What is link spam?
Have you ever clicked on an embedded link in a post that sent you to a page that had nothing to do with the topic? These links can be found all over social media, and they are spammy links.
Brands employ link spams to embed links in posts to promote their content, no matter what the post is about or where it was published. This method is widely utilised on social media and is typically employed by businesses to raise the number of external backlinks to their website and hence boost their SERP results.
Businesses typically use spammy links for their money-making web pages or cornerstone content. This is a typical method used by site owners since the number of external backlinks can boost the ranks of web pages.
Link spamming, on the other hand, has no effect on other search engine ranking variables for web pages. They provide no additional value in terms of improving the linked page’s quality metrics. Link spam does not affect the quality of a page in the eyes of search engines or readers. This is why link spamming should be done with caution by site owners to avoid sending a bad signal to search engine algorithms about their site.
So, in order to stay safe, what forms of link spamming should you avoid? Let’s see what happens.
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Types of Link Spam to Avoid
Cleansing Domains
Cleaning domains, often known as “301,” are a type of link manipulation that is considered a “black-hat SEO” strategy. This is an extremely risky link spamming tactic because the odds of your actions being found and penalised by search engines using black hat techniques are very high.
This method essentially employs the redirect method, in which new links to any domain are redirected, which is not typical link behaviour. It is not guaranteed that it will remain unnoticed in the future. If Google discovers you’re using this strategy, they’ll take steps like Penguin (immediately changing 301 redirects to 404).
Article Marketing
In and of itself, low-quality content signals to search engines that a website should not be ranked highly. Article marketing, on the other hand, takes it to a whole new level. Do not write articles just for the purpose of obtaining a link. If all of your website’s followed links are self-generated and not endorsed by external and authoritative sources, it could hurt your rankings and degrade the user experience. It is recommended that you do not commit time or money to writing mediocre or low-quality content only for the purpose of getting links.
Single-Post Blogs
Web 2.0 blogs are also known as single-post blogs. These are usually little blog pages on sub-domains of platforms like WordPress or Tumblr that aren’t functioning well already. These are mainly content hubs that exist solely to provide “link juice” to websites through social bookmarking.
Essentially, replacing links that have no effect on your page with those that host decent-looking material will provide no results. Because these bogus links are already underperforming, Google can easily pick them out.
Site-Wide Links
Just a few years ago, this was a common practice followed by practically everyone. Site-wide links, often known as sponsored links or Google Bombs, are frequently found in the footer part of web pages.
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Google crippled this technique by using the Penguin algorithm to penalise misuse of any form of anchor text with purchased links on websites. This method is no longer safe, and site owners should avoid it.
Paid Links
Although there are no infallible methods for detecting every single purchased link on a page, link spamming may become a problem for you. When paid links are placed in mass, search engines may easily find their imprints on pages.
The goal is to make it difficult for the search engine algorithms to figure out what you’re doing. You must have faith in the merchants that they will not spam your purchased links. Make sure all of your link buyers do the same because if one of them buys links in bulk, it may be easily spotted and traced back to your website.
Link Exchanges
It is a safe practice to exchange links, but it should not be done in volume. This approach necessitates putting your trust in complete strangers in order to obtain external links for your website. This is commonly referred to as a “link wheel.”
Because link wheels are only as strong as their weakest links, they are an extremely dangerous approach to obtaining links. When opposed to link exchange, if you are knowledgeable and careful enough to create valuable content, you can get much greater results with it and with little to no risk.
Link Bait and Switch
It’s evident that tricking consumers into accessing pages they don’t want to view isn’t a good idea. This approach is frowned upon by search engines, who will flag or penalise you if you do it. Bounce rates for linkbait and switch methods are extremely high, and unhappy consumers frequently report your pages.
This isn’t done very often, but it’s a horrible practice by any measure. Instead, employ ethical approaches like smart links to promote your links in bulk, which can help your pages achieve recurrent success.
