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If you are a content marketing professional and know a little about search engine optimisation (SEO). In that case, you must know that buying backlinks for SEO is a black-hat SEO practice and should definitely be avoided. 

However, some content and SEO professionals still rely on this tactic to get quick results on their SEO efforts. A similar and effective way to garner backlinks to your website is by exchanging links from fellow bloggers and websites. While this is not as bad as buying backlinks for SEO, it can still hamper the authenticity of your content if practised mindlessly. 

To be honest, there are multiple ways to gain a network of backlinks to your website. While there are a few white-hat SEO practices, there are also those that give you quick results but cannot sustain your position on the result pages for a prolonged period. 

In this guide, we address some of the common concerns with regard to building backlinks for SEO, its importance, the right way to follow through and the things that you must avoid if you don’t want to be flagged by Google. 

Before we dive into backlinks, let us understand SEO a bit more closely. This way, you will be able to better understand the negative impact of buying backlinks for SEO. 

How Long Does SEO Take To Generate Desired Results? 

You cannot obtain very immediate traffic and results from SEO, in contrast to Google Ads. SEO is a practice and a process, so you’ll need to be very patient. It might be challenging to determine whether SEO is worthwhile for your company, but you must give it a fair shot to succeed before giving up.

In the end, the intensity of your competition and the stage of your entire on-page and off-site online presence optimization will determine how long it takes for SEO services to start producing results.

If you work closely with an SEO agency, you can anticipate spending anywhere between six and twelve months on optimization for a new website that is just getting started with SEO. However, your SEO or webmaster should be able to guide you through following only white-hat SEO practices. Though they take about six to twelve months to show significant results, they can help you sustain your position in search results for a long time, unlike black hat SEO. 

How To Differentiate Between White-Hat & Black-Hat SEO Practices? 

While improving a website’s search engine ranks is the ultimate goal of both of these search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, the strategies used by the two are very different.

Let’s take an example. 

Have you ever gone to a blog page that continually inserts an unnaturally placed term in the middle of a sentence? This is known as keyword stuffing and is a classic case of unethical SEO. In order to attract the attention of the search engine algorithm, keywords are frequently overused in 

Black hat SEO tactics also include posting duplicate material, using unethical methods to build links such as buying backlinks for SEO, click-baiting with metadata, click-baiting with anchor texts, and spamming websites with content.

Even if you are not a marketing maverick, you should be aware of the strategies being employed by your digital marketing team and establish a rule to only use white hat SEO strategies because it is what will bring long-term success to your company.

What Is Ethical Link-Building?

The creation of links has always been the cornerstone of search engine optimization (SEO).

However, over the 23 years that Google has existed, link-building strategies have advanced. Today, Google gives high-quality links the upper hand over low-quality links to promote websites with useful information. 

More high-quality links will help your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). Instead of paying for backlinks from websites with high domain authority (DA), provide informative and instructive content that is link-worthy.

That is to say, in order to get backlinks, your content must not only offer solutions to problems and answers to questions, but it must also do it in a unique way. When your content is valuable and provides original and authentic material, its chances of being “cited” by another website automatically become high. 

If you are unable to create high-quality content that can get backlinks for your website, try seeking the guidance of a content writing agency. Professionals such as these can help you scale your content and will channel your business’s resources into gaining original and valuable content. 

Examples Of Ethical Link Building 

There are a few ways you can avoid buying backlinks and rely on ethical link-building practices such as 

Guest Posting 

As mentioned above, you may really submit guest posts to publishers in addition to posting product reviews on your website to get backlinks. Produce well-written content about a certain subject that is pertinent to your specialised field and will be beneficial to the publisher’s website.

However, make sure the topics you choose to write guest posts on cater to your own target audience as well as the audience of the host website. 

Target Competitor’s Backlink Sources 

Obtaining indirect backlinks from rivals is another moral link building strategy. To do this, check for websites that your rivals link to. You can ask others to reference your company on these websites.

Certainly, the websites linked to by your rivals are trustworthy and reputable. By requesting that these websites link to your website, their SEO value will be transferred to yours. You’ll also receive a veiled backlink from one of your rivals.

Revive Dead Links 

Some websites may unintentionally link to yours via broken links, whether this is due to your own website (page moves, website relaunches, etc.) or the websites’ misspelling of your links. 

Reviving dead links is an ethical link-building strategy you might want to use. Broken links are undesirable, thus this presents a chance for business owners to profit. Dead links may appear as a result of domain changes or page moves. All you need to do is take advantage of broken links and look for those that you can replace to recover the SEO value they lost. 

Use Wikipedia 

Wikipedia, a highly reputable website with thousands of contributors and editors who vouch for its accuracy, is another area where you can offer to replace broken links. Search for Wiki pages that require references or have broken connections.

