Blogs for links

Is this acceptable, and does it work?

[designaweb]

I've hired someone to do some link building, and in general I am satisfied with the results. There is one thing I am wondering about though - and your input on this would be most welcome.

This guy has created a blog on BlogSpot and writes an article a day related to our topic. The blog has solely been created for the purpose of sending visitors our way.

Is this acceptable policy, and does it work? Can it harm your rankings? Too close to spam?

I am not sure... What do you think?

[FranticFish]

Where it starts to get spammy is if your guy had a network of blogs to do what you describe. No harm in one blog whatsoever if the content relates to your site; just think of it as a satellite/feeder. Lots of businesses do it and it's perfectly acceptable.

You'll get maximum rankings boost (and traffic) from getting articles placed on a wide range of well-established blogs whose topic touches yours. Google loves these at the moment.

[explorador]

I've hired someone to do some link building

That sounds good

This guy has created a blog on BlogSpot and writes an article a day related to our topic

Added to the previous point, it doesn't sounds good anymore

Call me paranoid but he is building a source of traffic (and then bringing visitors to your site) but the thing is, he has the source, he is building something that is not yours and you have no ownership.

In other words I think you might be paying the guy to build something he might use anytime for something else, even to put Adsense on it. Just my opinion.

[ogletree]

Are you getting traffic from it? I agree with explorador. As soon as you stop paying him he can take his blog and point the traffic elsewhere. It would be better to create the blog on your domain. I normally set up a subdomain blog.example.com. This gives you links to your site that you own. This also gives you help with reputation management. It can make it so that you have 4 results on the first page for your company or product name.

[designaweb]

Thanks, I'll act upon your advice.

[kflanagan]

Creating a network of sites in this manner is actually becoming the norm and one of the most effective ways of increasing both rank and traffic. You will get told "oh its bad, its gray hat, build natural one way links" and then when you ask "how do you build natural one way links", you will get told to read lots of stuff.

Fact of the matter is, building a network of blogs on different IP addresses, with unique, related content pointing at a variety of sites (not just yours) interlinking and pointing links at the whole network works in all types of markets and is being done by the best seo firms today.

[aristotle]

I think this approach works rather well if done correctly. But it also requires a lot of work, since you have to write content for the blogs and find backlinks for them.

[FranticFish]

This funnel technique has always worked well but it's a lot of work to create sites that link to your site then create links to those sites. If you can get content featured on decent blogs related to your own site then you're removing two steps from the process AND it's more natural.

[brickmarketing]

Best approach is to have that blog built into your website so you have control over that content. Plus when visitors land on a blog post at least they are already on your site instead of having to take that extra step to make it over to your website through a link. If that blog spot blog eventually starts to look spammy it is directly connected with your website and Google owns blogger so you could get whacked with a penalty.

[FranticFish]

Yep, blog on your site means you can do 'post exchanges' with others too.

[CainIV]

Always keep track of all usernames and passwords. Use an email account that you have strict control over.

And when you have stopped using this person, change passwords for all accounts.