Hey guys,
In this post I am going to share with you some important aspects of professional link building, which you need to make sure you are using on your sites.
Google and the other major search engines are not silly. They have some of the brightest minds in the world working for them, who are always coming out with new ways to ensure that the results their search engines display for their users are quality.
We all know that getting backlinks to your sites is a key part of getting top search engine rankings, and at this stage the volume of links you can get seems to play the biggest role. However with that said, there is more to it than just the number of links you can get.
Mixing Up the Anchor Text
When ever you build links to your pages, you have to use good keyword rich anchor text for your links. However if all your links have exactly the same anchor text, this can start to look very unnatural, and something Google dislikes.
If you ever analyze the top sites in any niche in Google, by checking out the anchor text of their links, you will often notice that there is a vast mixture of different anchor text.
If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense to vary up your anchor text in your links, because if the links to your site were developed naturally, which is what Google is looking for, then the chances of them all having the same anchor text is very low.
Therefore a rule of thumb that I work on is, 80% of my links are the exact keyword I am trying to rank the page for, while the remaining 20% are slight variations of this keyword.
For the 20% that make up the variation, I will purposely make spelling mistakes or just a variation on the main keyword I am targeting.
No Follow is Not All Bad
In order to deter people from placing links on their sites, some web masters have the ‘No follow’ on. This tells the search engines to ignore all links leaving the page. Obviously this is not the best thing for your SEO, and relying on these kind of links will not get you top search engine rankings.
However it is still a good idea to get the odd no follow link. Once again, the reason is that this looks more natural. If all your links were not ‘no follow’ this would be odd, and may raise red flags at Google.
Link to Your Links
I have mentioned this last point in a previous post, however I want to repeat it here, because I am starting to realize just how important this is. What I’m referring to is making sure that some of the pages that contain links pointing to your pages, need to have links pointing to them also.
If all the pages that link to you, have no links pointing to them, then once again this will not look natural. What I do is add a second layer of links pointing to these sites and this reinforces the integrity of my overall link structure.
The Danger of Bad Link Neighborhoods
I receive a fair amount of emails from people worried that they have ruined their rankings by creating links on sites 
that Google doesn’t like. Some people become very worried about this, and rightly so, as losing your rankings is never a nice thing.
However I have a couple things to say about this matter, and this opinion is shared by a lot of my friends in the affiliate marketing industry also.
The first thing you need to know is that SEO is not instant. By this I mean, just because you do one thing today it does not mean the result tomorrow was caused by what you did the day before.
The danger you run into if you think that what you do today must have caused the result the next day, is that you might change your plan based on the wrong infomation.
For example if you build some links from certain sites to your pages, and the next day your site drops in the rankings, it does not mean that building these links had anything to do with it.
IMPORTANT NOTE: With that said though, I strongly believe that it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to your rankings, if you build links from sites that you might consider to be of low reputation. So if you somehow get a link from a site about “Viagra” then don’t worry about it.
The reason I say this, is that if it were that simple to get a site penalized by Google, then all you would need to do, to get all your competitors out of your way, would be to build a hand full of “Viagra” links to their sites!
Seems a little unfair don’t you think. Imagine if you worked really hard to get to the top of the search engines, and then one day some new site decides they want your top spot, so they just build some dodgy links to your site, and bang, you’re gone!
The only thing you need to be careful of, is NOT to reciprocal link back to a site that is linking to you, as this can cause a penalty from Google, as it doesn’t look natural.
That’s all from me!
Matt Carter
Related articles
Matt,
it is a good point that your sites doesn’t rise or fall because you do something one day. But I guess it is a good idea to look at what you are doing to see what it is having, And stop if you think it is having a negative effect,
Thanks,
Steve.
Matt Carter Reply:
May 21st, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Good point Steve
Thanks
Matt
You need to vary your link text.If all your links have the same anchor text sooner or later Google or search engine will be able to see the pattern.No doubt initially your ranking will go up,but once Google spot the pattern your ranking wii go down.Remember act like a human, avoid doing things like a robot where you do the same things over and over again.
