Years ago, Google didn’t have so many spam filters. Today Google filters sites for many reasons. Here are 7 of those reasons.
90% of your links point to the front page, or top-level domain.
Most spammy sites don’t get a lot of links to their internal pages because they have low quality content. It’s easy to forget your internal pages. Build backlinks to them.
90% of your links are site-wide links. Most spammy sites don’t get a lot of content-based links. Yahoo and MSN put a lot more weight on site-wide links, but Google penalizes sites with a high percentage of these links. Focus on getting content-based links.
90% of your links come from 5 domains. This looks like you’re linking from other sites you own. You can have hundreds of links, but if they all come from a small number of domains, you’ll get filtered. Build links from many different sites.
90% of your links come from low quality sites. I’m not just talking PR. PR is just one of the equations. What kind of sites link to you? Do they have good link profiles? Do they have many links? Do quality sites link to them? Get links from quality sites.
90% of your links come from the same type of site. You may love article directories, press releases, or directories. Just don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Google likes sites that get links from different kinds of sites. Get links from blogs, forums, static sites, wikis, web directories, bookmarking sites, social voting sites, article directories, press release sites, etc.
90% of your links are reciprocal. Reciprocal links are so 2002. Reciprocal links should be less than 15% of your profile. Focus on getting one-way links.
90% of your links have the same anchor text. Can we say manipulation? This might work with Yahoo and MSN search, but Google is smarter. Vary your anchor text by using synonyms, related terms, non-keywords (“click here”), and even images. Also, don’t tell people what anchor text to use. You may not rank as quickly but at least you won’t lose your rankings once Google realizes what you’re up to.
5 Comments to "7 Reasons Why Your Link Profile Looks Spammy"
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Seems like the more I learn about SEO…the less I know about SEO! I’ve never seen info on Linking quite in the same perspective as you’ve laid it out. Very informative.
Thanks!
some good points here.
but: You don`t say what the audience for these points is. The Spammer or internetmarketer would say something completely different. This is for the people that want to be found in 1 year. If you wanne be found today, its completely different. Just as an example.
That’s true. Good point. The audience is definitely someone who wants to build a long-term authority site. And in IMO, those are the best sites to build unless you have serious black-hat skillz
Alright so forums are low quallity links, but if the forum is the same topic as the site that you link to in your sig, and you linked to different content on your site it would better then to the homepage?
nice article btw
Thanks for the positive feedback.
The answer to your question is it depends. If most of your inbound links, go to your homepage, then link to a internal page. However, if most of your links go to internal pages, then link to your homepage. I read an interview from an SEO expert and he said about 50% of your inbound links should point to internal pages.