{"id":4183,"date":"2014-03-13T13:50:07","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T13:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=4183"},"modified":"2019-03-15T10:16:50","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T08:16:50","slug":"27-types-unnatural-links-link-building-strategies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/4183\/27-types-unnatural-links-link-building-strategies\/","title":{"rendered":"27 Types of Unnatural Links & Link Building Strategies"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/span>\n

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With all the changes happening in Google’s algorithms on unnatural links, spammy content, un-optimized mobile websites, it may be a bit overwhelming to keep track of all the Google Guideline violations. Some of them are an obvious violation of Google\u2019s Quality Guidelines and some of them are not that easy to spot. The process of link development is already hard enough without Google’s representatives (like John Mueller or Gary Illyes) breathing heavily down your neck.<\/p>\n

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\"Unnatural<\/p>\n

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Google’s link analysis has become increasingly complex and sophisticated. There are lots of SEO factors that dictate your website’s rankings, and link building might be the most used technique to improve your website’s rankings. You should know that not all backlinks are good. There are quite a few types of unnatural links you need to be aware so that your link building efforts won\u2019t be considered useless by Google.<\/p>\n

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  1. Link for Link<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Money for Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Goods or Services for Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Guest Posting<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Automatically Generated Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  6. Widget Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  7. Advertorials<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  8. Private Blog Networks (PBNs)<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  9. Articles & Commercial Anchor Text<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  10. Web-Directory Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  11. Footer Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  12. Sitewide Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  13. Blogroll Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  14. Forum & Blog Comments<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  15. 100% Do-Follow\u00a0Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  16. Anchor Text Over-Optimization<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  17. Geographically Irrelevant Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  18. Contextually Irrelevant Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  19. Link Velocity Spikes<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  20. Article Directories<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  21. Shady Redirects<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  22. Press Releases<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  23. Bookmark Sites<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  24. Resource Pages<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  25. Sites that Sell Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  26. Social Profile Links<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  27. Mass Ping Sites<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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    1. Link for Link<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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    I\u2019m referring here at exchange methods of link building. For example, if you\u2019re a car sales rep and you have links to several car service centers and insurance brokers around your area and they link back to you, it will probably won\u2019t raise any suspicions. But if you have hundreds of such links, not only from your area but from all over the world, you\u2019re going to raise some flags back at Google.<\/p>\n

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    Getting links using this method of link exchange is discouraged by Google and can trigger penalties. Even though exchanging links is an old practice, it still exists. With a quick search on Google. you’ll find lots of websites that offer link exchange services. Registering on such website doesn’t bring any real value to your website, not to mention visitors and traffic. Not only your efforts will be useless for the users, but you can risk getting links penalty, too.<\/p>\n

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    \"Exchange<\/p>\n

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    2. Money for Links<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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    Offering money in exchange for links or content that incorporate links is one of the most obvious methods to acquire unnatural links. One form of practice that is not that pronounced is obtaining links to your site after offering a donation. In a small number, it\u2019s accepted, but if you keep doing this, Google will consider it an unnatural tactic and you might get in trouble.<\/p>\n

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    The concept of buying or selling links<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0started in the mid-2000s and until 2009, the craze faded away and people move along. Paid links will often time have\u00a0dofollow links\u00a0are located out of context in the page which could be easily detected. Google has lots of algorithms that could catch the websites sooner or later and penalize them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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    3. Goods or Services for Links<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    \"Will<\/p>\n

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    If the method of exchanging money for links is straight forwarded, there\u2019s a thin line regarding bartering between services or goods and links. Matt Cutts created a video<\/a> <\/strong>explaining the silver lining to this method. If a person receives a laptop from a company and then he writes an article with a link pointing to the company\u2019s website, it\u2019s considered link buying. If that company lends the laptop and the person then gives it back, and ends up writing a review with a link to the company\u2019s website, it\u2019s nothing unnatural there. So the difference lies between giving and borrowing.<\/p>\n

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    4. Guest Posting<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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    According to Google, guest posting or guest blogging<\/strong><\/a> is a method used by blog or site owners to increase traffic to their sites and generate backlinks. If done correctly, guest bloggers offer to write content for other, similar blogs in their industry as guest bloggers. But it can easily turn into an unnatural link building strategy if the blog post has a high number of outbound links, or it asks for a dofollow link to their website in return or any type of “free content” scheme with keyword rich anchor texts.<\/p>\n

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    \"Guest<\/p>\n

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    Latterly, added in the not-so-select group of unnatural link tactics, guest posting may be harmful for your website if it\u2019s done improperly. To understand the fine print on this quality guideline violation, you\u2019ll need to differentiate between polished guest posts (where the author poured his knowledge to publish a high-quality article ) and spammy guest posting<\/a><\/strong> (where the author may be sending the same article to whoever is willing to publish it ). You need to tread cautiously, because it may transform from an opportunity into a problem.<\/p>\n

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    5. Automatically Generated Links<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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    It sounds like a sweet deal when someone offers to build bulks of links overnight on certain targeted keywords. In any case, those people are using automated programs that post links in the form of comments, forum posts, wiki posts and so on. This is one of the most harmful link building techniques, it terms of “internet pollution” as it adds literally no value to the users and it is very annoying for everyone. Basically, you’ll get a bunch of artificial links.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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    6. Widget Links<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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    A form of link building technique that uses “WordPress like” plugins. The person that created the plugin has the possibility to inject links on all the sites that have that respective plugin installed. If the plugin adds real value to the user, and if the webmasters have the choice to link or not back to the website, Google might consider them natural.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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    7. Advertorials<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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    Advertorials are articles that are published by sites as a form of advertisement in digital marketing. Google may consider this as a form of paid link tactic IF<\/strong> the links that point back to your site are tagged as dofollow.\u00a0Advertorials are essentially paid \u201ccontent” forms, whether we talk about news, articles, reviews.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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    Google\u2019s Matt Cutts explains very well in a video<\/strong><\/a> the warning on advertorials and paid content.<\/p>\n

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    Search engine wise, if links are paid, it shouldn’t pass value (that means placing a nofollow tag). Likewise, if you make it clear, if you’re doing disclosure, you need to make sure it’s clear to the people such as “Advertisements” or “Sponsored”.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    \"Matt<\/td>\nMatt cutts<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Former Head of Spam at Google<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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    You can even find information about these types of links in Google\u2019s\u00a0Webmaster Guidelines<\/a>.<\/strong> Any of the following situations that violate the guidelines are considered to be bad links:<\/p>\n