What kind of backlinks are "Bad" links

[amilylorry]

Hi everyone, can you tell me how you identify the "Bad" links? What's SEO metrics will you take into account?

[Planet13]

"What kind of backlinks are "Bad" links"

The way I look at it is that if my competitors had that link and I thought they were trying to game google, then it is probably a bad link.

[wheel]

I have to disagree with the idea that wikipedia links are no good. And its very common that many Wikipedia links aren't clicked on. Think about it, it's a vast resource with around 33 million pages/articles. That doesn't make them bad links.

Links either send traffic, or they help ranking in Google. Otherwise, they're pointless.

And most links don't send traffic. And the few that do send traffic, send negligible amounts.

Arguing that links for their own sake are good is an academic exercise. Like, you can build a business on links without Google. Anyone want to try that? Lots of people have been forced to try that - and nobody's succeeding.

Since the brand push that Google did a year or two ago, most of my competitors have dropped off the rankings. Some of them had great links, relatively speaking. Yet they're all laying off, scaling back, and even calling me for a piece of my business. When it's no longer an academic arguement, businesses don't waste their time building links for traffic sake.

[fathom]

Here are some of the backlinks you should avoid:

3. article directories (not that bad, but some can easily be abused too and dont use duplicate contents on bulk article submissions)

those are the obvious ones

This one Google itself indicates these are completely unnatural even without your cautionary issues, so far as anything similar to zinearticles.com

Reconsideration request for xxxxxxxxxxxx: Links to your site violate Google's quality guidelines
February 23, 2014

Google has received a reconsideration request from a site owner for xxxxxxxxxx.

We've reviewed the links to your site and we still believe that some of them are outside our quality guidelines.

Sample URLs:

[ezinearticles.com...]
xxxxxx
xxxxxx

Please correct or remove all inorganic links, not limited to the samples provided above. This may involve contacting webmasters of the sites with the inorganic links on them.

If there are links to your site that cannot be removed, you can use the disavow links tool. Keep in mind that simply disavowing links will not be enough to make a reconsideration request successful; we will also need to see good-faith efforts to remove a large portion of inorganic links from the web wherever possible.

Removing links takes time. Due to the large volume of requests we receive, and to give you a better chance of your next reconsideration request being successful, we won't review another request from this site for a few weeks from now. We recommend that you take the necessary time to remove unnatural backlinks to your site, and then file another reconsideration request.

For more specific information about the status of your site, visit the Manual Actions page in Webmaster Tools. From there, you may request reconsideration of your site again.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Webmaster Help Forum.

You can't argue with this one.

[denisl]

So - looking at my link profiles in WMT, a lot of the links are either ehow or answers type sites, or webpage analysis sites.

Are these the type of links that people are trying to get removed or dissavowing?

[fathom]

Answer links are rel="nofollow" (or disavowed by website owner).

eHow... although I personally don't like resource I don't see anything wrong with their natural citations.

[whatson]

I like this definition: A good link is one you didn't know about.

[denisl]

I didn't know about any of my links but I'm not confident they are all good.

[fathom]

The thing about good vs. bad links you need a fair percentage of bad to overshadow the good.

[onlinesource]

You guys say so no to blog comments or message boards, but what about when the comments stay on topic? For instance if somebody starts at thread or writes a post about car parts for their '67 vet and somebody replies about their own vet, and the conversation is all about corvettes and such and you replly with a helpful link like, "hey guys check out chevyparts.com", how is that abuse? I get it that most of the comments left on these blogs by spammers contain random backlinks that do not relate to the discussion, devaluing the page. But if the webmaster runs a clean site and makes sure that all content relates, then the links would hold good value, correct?

Same thing if I discussed elephants on this thread right now and linked to it. It has nothing to do with elephants and this page also becomes less about backlinks and devalues it as a source for the topic. At least that is what I believe.

The problem in posting on blogs and forums, from my experience is a: finding ones that do follow and not nofoollow. b: hit your topic and aren't being abused with spammers and c: is fresh because from my experience if you add a link to a post from years ago, it holds less value than a fresh post or thread that has gone viral.

[fathom]

You guys say so no to blog comments or message boards, but what about when the comments stay on topic? For instance if somebody starts at thread or writes a post about car parts for their '67 vet and somebody replies about their own vet, and the conversation is all about corvettes and such and you replly with a helpful link like, "hey guys check out chevyparts.com", how is that abuse? I get it that most of the comments left on these blogs by spammers contain random backlinks that do not relate to the discussion, devaluing the page. But if the webmaster runs a clean site and makes sure that all content relates, then the links would hold good value, correct?

Same thing if I discussed elephants on this thread right now and linked to it. It has nothing to do with elephants and this page also becomes less about backlinks and devalues it as a source for the topic. At least that is what I believe.

The problem in posting on blogs and forums, from my experience is a: finding ones that do follow and not nofoollow. b: hit your topic and aren't being abused with spammers and c: is fresh because from my experience if you add a link to a post from years ago, it holds less value than a fresh post or thread that has gone viral.

Notes for dofollow links - OK!

No problem with that or blog comments in general... where you get into problems is if you search for say (I'll use a big number) and find 1000 car blogs and posting your reply with a helpful link like, "hey guys check out chevyparts.com", that there is 1000 abuses? ...but sure only 1 comment like you reply with a helpful link like, "hey guys check out chevyparts.com", is GREAT!

But a single link isn't going to do much for your ranking potential either.

So you can make any good link bad and by not repeating that link style is how you can have all good links.

