Over the last few years there have been a few SEO strategies that you could use to boost your website to the top of Google. But a lot of things have changed with the advent of Panda and other updates that Google has released over the last 18 months.
A lot of these SEO strategies are not as powerful as they once were, like link wheels for example are just not going to cut it in 2012.
Another powerful SEO strategy that still works today is a backlinking. Backlinking is a very powerful strategy to get good traffic and rankings. There is only one thing you have to take into account and that is not all backlinks are the same and some of them are just a total waste of time.
There has been one buzz word around the Internet about backlinks and that is “it’s not the quantity but the quality” or “not all backlinks are equal”.
These quotes are very true I am going to show you in this article that in 2012 there are some back linking strategies that are a total waste of time, money and effort.
All of the strategies below I have tried so I’m speaking from experience.
1. Buying backlinks
Buying backlinks is a total no-no in my opinion and it can be quite dangerous for your website. There are many services online today that can get you tens of thousands of one-way backlinks to your website for $10 but you don’t know where those backlinks are coming from.
I have heard many horror stories on forums over the last 6 months where Webmasters have purchased a”10,000 back link scrape box blast” from Fiverr and their websites disappeared from Google overnight.
There is no shortcut in getting backlinks it’s best just to do it manually because if you use one of these so called back linking services you could potentially destroy your website.
Don’t get me wrong I know there are some exceptions to the rule.
2. Mass Article Submissions
This in my opinion is a total waste a time because you end up with 100 articles posted on 100 different article directories so Google will not indexed all of them because they are duplicate content. Also most article directories are always of a low quality so the page rank is usually low i.e. PR 0.
I know that someone who offers a service that will post your article to 1000 different
3. Directory Submissions
There are thousands of article directories that have sprung up over the last three years but just like most article directories they are of a low quality. The only directories that Google really pays attention to are Dmoz and Yahoo page directory and the rest I will not waste my breath on.
I think that Dmoz is no longer accepting directory submissions so the only way to get a Dmoz listing is to purchase an expired domain that is already listed there.
4. Profile Links
Profile links or signature links are not as powerful as they once were, they have become a low quality backlinks. Around 18 months ago I purchased 5000+ profile links to my website and I had a report that went along with the links so I could check if they were live. 18 months later and not one of the profile links have been indexed by Google.
Only high quality sites that allow profiles to be created on them get indexed.
Basically any back link that can be self-created without any moderation has dropped in value and profile linking is one of the types.
5. Mass Bookmarking
Anything that has the word “Mass” in a sentence when it comes to creating backlinks just steer clear from it altogether. Out of all of the thousands of bookmarking websites only 10 of them are worth submitting your URL to like Digg, Stumble, Reddit etc the rest are a waste of time.
As a side note there are some powerful bookmarking sites that have appeared over the last few years like Blogengage, blog interact, Bizsugar etc.
These bookmarking sites are wonderful places to post your article to because they are a bit more niche targeted than your average bookmarking website.
One of the added bonuses of these bookmarking sites is that the admin/owner of the site is reachable and most of them accept guest posts.
Before I forget there is a powerful article by Ben Jackson on Mitz’s Website with some solid backlinking strategies on it. If you want to build backlinks the right way I suggest that you read it.