Thread: Anyone know the value of crappy baclinks?

Does anyone have experience doing backlinking for a client in a highly regulated industry, such as Financial Services or the Medical field.

I'm wondering how building "crap" backlinks (chinese blogs, russian pornsites, etc) can be damaging in professional industries.

Healthcare falls under the insane HIPAA laws and Fin. Srvcs is burdened by the SEC, FINRA, etc.

I'm wondering if anyone has worked in either field and thinks building non-relevant backlinks is a good idea.

Originally Posted by DaveyMars

I'm wondering how building "crap" backlinks (chinese blogs, russian pornsites, etc) can be damaging in professional industries.

Possibly for a new site with little trust and backlinks.

What kind of backlinks are we talking about? Are webdirectories 'crappy' backlinks?

Hi DaveyMars! I think it can't affect much the rank of those high profiled websites. But it may affect their image having backlinks from pornsites.
Though I would really not fret much because if those links would greatly affect the websites being linked then the same technique can be used to pull another competitor's rank.

Google won't penalize you even if there're gazzilion russian pornsites linking to you. Google won't give any value to such link either. But for backlink, you can build it as much as you want because there are no such thing as too much backlink.

I agree with bogart. Theoretically, poor quality links can negatively impact a site, especially if it is a new site.

You need to read this.

Link Schemes - Webmaster Tools

It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links.

...some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results.

Most of the time you can point a lot of crappy links at a site and it will not matter, as long as the site has a number of good quality links pointed to it. But when a site has nothing but crappy links, that sends a bad signal and indicates that you are artificially building links, which is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Today, a good quality link is going to be a contextual link from a site in a related industry and preferably from a page that focuses on a similar topic as the receiving page.

Originally Posted by merlynridinger

What kind of backlinks are we talking about? Are webdirectories 'crappy' backlinks?

Yes, web directories are crappy links. Local business directories typically are not. There is a good reason why almost all inner pages in most web directories never show PageRank. They have been targeted by Google and penalized so that they do not pass value to the sites that they link to.

Originally Posted by JollyWorks

is it for your competitors?

Directories links won't hurt you. They are generally someone between article directories and blog comments. One thing to remember is that we are speaking in general. A directory listing in a quality niche directory (non paid) or comments on authority blogs that are heavily moderated, still have some value.

Local business directories are also good directories, but you typically need to use a street address with a listing. A lot of local business directories in the USA, such as Kudzu, are authority sites. I give a local business directory thumbs up when it shows up in a Google Places account.

IMHO, I would put most directory listings at rock bottom in quality, especially when the inner pages never show any PageRank (n/a) and even Yahoo does not acknowledge the links as backlinks. We have done tests using thousands of bulk directory listings and have never seen them have any effect--good or bad--on rank positions. It appears that they are ignored by most search engines.

Focus on building quality links. One good quality link can be worth more than thousands of poor quality links. Supplements this with links from relevant sources, such as blogs with related articles.

Originally Posted by TopDogger

Focus on building quality links. One good quality link can be worth more than thousands of poor quality links. Supplements this with links from relevant sources, such as blogs with related articles.

Totally agree, based on my own experience, having a few good quality links can bring my website (good quality contents of course) to page 1 SERP, and in fact, it's easier and more beneficial to build a few quality links than thousands of crappy links...

Originally Posted by TopDogger

IMHO, I would put most directory listings at rock bottom in quality, especially when the inner pages never show any PageRank (n/a) and even Yahoo does not acknowledge the links as backlinks. We have done tests using thousands of bulk directory listings and have never seen them have any effect--good or bad--on rank positions. It appears that they are ignored by most search engines.

I have a PR2 free directory. The main category pages are PR1 and the subcategories are grayed out. It seems that there's too many pages and not enough PR flowing into the site. So, the subcategories are in the supplemental index. However, the cache dates are all showing this month which tells me that the pages are being crawled. The links are still "crappy" even the PR1s. But they are at least crawled. Makes me wonder if they have the power of a social bookmark and whether deep linking to new pages would have any value.