drive lots of traffic. When your backlinks increase at incomprehensible rates, then be sure of that Google will pay more attention to your site.
You cannot compromise on the content on your website too. Little content with many backlinks are an imperfect fit that will trigger Google’s attention.
Before building backlinks, make sure you have put every other important SEO measure in place. And if you have a solid SEO strategy in place, you most likely not even need a backlink strategy.