Matt Carter Reply:
May 21st, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Hey Jimmy
Thanks for your comment, however I did mention that in the post, that you need to vary your anchor text
Cheers
Matt
There is this site makeup artist I’m trying to out rank. Has 500,000 backlinks from porn sites and most have the same ip address. I’m surprise this site is still rank number 1 for many keywords. How comes Google havnt slap them Matt?
Matt Carter Reply:
May 21st, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Hey Sahan
Google doesn’t slap this site for the very reason I mentioned at the end of the post.
The type of links you get isn’t going to hurt your rankings, only if you reciprocal link back to them.
Thanks
Matt
Matt,
From my experience, yes it does “look” un natural to have all links with the same anchor text however that is exactly what works over 100’s of domains I have. As soon as I change up the anchor text to a page my rankings decline. When I focus on one I’m trying to rank for it works every time.
When I want to rank for other terms, I pick another page and one specific anchor text – and it works without fail. I hear everyone saying to vary the anchor text and when I do – I lose rankings. Odd but true.
For me, the proof is in the results. I build consistent anchor text links using one keyword phrase per page until it ranks and from my testing against another page using varying anchor text, the single anchor text works every time.
Very good post, as usual, Matt.
It would be interesting to have someone in the Warrior forums of someplace like that do an actual experiment where he tries to lower the competition’s ranking by building massive amounts of “bad neighborhood” links in a short period of time to the site.
Not very ethical, but very interesting for learning purposes, and if we actually can clearly prove that external links can’t damage rankings, it’s not so much unethical anymore.
My personal opinion is that unless the site is new, witch would cause the site to move a lot in rankings if it’s building massive amounts of links very fast, bad links will just be ignored.
Matt,
Good info about back linking. It truly is the juice you need to move up in the search engines. It would be great if you could share some insight into how to secure a backlink from a site that has a page rank of 3 or better as this would really “juice” your site!
Love the blog design, can you pass where you got it?
Today i was looking to know more about “nofollow”.
And durring I was searching for it, you send the email…
thank you.
Hi Matt,
Nice to see you giving valuable advice again. I am using your Backlink Blueprint now and it’s giving me a ton of work(consider that as a compliment). It gave me the insight I needed in backlinking. I never knew it was so important.
Thanks,
Andreas
Nofollow links won’t help you in link building for SEO but in link building for direct traffic, there is a small difference but both is fine 😉
Hi matt,
Thanks for the post! Especially the part about Bad Link Neighborhoods … funny picture btw 🙂
Hi Matt,
I didn’t get it. The wikipedia def. for rec.links is:Example: Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob’s website links to Alice’s website, and Alice’s website links to Bob’s website, the websites are reciprocally linked.
You say: The only thing you need to be careful of, is NOT to reciprocal link back to a site that is linking to you, as this can cause a penalty from Google, as it doesn’t look natural.
and:What I’m referring to is making sure that some of the pages that contain links pointing to your pages, need to have links pointing to them also.
If all the pages that link to you, have no links pointing to them, then once again this will not look natural. What I do is add a second layer of links pointing to these sites and this reinforces the integrity of my overall link structure.
So how can I correctly link to my links? What about this second layer?
By the way, I have sent you an e-mail a while ago, asking if I can use rapid rewriter for german text.
Best regards,
Jörg fom Hamburg
Very good article on the value of link building, This is something that I have had problems with in the past.
Thank
Robert
Hi Matt,
With reference to your post regarding “Link to Your Links”, are you using social bookmarking and RSS feed submission as your second layer of links?
If so, are those the only methods you used? Thank you for taking the time and effort to write this post.
Paul
Matt Carter Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 10:51 am
Hey Paul
Yes I am using social bookmarking a lot for my second layer of links
Matt
Thank you for this Matt,
i agree with Terry above. One of my sites got totally slapped when I tried to link “within”. Mistery to me, big time, however, I’ve just linked to my main domain name and jumped within a day to spot one. Still staying there strongly.
Cheers
Alex
Can someone help me.
If I am getting profile type backlinks does it matter if I use the same IP address, email for sign up and profile name.
or, should the IP addy, email and profile names be different.
Just wondering if this is something Google picks up on and penalizes for.
Thanks for all your insights Matt.
Love ya,
Kate
Matt Carter Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 10:52 am
Hey Kate
I would use a yahoo email and not gmail when doing profile links and also vary up your user names.
