Answers to Linkbuilding Questions From Twitter

Questions provided by real anons

For today’s free-tier post, I’m going to give answers to linkbuilding questions from anons on Twitter. If you want to participate in the next question and answer section, make sure you follow me on the bird app: twitter.com/bowtiedtetra.

Do you have guidance on what makes a backlink good?

In short: authority and relevance.

You can check the authority of a page by going here: dachecker.org.

Relevance includes a few things: domain relevance, article relevance, and sentence relevance.

You want your link to be on a domain that’s in the same niche as you. If it’s in a piece of content on a non-relevant domain that’s about your domain, that’s relevant as well. 

A good backlink will be located in the middle of the content in a paragraph in an actual article.

Do PBNs still work?

A private blog network is a collection of websites all owned by you. You use the network to link to sites that you make money from in an attempt to pass on authority from the sites that you don’t make money from. 

I don’t recommend using private blog networks. You can get some results from them, but It’s kind of a boomerish tactic at this point and you can get hit with a penalty if it’s too obvious. 

I have no problem with using grey hat techniques, but Google has been cracking down on PBNs lately.

Avoid.

How do you find sites to target and what do you say?

I have a few articles about this very topic (with more to come). For now I recommend reading the following guides: The Authority Blueprint (LINK), Red-Pill Linkbuilding Tactics (LINK), and The Mechanical Turk Method (LINK).

Do you have any thoughts about buying old domains and spamming links to boost the main site?

Buying low-quality domains and spamming links is a terrible idea. Don’t do it.

You can get an SEO boost  if you buy a high-quality domain with a good backlink profile and redirect the pages to your site.

Is searching for sites with the words “guest post” on them a good strategy?

No.

Do not ever buy guest posts from sites that have the words “guest post”, “write for us”, or anything similar anywhere on their site. If you can take one look at a website and tell that they sell guest posts, Google can tell as well. 

Guest posting is still a good strategy, but you’re going to have to put work into it.

I don’t understand what I’m supposed to say. Can’t you just give me a step-by-step guide on what to do in every conceivable situation so I don’t have to think?

If you’re not a creative person, you’re NGMI when it comes to linkbuilding. I write guides that take a lot of the thinking out of the process, but at some point you’re going to have to think on your feet and come up with a novel solution.

Many spergy types are attracted to affiliate marketing for some reason, which makes no sense because it’s a dynamic endeavor that requires you to be a normal person who can think of new solutions to problems.

Unfortunately creativity is something you’re born with. If you don’t have it, there’s nothing you can do to develop it. If you’ve never played an instrument, painted, wrote fiction, or anything similar you’re flat out of luck. I’ve noticed a strong correlation between artistic types and linkbuilding success. You should find a creative person to partner with while you focus on things with clearly defined step-by-step processes like technical SEO.

What do you do if you get hit with a penalty for unnatural linkbuilding?

If you build a large quantity of low-quality, irrelevant, or spammy links; Google will hit you with a manual or algorithmic penalty. This means that they will either downrank you or even remove you from their index entirely.

The first step in recovery from a linkbuilding penalty is to remove or disavow any unnatural links. You can remove them by contacting the websites and requesting that they take them down. For any sites that don’t comply, you can disavow them using a tool that Google provides in the Search Console. You can learn more about disavowing links here (LINK).

Once you believe that you’ve fixed the issue, you’ll have to submit a reconsideration request with Google. A reconsideration request is when you ask Google to review your website after you fix the problems that caused them to penalize you. You can find submit the request in the Google Search Console Manual Actions Report (LINK).

Should you build both tier 1 and tier 2 links?

It can help but it’s not necessary.

Tier 1 refers to backlinks from another website to your website. Tier 2 refers to backlinks that are linking to a site that links to you.

If you get a link from a high-authority website, you obviously don’t have to worry about building tier 2 links to support it. But if you get a link from a lower-authority website that is relevant to your niche, it can help to build a tier 2 link to that page.

It’s definitely not necessary. If you do it in a targeted and non-spammy way it can help make your backlink profile stronger.

Should you build nofollow links as well?

There is no point in putting effort into building nofollow links.

If you can get one with little to no effort, then take it. But it won’t pass on any link juice to your site. 

The only exception is if it’s coming from an extremely authoritative site AND it uses branded anchor text. In fact, even if an authoritative site just mentions your brand name in context and doesn’t even provide a backlink you can still get a small SEO benefit. It’s always a very good thing if the New York Times or Fox News wants to mention your brand because it boosts your authority in Google’s eyes.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my tweet and asked questions about linkbuilding.

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