Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Back link pyramid
-
Excuse me for such a newbie question but is using a backlinking pyramid black hat seo. I was trying to find out but every site gives you different advice on this subject.
Also If there is a type of backlinking structure that is best please let me know.
thanks
-
SE = Search engines
they can see what you are up to
-
Alan, when you say SE's to spot you who are you referring to. Sorry really new here not sure what you were saying.
Thank you for the response as well.
-
Wow thank you so much for the responses they were very helpful. I was asking this question so I can learn proper seo not for the intention to black hat my way to the top. I have built a company from the ground up with my family and have no intentions of doing anything to harm our internet presence in any way.
I wanted to know if it was bad or not because I had a local seo guy wanted to build that type of structure for our site and wasn't sure.
Optimize - You freaking rock... now thats an answer... I am going to forward this over to the seo guy as the main reason why I won't be hiring him. lol
Thanks again...
-
Thanks for this helpful information. In the future, it'd be great if you could add the links that cite your sources, and indicate which portions of your answer have been reproduced from existing content.
-
Jason-
Unless you are King Tut, pyramids by nature are bad. The most common black hat SEO techniques all center around link building schemes, from pyramids to paying for thousands of links.
Here are some basic Google no-no's
- Buying backlinks, or otherwise providing monetary compensation for backlinks (including offering discounts for links, as we saw when Google punished overstock.com)
- Creating many sites just to provide backlinks to other sites — also known as link pyramids.
- Putting hidden text on your website, including very small text stuffed with keywords, or text that is the same color as the background or otherwise invisible.
- Creating doorway pages — pages that are designed solely to attract search engine attention that then redirect users to a different website. It’s important to note that this is different from landing pages, which exist on your website and are perfectly okay.
- Using proxy servers or generating dozens or hundreds of IP addresses to make sites look like many sites, for the purposes of increasing backlinks.
- Having duplicate content stolen, or “scraped” from other sites just to make your site look like it has lots of content and updates.
Backlinking that you should be focused on.
It sounds like you are making it out to be the holy grail. Backlinking is one important part of SEO but don’t get so wrapped up in your backlinking that you neglect other vital aspects of your SEO. Having said that these are the best places to initially focus for backlinks:
- Blog Commenting
- Forum Comments & Footer Links
- Article Syndication w/ link(s)
- Directory Submissions (Paid & Free)
Your linking portfolio should probably contain a combination of all of the ones listed above and then some. Search engines can identify where a link is from and easily enough what type of link it is and if all of your link building is focused on one type of link then it won't look as natural.
Backlinking IS important – but it’s not everything. Use your head when creating your SEO backlink strategy and you’ll have a manageable program that can produce great results.
Goog luck.
-
yes it is, you are trying to game the system, it is also very easy for SE's to spot, you will end up with a un-natural link message from google in your GWT
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
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a ski website that I am currently performing a toxic backlink audit on. I have noted that a lot of the links being flagged as toxic/spammy by the tool I am using seem to be the same/similar sites with different URLs. The sites are vaguely related to skiing (relating to helicopter travel options for travelling to ski resorts) but it is concerning me that there are so many of them and they are being flagged as so toxic.
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia
Do you think it is worth disavowing these? Or contacting the owner to ask them to remove the link? I have included an example of some of the links below. https://www.cannes-helicopters.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://nice-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5 Slightly different site but same favicon icon:
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://www.whitetracks-holidays.com/Helicopter_Transfers_Villars_Switzerland.htm Thanks in advance for any advice / help!0 -
Other websites copy content and giving a link back
Hi, I've just noticed a few back links in Google Search Console, I was excited. But when I saw the backlinks, 2 other websites that had completely copied my content and then gave a backlink to my website. Is this bad for SEO and would google penalise my website for this?
Link Building | | thinkLukeSEO1 -
Spammy links
Hi Guys, I have a case which seems to occur more often for our customers. The websites of our customers seem to receive tons of backlinks from websites all over the world (China, Russia, Ukrain, etc). It’s spam we never asked for, we didn’t buy any dodgy linkbuilding packages or anything. Do any of you guys have experience with this matter? We try to disavow the links but it takes too much time and we will never manage to disavow 100% of all links. Examples are www.keukensduitsland.nl and www.m2beveiliging.nl Hope anyone has experience and maybe even solutions for this matter. Thanks!
Link Building | | Happy-SEO1 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Text Link vs image link?
Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
How can I verify who links to me?
I need to verify all the inbound links I have coming in to my site. I've tried using OSE but have been told it does not scrape many smaller sites so cannot be sure of it's accuracy (especially since when I ran it, it returned a small % of the link i know are out there). Is there a way to do this in Analytics? Or another way? Thanks
Link Building | | NiallTom0 -
Do links within imbeddable widgets carry link juice?
I'm dipping my toes into infographic design. On of my desired outcomes is to gain links by having other sites embed my graphic. I'm considering using Tableau's interactive data visualization software to do so; thus creating a widget, embedding it on my blog, and including the embed code for others to post. Is it possible to include a juice passing link in such an infographic? I know its possible to include links inside the tableau graphic but not sure if they have straight SEO value. If these links are not juice passing would it be better to go with a simple image link that passes value?
Link Building | | JesseCWalker1