How to build backlinks without getting penalised by search engines
Backlinks are the backbones of Search Engine Optimization. However, Google says building links to influence search results will do more harm to your blog versus helping your blog. Isn't it conflicting?
In the late 90's when I started blogging, I wasn't doing a separate task called "SEO". That doesn't mean I was sitting idle after writing my articles. I was trying to figure out how to make search engines like my articles and send more and more people to my site. I just didn't know what I was doing was called "SEO".
I was always skeptical about building a lot of "backlinks". In last 16-17 years of my blogging, I have been trying to make my content suitable to get backlinks but I tried to stay away from approaches like blog commenting, link exchanges etc or limited it to very minimum. My common approach was to ask for a link to my content than spamming other sites to get links.
Until 2 years ago, most of the new bloggers depended on forum footers and blog commenting as the easiest way to build lot of quick links to their websites. The scenario has changed a lot now. Google has started penalising sites that focus on link building than content creation. Should we build backlinks to our blogs?
Even after Google started penalising sites for link building, quality backlinks remain the backbone of search engine ranking. So, how do we get quality links to our blogs without getting penalised? This is a very common question and one of the biggest confusion for today's bloggers.
I have done a few experiments on link building and also had few bad experience on some of my blogs which naturally acquired some backlinks which were considered as bad links or artificially created backlinks to influence search results. Based on my own research and experience, I would like to share a few points:
Watch this video from Matt Cutts on what is paid links:
And here is a video from Google's John Mueller, who suggests stay away from link building (for ranking):How to build backlinks safely, without getting penalised?
I get a lot of questions in my Facebook about link building. If someone ask me a quick question on whether they can build backlinks to their blog, my general answer would be, "it can harm your site". And that's true. Building lot of links to your blog can seriously harm your site and could result in vanishing your site from Google search results.
So, how do we build links carefully, without hurting the site?
Here are some points that you could take care while working on links to your blog.
NOTE: I rarely check the backlinks for my big blogs and I believe it is not required to worry about them once your blog is well established. Link building is big concern only for small blogs which are struggling to come up in search results.Bottom line - what is bad link building and what is good link building?
I would like to summarize the results of my research and experience this way:
1. Focusing on linking building as the main strategy to promote your website can seriously harm your site.
2. Link building should be one of many approaches you use to promote your website.
3. Posting links to your site all over the web can harm your site.
4. The best and safe approach to build good links is to bring your content to the attention of people who would be interested in linking to your site. For example, if you write a good review of a product, show your review to the company/brand. They might link to your blog. And nothing wrong in directly asking for a link.
Read What is negative SEO? How to protect your website from negative SEO?
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These are the best ethical link building tips. I always prefer contextual link building and interlinking my similar articles to each other. Bloggers who are in trouble regarding spam links to their blogs can make use of Google & Bing's Disavow tool. It was first introduced by Bing and later Google in 2012 to help bloggers against spam links.