Business Directories and Spammy Link Profile

[LeeMiller]

Hi,

have been reading a lot about submissions to directories and posting spamming blogs and forums and how they're a bad idea, saw a great post on it by Rand in a white board Friday lecture, the only thing is I've been analysing a company and that appears to be what makes up its entire link profile, all the links point to their home page with their primary phrase as the anchor text.

Just wondered how a company with some 4k links the majority being follows, hasn't been penalised for what are a really bad set of back links.

Should add that this is an insurance company, they're no light weights in their industry but certainly not one of the big boys.

Thanks, Lee

Example here

[LeeMiller]

is funny you say that, was analysing a site the other day and they had lots of links from graphical blog post, think they came from abode illustrator tutorials, commenting has been blocked now but those links were generating a lot of authority, low 70's.

Which raises an important point thats something worth considering, commenting on pages that are likely to mature in respect of PA, what might only get a little authority now might in say 3-4 years yield something worth having,

Good points thanks a lot.

[LeeMiller]

I think considering the history and particularly the issues surrounding low quality directories, most of which who were banned are back and listed, it shows a lack of commitment by Google to stamp out this kind of low quality linking, which is plainly done to artificially inflate rankings.

Concerning the Panda update I just think this is a response by Google to fire-fight the popularity of social media. Interesting that Panda and Google+ were both introduced relatively close together.

And I guess you can understand that, I get most of my business from social sites, Facebook being my main source of work and so that's reflected in how much time is spent socialising there. More time being social less time Googling!

Thanks for your comment.

[LeeMiller]

Agreed Opt,

I took a look at their competition (the big boys) their links profiles were spectacular lots of heavy weigh authority sites, National Press, Stock Market (75-90 PA) . I guess it all boils down to who they're employing to do their seo, hire low grade and the results will reflect that quality.

Still somewhat hesitant to adopt this kind of link building strategy myself, I have made blog comments but they've been genuine and lengthy responses to posts in my industry.

thanks appreciate your comment

[MashBonigala]

I see this absolutely in the graphic and logo design industry. Newer sites spamming the web with directory/forum/article spam links are getting to the first page and bumping off MUCH older sites that just post good content on their websites and do not actively go after spam link building!

Very unfortunate! But it is definitely working!!!

[RikkiD22]

Despite what a lot of people say I still feel that link building in this sense works as long as you are strict with it. If they are making sure the directories have a good authority, they have a mix of followed v no-followed and build in some sort of organic manner (consistent drip of links).

I think a lot of concern is that the search engines are working out which links are manufactured in this manner and will soon heavily devalue them, but in the here and now it works to some extent.

I guess the other thing to consider is the competition - if it is this type of link building v no link building I guess this would win...

[pwpaneuro]

Hi Lee,

I know how you feel. I feel the same when I see this happening quite often unfortunately.

What I think it is: they got their spammy backlinks before Panda update and haven't been caught. As yet.

I do hope that Google keeps improving it's algorithms and one day we won't see such cases. Or I'm just being an optimist...

Regards,

Alex