Google’s Mueller Calls Web 2.0 Style Links Spammy via @martinibuster

In a recent Webmaster Office Hours Hangout, Google’s John Mueller was asked about links from free posting sites. The technique of getting links from sites like Tumblr, classified sites, linking to your own profile in Alexa and other places that give links from profiles is called Web 2.0 Link Building.

Mueller didn’t specifically say the phrase Web 2.0 Link Building but the question and answers were specifically about the Web 2.0 link strategy.

Web 2.0 Link Building

Web 2.0 link building is a form of link building where you sign up at sites that are typically but not limited to social micro-blogging sites. After sign up you are granted a subdomain or a web space where you can blog and publish links to yourself.

This form of link building isn’t limited to blogs, it also includes obtaining links from author, user and website profiles on other sites.

Examples of sites that have been abused in Web 2.0 link building are:

• Tumblr
• Reddit
• Alexa
• Slideshare
• Medium
• Quora

An example of how in the past some have obtained a free link on someplace like Tumblr is to sign up, get a subdomain of Tumblr and then create blog posts with links back to the spammer’s website.

Spammers Say Web 2.0 Links Work

There are many low quality link builders who benefit from selling Web 2.0 links. Those spammers will predictably argue that Web 2.0 links still work and do it loudly.

But one has to understand that there is no spam technique on earth that lacks defenders in the form of spammers who profit from those techniques.

How Effective are Web 2.0 Links?

Those kinds of links are the easiest kind to spot and because of that they can be regarded as worthless.

The strategy itself is so simple to plan that a third grader with a juice box and ten minutes to spare could have created it.  Anyone who believes that a strategy so staggeringly simple can be difficult for Google to defeat is deluding themselves or their customers.

The best are editorially given links that someone chose to give because of the content. If editorially given links are the gold standard of links, then Web 2.0 links can be considered the pocket lint standard, they are that bad.

The person asking the question asked how effective those kinds of links are:

How effective is old off page SEO like backlinks creation? Many agencies spend lots of time doing old off page activities such as image sharing with links, article submission on sites like Tumblr, classified sites and other free posting sites where people hardly read any of the posts but those platforms for dropping links with some text basically majority of their site has poor quality posts.

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller gave a straightforward and unambiguous answer:

So off hand, all of those examples that you mentioned are really terrible ways of promoting your website.

So that’s something where if you hire an agency and they go off and post links on Tumblr, on classified sites and free posting sites and they claim this is going to help your website then I would move to some other agency.

So just to be really clear like this kind of activity has zero value for SEO.

It’s not something where you’re promoting your website in any way but rather essentially they’re spamming the web.

So that’s something I would strongly discourage anyone from doing.

Quality Content and Outreach/Publicity for Links

Mueller then reaffirmed the strategy of building relevant content and telling others about it:

On the other hand, creating really fantastic content and then reaching out to perhaps other sites who want to talk about that content, that’s like a totally different story.

So it’s not the case that I would say any work that you do that results in getting a link is a bad thing. But rather you should be focusing on things where you end up getting natural links because of the value of your content that you’re providing and not focusing on dropping links into random places anywhere that you can drop a link randomly.

That kind of link building where a person has to think on a level that’s higher than a third grader (or a juice box) is what it takes to successfully rank relevant content. It’s a seemingly simple strategy but there is a world of nuance that goes into making that kind of link building successful.

Mueller then doubled down on criticizing Web 2.0 style spam:

That’s not going to help your website, that’s just going to considered as spam so that’s a really bad idea.

So that’s kind of link I can’t say in any amount of working on a website to improve the links that you would get is bad. But rather that you should definitely not be doing this kind of spam.

And if an agency is doing this kind of spam for you I would switch to a different agency.

High Quality Link Building Strategies

If you are interested in learning the nuances of link building strategies then you should take a look at a compilation of link building articles I wrote in 2019.

I share many tips from my own link building strategies developed over almost twenty years of search marketing.