Check if you can recreate the material if you’re dealing with a dead link. Write new content to support the topic on Wikipedia’s page if the page requires citations, or search your recent archives for material that Wikipedia can cite.

However, all of Wikipedia’s outbound connections are NoFollow. In actuality, NoFollow links from reputable websites like Wikipedia are preferable to DoFollow links from low-domain authority websites since they pass on more SEO juice. Furthermore, NoFollow links from websites with high domain ratings are a useful technique to attract high-quality visitors to your website.

Here are a few other general recommendations that you must consider: 

• Never purchase site-wide links. Sitewide links, such as those in the navigation, footer, or sidebar, scream “spam” to Google.
• Steer clear of link-selling services and “backlink bundle” vendors. A fast way to lose money is to hire a link-selling business (like Sape) or pay someone on Fiverr for a backlink package. And if a website explicitly states that it sells links? Run!
• AVOID websites with “red flags.” You should be alarmed by websites that have previously been punished, have been converted into link or article farms, and generally rely on thin, ad-filled pages.
• Always be transparent about paid links, and make sure they are properly rel=nofollow or rel=sponsored marked. Avoid purchasing links for SEO. If sponsored packages make sense for your company, purchase them with links that are appropriately acknowledged.

Beware Of Toxic Backlinks 

Your SEO campaigns can be hampered by harmful backlinks, which also harm your website’s standing with search engines.

When backlinks are not editorially relevant, don’t look natural, or come from low-quality referring domains, they might be categorised as toxic.

Such connections are frequently made using methods like

• Reciprocal link strategies 
• Link farms
• Black-hat SEO strategies (strategies that go against Google Webmaster guidelines).

Sometimes toxic backlinks can be difficult to identify. Ask your digital marketing agency to keep a track of the backlinks your website garners and remove any link that may hamper your DA. 

Indicators of Toxic Backlinks 

Link-building for SEO can become complex. Therefore, you need to watch out for these indicators that may generate toxic backlinks to your website. 

Links that aren’t natural – Link relevancy is a big concern. “Unnatural links” are links that are made specifically to manipulate a website’s position in Google search results and are a common result if you are buying backlinks for SEO. Unnatural links frequently originate from link schemes and dubious link-building techniques, or they are irrelevant from a context or topical standpoint.

Spun content – Spun content is recycled content that is produced by using slightly different synonyms, changing the sentence structure, and adding slightly different information to an existing article. The goal here is to use this altered language to manipulate search engine rankings, which is frequently accomplished by content-authoring AI.

Explicit or illegal content – Any material that is against the law is considered to be unlawful content on the internet. This could be material that encourages terrorism, hate speech, or obscene content.

What Does Google Say About The Relevance Of Backlinks In 2022? 

Google’s John Mueller and another Googler Lizzi Sassman responded to the pre-selected topic on SEO and Google during a live Search On podcast session at Brighton SEO.

Collectively, the hosts respond to the following inquiry on Google’s backlink penalties:

“As an SEO, we are considering backlinks.” However, constantly pursuing backlinks frequently leads to link fraud, which is a grey area. What are then, the main elements that Google takes into account when penalising backlinks?

Google representatives are typically cautious when responding to questions about ranking and penalty issues. 

Mueller discusses the importance of backlinks as a ranking factor in general and why, rather than penalties, it may become less significant in the future for SEO experts.

Mueller claims that if Google gets better at determining how content fits in with the rest of the web, its algorithm won’t need to rely as heavily on inbound links as it does now. He stated the following:

“Well, it’s something where I imagine, over time, the weight on the links at some point will drop off a little bit as we can figure out a little bit better how the content fits in within the context of the whole web.”

This is one way of indicating that backlinks won’t be as important in the future and that an SEO expert shouldn’t be concerned about the penalties related to them.

So, Does Bad Backlink Equal To A Bad Reputation?

Avoid gaining links from bad places, such as spam websites. When users find your website on such websites, it naturally may raise doubts about the trustworthiness of your website. Avoiding impoverished areas when building links may seem easy, yet there are times when it is impossible.

Potential customers would be hesitant to click on any links on a spammy page because they would assume they do not seem relevant or of high quality.

This is likely the most enticing poor link generation strategy because you can pick the websites from which you obtain links and inspect them to make sure your links aren’t being placed in dubious spots. Instead, you can use relevant content to connect to pages with anchor text that includes the keywords you want to rank for.

Rather than purchasing connections, it is much better to employ an SEO firm to genuinely raise your ranks. Pay for labour, not links, in other words. Just be sure to do your homework and work with a trustworthy business or individual who isn’t just purchasing connections for you.

All the best!