Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Research & Trends
    3. White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4. Should I Do a Social Bookmarking Campaign and a Tier 2 Linking?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Should I Do a Social Bookmarking Campaign and a Tier 2 Linking?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4
    6
    2255
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • zorsto
      zorsto last edited by

      I don't see anything bad in manually creating links on different (about 50) social bookmarking services. Is this method labeled as White Hat?

      I was wondering if it would be fine to create Tier 2 linking (probably blog comments) for indexing of the social bookmarking links?

      Please share your thoughts on the topic.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • brad.s.knutson
        brad.s.knutson @zorsto last edited by

        The thing is though - these methods will not increase your rankings.  Google has pretty much devalued any links that we have some form of control over (directories, forums, blog comments, social bookmarking sites - even guest posting).

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • zorsto
          zorsto last edited by

          I definitely don't plan this to be my only strategy.

          I have successful websites ranking well for some pretty competetive keywords. Besides social media signals, established blog mentions etc. I thought this could give the website an additional bump to rank for some other competetive keywords.

          brad.s.knutson 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • brad.s.knutson
            brad.s.knutson last edited by

            If all you plan to do is drop your links in social bookmarking sites, you're probably just wasting your time.  It's not likely that these links will be worth anything to search engines - even if they are followed links.  The time you spend building these links could be spend developing great content, or working on other link-building opportunities that would be more worthwhile.

            As far as blog comments go - if your goal is to get backlinks, it's not a good idea.  These links are nofollowed and too many of them will look spammy to search engines.  If you are commenting to engage with the content author, that's a different story.  I often comment on other sites to engage with the content author and start a conversation.  I sometimes choose to include my website as a reference, but I often choose to leave it out.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • Chris.Menke
              Chris.Menke last edited by

              Zoran,

              Looks like you picked up a copy of the 1996's Backpackers Guide to Linkbuilding. 🙂  As Ricky said, that stuff's not worth much today.  Basically, the more control you have over a link today, the less it is worth--with bookmarks being at the low end of the scale and editorial links from authoritative resources on the other end.  Rather than spending your time at the low end, work on building out your social media profiles and figuring out who your audience is so you can publsh content for them and announce that content through your social channels.

              Moz Chap. 7 Growing Popularity & Links

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • RickyShockley
                RickyShockley last edited by

                Hey Zoran,

                From my understanding social bookmarking on small and rarely used sites will have VERY little positive affect on search rankings. I like to follow Eric Ward's golden rule: ask yourself..would you want this link if Google did not exist?

                Definitely think your time could be better utilized elsewhere!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                Browse Questions

                Explore more categories

                • Moz Tools

                  Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                • SEO Tactics

                  Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                • Community

                  Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                • Digital Marketing

                  Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                • Research & Trends

                  Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                • Support

                  Connect on product support and feature requests.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • crescentdigital

                  Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects

                  Hi, I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT. Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s. The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore? The linking domains are listed below: http://www.basalts.cn/
                  http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
                  http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
                  http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
                  http://www.granite-exporter.com/
                  http://www.sandstones.biz/
                  http://www.stone-2.com/
                  http://www.stonebuild.cn/
                  http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
                  http://www.stonecontact.cn/
                  http://www.stonecrate.com/
                  http://www.stonedesk.com/
                  http://www.stonedvd.com/
                  http://www.stonepark.cn/
                  http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
                  http://www.stonewebsite.com/ Thanks Steve

                  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | crescentdigital
                  0
                • MickEdwards

                  Disavow links leading to 404

                  Looking at the link profile anchor text of a site i'm working on new links keep popping up in the reports with let's say very distasteful anchor text.  These links are obviously spam and link to old forum pages for the site that doesn't exist any more, so the majority seem to trigger the 404 page. I understand that the 404 page (404 header response) does not flow any link power, or damage, but given the nature and volume of the sites linking to the "domain" would it be a good idea to completely disassociate and disavow these domains?

                  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MickEdwards
                  0
                • howardd

                  Black Hat SEO Case Study - Private Link Network - How is this still working?