A Year of Link Building Strategies
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/year-of-link-building-tips/341509/

 

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/googles-mueller-calls-web-2-0-style-links-spammy-via-martinibuster/

Google Says Paid Links Don’t Work via @martinibuster

John Mueller answered the question about the ability of paid links to help sites rank. He insisted that in “pretty much all of the cases” he’s reviewed it wasn’t the links.

Do Paid Links Help Sites Rank?

The person asking the question claimed 80-90% of sites ranking in their niche are using paid links. That’s a not necessarily unusual situation.

Here is the question: 

Are backlinks important in ranking factors? Because nowadays 80 to 90% of websites are buying backlinks which I think is very unethical.

But these websites are also ranking on the first page. Why?

John Mueller first confirms that Google still uses links. But then he says there are other factors. I believe what he wants to communicate is that links are not the one deciding factor but rather, links are one factor out of many factors.

This is what Mueller said

“We do use links in our ranking algorithms. We use a ton of other factors as well. So it’s not the case that links is the one thing that will make your website show up in the search results, regardless of what other people do.”

That makes sense because ultimately, what matters is if a search result answers the users search intent. The links can contribute to understanding what the page is about but ultimately the web page needs to effectively communicate the answer a search query demands.

Mueller then remarks how often websites participate in SEO tactics that don’t affect the rankings. I see this across a wide range of niches. What happens is that competitors mimic each other. This follow the leader mentality, though it looks hyper-competitive, can mask weakness in the competition. It usually manifests as no single site being able to dominate the search results.

What Mueller said:

“This is something where we also see that a lot of sites do things that aren’t really necessary for their website and web search.  They’ll go off and buy a ton of links and then we ignore all of those links.

So just because you’re seeing people doing something that looks kind of weird doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re actually profiting from that in a sense that there are lots of reasons why sites can rank in the search results. And it doesn’t have to do with anything sneaky that they’re doing.”

I like this next part because this is where he mentions, for the second time, other factors that are deciding why a site ranks. We’re not really in a post-link search world. But the quality of links passed around maybe has gone down, and I’m not talking about paid links. I’m talking about overall, there aren’t as many bloggers as there used to be, that kind of thing.

Related: 18 Popular Link Building Tactics You Should Actually Avoid

Increasingly, I tend to ask questions like:

• What can be done to create signals that indicate this particular site is what users want to see?
• How can I make this content better than the competition?

This is the part where he mentions the importance of non-link factors:

“We get this question around links. We get this question around keyword stuffing, around hidden text; all of these aspects come up regularly and in pretty much all of the cases that I’ve looked into where we work together with the web spam team and the search quality team to double-check why these sites are ranking, it’s pretty much always because of other things.”

Do Paid Links Help Sites Rank?

I believe that the average SEO and publisher are unable to understand why a site is ranking. The average SEO tends to seize on the most obvious clue, convinced that the most visible clue is the explanation. This results in a false diagnosis.

This may explain Mueller’s experience. People who don’t know how to identify why a site is ranking are self-selecting to show John their “proof” that is really just a red herring.

People with more experience understand that paid links can work to help a site rank better. The problem that I see is that the quality of links that are for sale is generally of a poor quality.

So if a site receives a benefit, what can happen is that the benefit is short lived. The links eventually stop helping. Sometimes there is no benefit at all.

I asked someone I know who is successful in highly competitive niches about this and this is what they said:

“Our sites… are 100% pbn rank. So paid links work but we reckon that Google also discounts a fair few of them. They need to be more relevant to get through the filters these days.”

It could be that the people who come to Mueller are self-selecting to be the kind of person unable to conduct a competitive analysis. This may result in Google’s perspective that paid links don’t work. From outside of the Google’s offices the realities of paid links are different stories.

Related: 10 Bad Links That Can Get You Penalized by Google

 

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/google-says-paid-links-dont-work-via-martinibuster/