Same thing if I discussed elephants on this thread right now and linked to it. It has nothing to do with elephants and this page also becomes less about backlinks and devalues it as a source for the topic. At least that is what I believe.

But it does (have something to do with elephants) the moment you added the word if it is never edited out.

You aren't devaluing the page or the link you simple expanded the topic to include "elephants" as well.

I am positive after these last posted are index this thread will rank for bad elephant & car links (and all associated phrases)

[edited by: fathom at 5:24 pm (utc) on Sep 5, 2014]

[EditorialGuy]

You guys say so no to blog comments or message boards

Our site gets a lot of links from forums (we're often cited as a resource), and some of our most-linked pages from forums have no. 1 rankings in Google, beating out big-name sites.

Mind you, I'm talking about real organic links, not links in forum signatures or links that were placed by us.

[seoskunk]

Google have developed a new algo that rewards advertisement. Backlinks are at best irrelevant and at worst causing some kind of penalty. SEO involving backlinks is dead.

[drl1]

Wheel nailed it.

[fathom]

Google have developed a new algo that rewards advertisement. Backlinks are at best irrelevant and at worst causing some kind of penalty. SEO involving backlinks is dead.

Must be skunk talk for "I stink at SEO"

[jmccormac]

Just on the Wikipedia thing, it seems to be so trustworthy for Google that Google scrapes it for its "knowledge" graph. However many people go to Wikipedia looking for an answer (that they have abjectly failed to find in Google's SERPs) rather than a link.

Regards...jmcc

[EditorialGuy]

However many people go to Wikipedia looking for an answer (that they have abjectly failed to find in Google's SERPs) rather than a link.

They're probably going to Wikipedia for the same reason that someone reading a Google News snippet goes to the Washington Post or the New York Times: to get information that isn't just bite-sized.

An answer box on Google, Bing, or another search engine may be fine if you're looking up "capital of North Dakota" or "size of blue whale" but the person who's visiting Bismarck or interested in knowing more about blue whales isn't likely to be satisfied with a one-line answer or a few bullet points of text.

[jmccormac]

They're probably going to Wikipedia for the same reason that someone reading a Google News snippet goes to the Washington Post or the New York Times: to get information that isn't just bite-sized.

This might be uncomfortable reading for Google fans but nearly a generation of school kids and students have relied upon Wikipedia rather than Google. They have grown up using Wikipedia for homework and research rather than Google. And now they go to Wikipedia first. This is why Google plagiarises Wikipedia for its "knowledge" graph. It is a blatent attempt to keep users on its SERPs pages so it can shove adverts in their faces.

Regards...jmcc

[fom2001uk]

IMO, Wikipedia links do help rankings, but its not a direct boost. It doesn't have to be.

[seoskunk]

Must be skunk talk for "I stink at SEO"

LOL thats soo true, honestly your wasting your time with backlinks, way too dangerous these days , but if you want to continue its your funeral.... Give me a shout when you need to pay to do the disavow file.

[fathom]

LOL thats soo true, honestly your wasting your time with backlinks, way too dangerous these days , but if you want to continue its your funeral.... Give me a shout when you need to pay to do the disavow file.

Backlinks are like driving a car. If you follow the rules & drive safe you will almost never ever have a problem.

But if you think you can hotdog it anywhere & everywhere that too is way too dangerous.

[hiredeveloper]

According to me, Low quality and irrelevant back links are counting bad links for our site. So I will always trying to choose the way like generating quality back links rather than quantity back links.

[aristotle]

I still haven't seen anything in this thread to change my opinion that the best way to judge a backlink is by how much traffic it sends you. Here are my reasons for believing this:

A backlink that sends traffic is nearly always located on an important website which gets a lot of traffic itself. In addition, such a backlink is probably being clicked because the anchor text is relevant to what people are reading on the other site. Most likely both of these factors are an important part of how Google's algorithm evaluates the value of a backlink. So not only do these types of backlinks send you traffic directly, they are also likely to give a much bigger boost to your Google rankings than other backlinks.

Evidently some of the posters in this thread have never had any backlinks that send much traffic. This may be typical of people who get their backlinks by building or buying them. On the other hand, backlinks that send worthwhile traffic are nearly always natural backlinks that are created by other people without any involvement on your part. One of my sites has a natural backlink that sent more than 6000 visitors the first day, and still sends a few everyday more than two years later. My sites also have several other natural backlinks that sent 500-1000 visitors the first day and still send a few more each day as well.

In summary, natural backlinks that send traffic are also in most cases the backlinks that give the biggest boost to your Google rankings. Thus not only do you get direct traffic, you also get more traffic from Google. So for me, these are the most valuable backlinks of all.

[Saffron]

Backlinks are like driving a car. If you follow the rules & drive safe you will almost never ever have a problem.

But if you think you can hotdog it anywhere & everywhere that too is way too dangerous.

I've never asked anybody to link to my site, submitted to directories. I'm wading through my backlinks now, there's some awful ones.

I really dislike the whole presumption of guilt.

[rish3]

Answer links are rel="nofollow" (or disavowed by website owner).

eHow... although I personally don't like resource I don't see anything wrong with their natural citations.

eHow makes me laugh.

Ehow links are "nofollow" (i.e: "I can't vouch for this link"), but then specifically listed under "Resources" (i.e.: "We found this article, which seemed good to us, so we did a thin rewrite")

So, you liked my article enough to do a thin rewrite without any original research, but you don't like it enough to give it a proper "do follow" link?

It would be funnier if this strategy didn't give them so much google organic traffic.