Low-Quality Press Release Syndication
Press releases should be of excellent quality and accurately communicate the brand message. This is why high-quality syndication services include fact-checking, editorial rules, and pricing. Low-quality syndication providers, on the other hand, do not check the content. As a result, the links are either not indexed at all by search engines or are given a poor ranking factor.
Make sure you don’t utilise these service providers to distribute press releases because they won’t help your brand and might even hurt your rankings on SERPs.
Directory Spam
On the internet, there are too many directories, and search engines like Google have ceased paying attention to connections on many of them. The lower-ranking directories will only aid you a small amount in the best-case situation. How do you know which directories you should avoid? Simply ask yourself this question: Are the sites included on this directory website of high quality, and will they charge money to be listed? If you answered no to either portion of this question, it’s not worth it to spam these directories with your links.
Link Farms
Link farming occurs when two or more website owners collaborate and share links in order to post them on their respective websites. Site owners utilize link farms to create many backlinks for their websites. Search engine algorithms, on the other hand, do not see this technique as authoritative.
The backlink profile of link farms is not indexed as a result of this. When extreme spamming is detected, search engines may designate the entire website as spam.
Forum Spam
Forums are also a great location to find a lot of useful links. Search engines, on the other hand, have rendered its impact null and void. It has no influence on your link-building authority whether you post follow or no-follow links on forums.
For example, Bing’s webmaster forums have become a quagmire of spammy anchor texts and phrases, yet they don’t carry any weight as legitimate or authoritative links.
Profile Spam
Profile spam is another victim of link spamming since links posted on authority domains frequently go through a phase of unintentional follow links. This form of link spam may be seen all over the internet. Because it prohibits imitators and spammers from leveraging a brand’s identity, search engines like Google find it impossible to enforce any strict limits or actions on profiles.
Comment Spam
To sift out any link spam, authoritative websites have started utilising classifiers in their comment areas. Any links provided in the comment sections are devalued by classifiers. As a result, if you publish any links on an active site with roughly 500 comments, you will only get 1/500th of the link juice on the blog. However, a classifier will take that away as well, rendering your links useless.
Hidden Links
Have you ever come across blogs or articles that had hidden hyperlinks? These are referred to as hidden links. Hidden links can be hidden in texts, graphics, or the website’s code to be detected by the algorithm. It’s normal practice to link conversion pages in these hidden links, however, it might be a negative experience for users who don’t want to be moved to another website.
No-follow Links
If your page contains a large number of no-follow links, search engine algorithms will perceive you to be spamming. There is automatic link-building software that tries to do this by employing random links to increase a site’s backlink profile in order to avoid being flagged by Google spam detectors.
However, after Google’s Penguin update, this has become extremely difficult. Rather than focusing on quantity, Penguin examines all of the links on the website based on their context and quality. This makes nofollow link spamming very hard to go unnoticed.
How to Recover from Link Spam Penalties?
As a site owner, you should be aware of the possibility of search engines sending you a manual action notification. This notification is in GSC format for Google. If you receive this message, it’s likely that your site has been marked for link spamming. To detect this, you might even observe a traffic crash on your site. That does not, however, imply that it is beyond repair.
You have two options for recovering from link spam penalties:
- Stop doing any and all link spamming right now. If your spam content are old and out of current, Google’s algorithms are more likely to overlook them when evaluating your SERP ranks.
- Conduct a comprehensive SEO assessment of your website. This will assist you in determining the actual cause of your site’s poor performance. If link spam is shown to be the cause after the audit, you can utilise the disavow tool to remove artificially placed or penalised links. The SEO audit will alert you to these links, and the disavow tool will assist you in removing them.
Link Spams – Are they Worth it?
This question has a clear answer: no. While link spams can produce little effects for your site if done correctly, they are not worth the effort. Black-hat SEO tactics can only get your site so far before search engines flag it.
Employing white-hat SEO and ensuring there are no resemblances to black-hat practises is always a smart idea. The dangers of link spam far outweigh the advantages. When you factor in the time and resources required to carry out link spamming, it quickly becomes a huge waste of time for the site. Take into account the opportunity costs – What else could you do or invest in that is safe and would improve your website’s results?