Are You Getting Bad Un-Linking Advice?

Posted on February 05th, 2013 in SEO

When Panda and Penguin updates from Google started wrecking havoc with a lot of websites, most people knew the culprits involved a lot of companies whose goals were to get backlinks at any cost for their client’s benefit. So when the sites that had those links started losing traffic, the sites whose links were on those sites started losing it as well.

Brent Thomson
via Compfight

The big recommendation that seems to have permeated the industry was to get all of those links removed from as many sites as possible. Thus, many companies started a link removal campaign, which really wasn’t such a problem. The problem is that most of these companies decided that all links needed to be removed; that’s where the bad advice part came in.

One of the blogs I own is a finance blog. All of the articles are related to something financial; right now it’s my highest ranked blog. The blog accepts advertising, which includes companies being able to purchase a link within an article, write guests posts with their link inside the article, or pay me to write the article with their link inside it.

All articles on the site are related to financial issues. All links are related to financial issues. If you have a link on that site, it’s related to finances; no questions about it.

However, that blog has been receiving requests to remove links. None of them are links paid for that weren’t originated by those who requested guest posts or had me write something for them. This means that those links are good and legitimate because the topic is related to their business. Yet, they’ve been convinced by someone that those links are bad, that suddenly getting a backlink from everyone is bad, and thus those links have to go.

The problem with that advice is the same problem as the original advice. When companies allow those who work for them to suggest an all or nothing strategy, bad things are going to occur. Getting backlinks with no regard to who they were linking to was stupid. Removing all links without reviewing whether some of those links might be legit, especially if they ended up where they were because of guest posts, is idiocy.

For any company looking to hire an SEO strategist, it’s important to ask about backlinking strategy up front, if that’s what you want to do. Personally, I’ve always felt that one should take care of their own site first, then evaluate if looking for backlinks is the proper thing to do, and if so, having guest posts on sites whose topics are similar to your own is probably the best way to go. You may not get hundreds of links but those you do get will be better targeted and legitimate.

Tags: backlinking, bad SEO advice

This post has 4 comments

Frank Woodman
February 7th, 2013
Like so many areas of SEO rumors and misinformation seem to be more common than the truth. I’ve seen many articles saying that you need to cut all or most all of the links you have. That is just stupid and of course if links are good related links they are most certainly an asset. So it’s good to see a more informed article that tells it like it is… good related links are still good for Google and other rankings. So I’m with you I on this issue Mitch.
Frank Woodman recently posted…Do you need to see if your tax refund will be offset by any claims?

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Mitch Mitchell Reply:
February 9th, 2013 at 4:15 PM
Thanks Frank. I can’t figure out why there seems to be so many kneejerk reactions to everything these days. Some links are just fine; for most folks, the majority are fine. But if they hired companies to do their bidding and now are trying to fix things themselves… well, you do what you can.

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Darnell Jackson
February 15th, 2013
Good point.

This is why I think the BEST reason to build a back link is for traffic first.

If people won’t use the link you probably put it in the wrong place.

I look at links almost like an invitation, think about WHO you wouldn’t invite. That’s what I’ve found that works the best.
Darnell Jackson recently posted…How to find leads on the internet for free. part 3 – Craigslist

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Mitch Mitchell Reply:
February 16th, 2013 at 4:14 PM
Thanks for sharing Darnell. Actually, I don’t really think about backlinks except for blogs that have CommentLuv on them, where I can select a post I want to share with people. Traffic would be my first thought after that, which is why I share my links in many other places. But farming my business out to someone just to get links…not me.

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