                  I have been studying my competitor's link building strategies and one guy (affiliate) in particular really caught my attention. He has been using a strategy that has been working really well for the past six months or so. How well? He owns about 80% of search results for highly competitive keywords, in multiple industries, that add up to about 200,000 searches per month in total. As far as I can tell it's a private link network. Using Ahref and Open Site Explorer, I found out that he owns 1000s of bought domains, all linking to his sites. Recently, all he's been doing is essentially buying high pr domains, redesigning the site and adding new content to rank for his keywords. I reported his link-wheel scheme to Google and posted a message on the webmaster forum - no luck there. So I'm wondering how is he getting away with this? Isn't Google's algorithm sophisticated enough to catch something as obvious as this? Everyone preaches about White Hat SEO, but how can honest marketers/SEOs compete with guys like him? Any thoughts would be very helpful. I can include some of the reports I've gathered if anyone is interested to study this further. thanks!

                  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd
                  0
                • NurunMTL

                  Hiding content or links in responsive design

                  Hi, I found a lot of information about responsive design and SEO, mostly theories no real experiment and I'd like to find a clear answer if someone tested that. Google says: 
                  Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device
                  https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details For usability reasons sometimes you need to hide content or links completely (not accessible at all by the visitor) on your page for small resolutions (mobile) using CSS ("visibility:hidden" or "display:none") Is this counted as hidden content and could penalize your site or not? What do you guys do when you create responsive design websites? Thanks! GaB

                  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NurunMTL
                  0
                • LeverSEO

                  Footer Link in International Parent Company Websites Causing Penalty?

                  Still waiting to look at the analytics for the timeframe, but we do know that the top keyword dropped on or about April 23, 2012 from the #1 ranking in Google - something they had held for years, and traffic dropped over 15% that month and further slips since. Just looked at Google Webmaster Tools and see over 2.3MM backlinks from "sister" compainies from their footers.  One has over 700,000, the rest about 50,000 on average and all going to the home page, and all using the same anchor text, which is both a branded keyword, as well as a generic keyword, the same one they ranked #1 for. They are all "nofollows" but we are trying to confirm if the nofollow was before or after they got hit, but regardless, Google has found them. To also add, most of sites are from their international sites, so .de, .pl, .es, .nl and other Eurpean country extensions. Of course based on this, I would assume the footer links and timing, was result of the Penguin update and spam. The one issue, is that the other US "sister" companies listed in the same footer, did not see a drop, in fact some had increase traffic.  And one of them has the same issue with the brand name, where it is both a brand name and a generic keyword.  The only note that I will make about any of the other domains is that they do not drive the traffic this one used to. There is at least a 100,000+ visitor difference among the main site, and this additional sister sites also listed in the footer. I think I'm on the right track with the footer links, even though the other sites that have the same footer links do not seem to be suffering as much, but wanted to see if anyone else had a different opinion or theory. Thanks!
                  Jen Davis

                  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LeverSEO
                  0
                • Joseph-Green-SEO

                  What means a back door link. Please explain and I will give you credit

                  Some one is asking me to do a back door link to each other, what dose it mean?

                  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO
                  0
                • lauratagdigital

                  Disavow - Broken links

                  I have a client who dealt with an SEO that created not great links for their site. http://www.golfamigos.co.uk/ When I drilled down in opensiteexplorer there are quite a few links where the sites do not exist anymore - so I thought I could test out Disavow out on them .. maybe just about 6 - then we are building good quality links to try and tackle this problem with  a more positive approach. I just wondered what the consensus was?

                  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lauratagdigital
                  0
                • shags38

                  Why would links that were deleted by me 3 months ago still show up in reports?

                  I inadvertently created a mini link farm some time back by linking all of my parked domains (2000 plus) to some of my live websites (I was green and didn't think linking between the same owner sites / domains was an issue). These websites were doing well until Penguin and although I did not get any 'bad link' advices from Google I figure I was hit by Penguin. So about 3 or 4 months ago I painstakingly deleted ALL links from all of those domains that I still own (only 500 or so - the others were allowed to lapse). None of those domains have any links linking out at all but old links from those domains are still showing up in WMT and in SEOmoz and every other link tracking report I have run. So why would these links still be reported? How long do old links stay in the internet archives? This may sound like a strange question but do links 'remain with a domain for a given period of time regardless'? Are links archived before being 'thrown out' of the web. I know Google keeps archives of data that has expired, been deleted, website closed etc, etc for about 3 years or so (?). In an effort to correct a situation I have spent countless hours manually deleting thousands of links but they won't go away. Looking for some insight here please. cheers, Mike

                  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shags38
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.