Thanks
Matt
Anna Bregman Reply:
April 25th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Hi Matt,
Just wondering, if I find that I am able to leave backlinks within the content of my forum comment, is it better to NOT put them in a ‘signature’ too? So Google doesn’t know I’m advertising my own website with my comments?
Thank you
Great post. Sometimes we all have to do the Google dance.
Matt:
Thanks for the tips on link building. I am just getting started in this business and I know these tips will be beneficial for me.
I can’t wait to start employing these tips.
– RIck
Hi Matt,
Thanks for sharing this with us. I have recently embarked on a massive backlinking strategy using web 2.0 profiles.
Would you recomend this ?
Cheers,
Dennis
Matt Carter Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 10:53 am
Hey Dennis
Yes web 2.0 sites are great, just make sure you link to them with bookmarks or RSS feeds to make sure Google finds these pages
Cheers
Matt
Now I seem to see why most of my links disappear. I have done almost every linking methods from blog posts and comments, article directories, social bookmarks etc. The links show up alright in my backlink checking software alright but after a few months they disappear and my site goes down again.
“If all the pages that link to you, have no links pointing to them, then once again this will not look natural. What I do is add a second layer of links pointing to these sites and this reinforces the integrity of my overall link structure.”
Should the links to pages linking to your pages come from your site or from another say ezinearticles?
I will certainly use your methods and see if they help.
Thanks for the tips
Hey Matt, I recently put a dofollow plugin on my site, will that affect it badly? Just wondering about that now since reading your post, Sally 🙂
“The only thing you need to be careful of, is NOT to reciprocal link back to a site that is linking to you, as this can cause a penalty from Google, as it doesn’t look natural.” Man this one line could be the most important in SEO history.
Thanks again Matt for the info on how to get high ranking with links. Perhaps if you have more than one website, you could exchange links but make sure the links you reciprocate is not on the same sites.
hey Matt
once again great post.
that seo thing is very scary to me should I DO THE BACKLINKS MYSELF OR OUTSOURCING IT. please how many links should i try to get a day/month ? please help.
Always, Thanks for the great information. Do resource box links or blog-roll links have the same weight as anchor text in a post?
Todd
Thanks for the good information again. In the past I was approached by some site owners for reciprocal links. In some cases I noticed that my traffic would increase. In another case I found that my traffic would take a sudden hit, I quickly removed those links.
I presently have 6 sites and I have them linked together. I have found that Google would find a new site within 1/2 hour, Yahoo about 2 hours, Bing about 2 weeks.
I am in the process of looking for good niches, in order to build more sites.
Hey Matt
Good solid information you have provided again. Building links is a very time consuming task, getting links from different sources using differing anchor text is crucial to a successful linking campaign.
As you say it is a good idea to have second tier links to your primary links, using social bookmarking. Are these social bookmarking links you create permanent? Are they just used to get your primary links indexed, or is there some added value to these? Do they actually contribute to your ranking?
Which type of links are most valued by the search engines?
Sorry about all the questions.
Thank you for your help.
Hi Matt
Thanks for useful tips
Think the best is not to feed Google with patterns.
Google loves linking , referencing and know about our resources , but hates repetitions and models.
Algorithms , not only on Google’s case , are by definition , pattern hunters.
No matter what you do with your website , but don’t “mechanize and repeat ”
regards
Matt, is is a Great post. This will help me a lot
Mark, I might agree with you on some of these points, but not so sure. Linking is tough enough. Google likes natural looking linking, yes, but when you write these things you send many people in a panic. Linking is like weight loss, do a few things properly, consistently –without being perfect- you can do a lot of good. Probably the most important thing you can tell your readers (I mean, really drive home) is about the keyword research. Without finding a good KW term it doesn’t matter how well you link – you won’t reach the top. Not without a whole bunch of age on your site (along with links)
Best,
Matt Carter Reply:
May 25th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Hey Brian,
First of all my name is Matt, not Mark, but anyway all good, however I am not sure what you are saying in your comment there. How am I sending people into a panic about link building? Maybe you can try and explain this more. This kind of link building works wonders, believe me!
