Does this link building actually work?
-
Doing a small SEO project for a local dermatologist and when reviewing competitor link profiles I found one site that was earning a TON of links from other doctors throughout the country.
From what I can tell, it looks like this web development company builds medical practice sites, then puts a page on each site that links to all other practices they created site for.
Does this actually work? What would the name of this be? Recipricol links? Link farm?
http://www.raleighsportsmed.com/ypo-showcase.php
Thanks!
Ricky
-
Does it work? Yeah, probably. For now.
Should it work? Probably not. I obviously haven't seen the sites, but if they're hosted on the same hosting account with the same IP address, then it wouldn't surprise me if this was eventually hit. And if it was reported, it definitely would not pass a manual review by the Google spam team IMO.
As others have said, it's super risky. Just a few weeks ago I didn't let someone join my platform to provide local SEO services specifically because they are doing this sort of thing as their main link acquisition tactic for their clients, and while it works right now it's definitely very grey hat and will stop working at some point. I've spoken with people who used to operate Personal Blog Networks like this, and they always get hit eventually.
I'd also hate to be the SEO brought in to clean this sort of thing up and get the clients that this company loses ranking again. Lots of small businesses sound like they'll be harmed because of this, unfortunately.
Hope that helps!
John
-
That SEO consultant or agency is buying all the tickets for a penalty.
Too old school, too early 2000's
-
Wouldn't you hate to be the SEO consultant who had all his clients penalized at the same time? Sheesh!
-
Oh man! That looks reaaalllly dangerous.
I am confident that this type of approach has been on the Google Spam Team's radar for at least a decade. I will be surprised if Google has not at least devalued these links, if they have not demoted some of the sites in the organic rankings - but I don't know what type of negative impact this would have in the local search results.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Which way of Link Building is best for seo and long term results
Hi - Have started off with a Automotive site - www.mycarhelpline.com based in India 15 months back Have achieved close to daily visitors of 2500+ in numbers Have made do follow links through - Article submission in high pr directories, couple of press releases, high pr forum submission, directory submission with high pr (though yet to get link from yahoo, botw n dmoz) and couple pf backlinks in high other pr sites Need to know - Best way to create backlinks - is article writing the best way to create backlinks - as against paid directories and paid press releases. I Can target 350 articles in high pr article directories for 6 mo - Ezine, Selfgrowth, Articledashboard n others How can i achieve my target of 10,000 daily visitors. What link bulding strategy do i need to adopt - as am finding difficult to explore sites where i can build backlinks except articles There are other Auto sites - heard of getting 40K unique visitors on daily basis Pl suggest . thnx
Link Building | | Modi0 -
Backlinking / Link Building Services
Hello, Our site is struggling organically and one of the key factors (not surprisingly) is a lack of backlinks. We have hired a content writer and are working on a content strategy to generate quality, relevant backlinks. But this is more of a long term project. After reviewing backlinks to our competitors' sites, it seems clear that they are using agencies or services to generate backlinks (most coming from low quality sites). I'm aware that this isn't a good long term strategy (although it seems to be serving them well at the moment). I was hoping the community could provide some insight on products or services out there that provide "safe" backlinking strategies. I don't want to do anything that is going to harm us in the future. I've read a bit on the hoth, and it seems fairly safe and potentially effective, but it's hard find much objective advice on the topic. Any insight is much appreciated - thanks in advance! Jason
Link Building | | ba_seomoz0 -
Best way of starting link building to a new website?
I am doing SEO for a security keyholding company and would like to build up some quality links from related and high PR sites. Submitting profiles to directories is incredibly time consuming. I am thinking of outsourcing a link building campaign to a link building company, but know Google advises against this. Does anyone recommend a cost effective and ethical link building service out there? Or are there any link building techniques to use that will help me out? What I want to be sure of is that a link building campaign won’t get my websites penalised in search engines and the links are from quality and related websites. Many thanks in advance
Link Building | | AlexBarnes0 -
Multiple link building strategy for multiple clients
We deal with about 200 clients for a series of websites. We create a number of articles articles per site per month. A company we used to do link building for the websites it turns out were doing a lot of spinning which has been hard hit by the new penguin update. I'm actually really happy about it as it means we can now do some legitimate SEO on their sites. Any ideas of what the best strategy would be for this amount of sites which we are already creating shareable content for?
Link Building | | acs1110 -
Internal Link Building
How important is internal link building? What is the right way of doing it, and what is the wrong way of doing it?
Link Building | | sansonj0 -
What are the best SEO agencies for link building?
I am not looking for a full service SEO agency. I just want link building. Not paid links, not link networks, not blog comments, not bookmarks...real, legit, decent links. Does anyone have any experience working with an SEO agency that helped them develop their link profile positively and at a reasonable price? I'm willing to pay for the service, I just want to work with someone who won't buy links or send a bunch of spam our way. If anyone has worked with such an agency, please let me know so I can contact them for more info. Thanks!
Link Building | | DanDeceuster0 -
Link building, does query string matter?
Hi All, We have some partners which link to our site, and they put "?ref=SITENAME" so we Can identify the source of the link....but does this matter to the search engines? Does this count as a different page than the one without the query string? -Rasmus
Link Building | | rasmusbang0 -
Can someone recommend a proven link building company?
Hi there. Can someone please recommend a link building company? Can somebody recommend a tried and trusted linking building company that they have used and have really good results from? There are so many link builidng companies out there all promising they can deliver X,Y AND Z! Please help if anyone can recommend a company has am going roun in cricles! Thanks guys Gareth
Link Building | | GAZ090