Thanks
Matt
Hi Matt,
You always over deliver and lot of things I learn from your blog
and email. This is a keeper.
edsel
I apologize, Matt. I am simply saying that when you give tips to people using your methods (for linking), it’s already tough enough for many (if not most) people to get links. Even with your methods – which are great – it takes an obscene amount of time. …When you add in the aspect of linking to your links, it complicates things. On a static low PR site, I understand your logic. However, on a more powerful PR site (say 3 and above) it’s not necessary. In fact, unless you have an outsourcing army that method is just sprinkles on the frosting of an already well-made cake: your time is better spent elsewhere, and the next link can go to an internal page, instead of a link on the outside of your site.
Again, I apologize for the name mistake.
Best,
Brian
Matt Carter Reply:
May 26th, 2010 at 8:17 am
Hey Brian
You make some good points, but I find that Google is getting tougher on sites, and if you
are going after a slightly competitive keyword, then I have found sites drop from Google
for as long a 8 months, until I started to build a more solid link structure.
However you are right, if it is low level stuff there is less need for this, although its not
hard to do when you use automation software, I would never build a second layer of
links manually.
Thanks for your input
Matt
Thanks Matt, your article is very useful for me as an internet marketer & also Twalk 2.0 preneur. Cause this article is good to known by all of internet marketer.
I also used social networking to build the link.
For all of you that want to get FREE Traffic ebook, just visit my blog in http://in-topic.com/blog/
and enjoy it.
Thanks,
Gani
http://in-topic.com
(The best place for sharing and update information into your social networks)
Matt Carter Reply:
May 26th, 2010 at 8:22 am
Hey Gani
Thanks for stopping by!
Regards
Matt
G’Day Matt
Good post for me as I am looking to embark on a back-linking week.
Can you recommend the tools you use or would use for:
1. Article Backlinks
2. Blog Backlinks
3. Forum commenting and backlinks
4. Social media bookmarking and links
I would like to automate the whole process as much as possible.
thanks
My
another great bit matt. i’m brand new but i’ve read some, enough to know i can get lots of my answers on your blog.
thanks for the good deeds.
happy trails and safe travels, ed.
Looking forward to read more article, thanks.
Robert
Matt,
Very timely information, thanks! I need a good resource for doing social linking. Where do I find a good one? Thanks,
Peggy
Hi Matt,
Is link building important with CWS sites and how do you build Links? Do you have a video on that?
I am trying to learn.
Thanks for all your help so far!
Matt Carter Reply:
July 8th, 2010 at 7:49 am
Hey Ann
Yes you need to build links for all sites. Link building is detailed topic and not something
I can give you an answer for easily. I encourage you to read past blog posts of mine
and if you haven’t already then watch my 12 part video course.
Thanks
Matt
Another great post. I haven’t done any reciprocal linking (and now am grateful not to have done so.) As a beginner, understanding Google can be a challenge. This post shed quite a bit of light on the topic for me.
Is your backlink blueprint program available as a separate product or only with rapid rewriter?
Matt Carter Reply:
August 8th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Hey Joe
Sorry but at this stage Backlink Blueprint is only available as a package with Rapid Rewriter.
Kind regards
Matt
Hi Matt,
I’m a dedicated follower of your blog and I have set up a massive backlinking campaign for the company I work for. The biggest problem I have been finding is that nearly every site I find to leave a blog post comment on have the no-follow feature enabled. Is this becoming more frequent now as I can never seem to get a break.
Joseph
http://www.aldax.com.au/whatcastingmaterial.htm
Just testing if this blog has no-follow enabled, hehe
Hi Matt,
Great videos, very helpful information and well presented. I would be happy if you consider offering the BL blueprint separately sooner.
Hi Matt thanks for the post,I’m new to SEO and reading your blog helps alot,well,at least gives me an insperation.
Although I have no preior knwoledge about Internet marketing it seems like the best move I should take is just dive in .Where do you think I should start from?
I’ve been trying to figure out what backlinks are for for quite some time and this is the best explanation I have found. Thank you.
THanks Matt for the pro suggestions, I will try them out when making more backlinks for my site!
What does this mean exactly “…add a second layer of links pointing to these sites…”
Thanks for all the advice, Matt.