Link Spamming vs. Power Linking with Blogs

Link spamming with blogs

A recent issue of WebProNews focused on how people are using Google's own free blogging service to take advantage of Google's lenient attitude towards link-heavy blogs. As one poster put it, "people are using Google's Blogger to set up dozens of free blogs and then setting up hundreds of keyword rich anchor text links to point to pages."

What makes this a questionable practice is that content like this is not intended to ever be read by anyone. It is simply a bunch of keywords and embedded links strung together for no purpose other than to impress Google's spiders. Another term for this is "google bombing", and for years enterprising bloggers have been pushing their sites to the top of the listings for keywords like "Talentless Hack" or "Operation Clambake". The idea is to get lots of sites creating lots of posts that pack lots of links together in content that focuses on one or two keywords.

It was only a matter of time (probably about 24 hours) before this started to be used for commercial purposes. One of the most striking applications of link spamming is the program called "Search Engine Cloaker". You can set this program up on any website and it will spit out thousands of pages of jibberish stringing together reams of keywords and building in hundreds of links pointing to exaclty the pages you want to promote.

Another example is your typical link directory — page after page of links serving no purpose other than to give outbound links in exchange for inbound ones. Of course in theory a link directory is a "resource directory" that gives web visitors useful information, and is even a kind of "endorsement" by the webmaster. But in fact, most link directories are never meant to be looked at.

That means they fail the same test we have applied to blogs: this material is not intended to be read by anyone. That makes it spam.

Power Linking with Blogs

Power linking is different. As I point out in my FREE Power Linking Course, there are quite a few fairly simple strategies almost anyone can implement that will give you lots of high value links on high value sites. These are sites with real traffic, so this content is meant to be read. You can't post meaningless jibberish on real sites. Webmasters will simply not tolerate it.

Of the four leading power linking strategies outlined in my course, the second easiest is creating a blog and posting interesting content that is keyword rich and packed with links. (The easiest is buying links from high value sites.)

If you go ahead and try the power linking blog strategy, just keep this simple test in mind: "Is the material I publish in my blog meant to be interesting to readers?" If it is, then you're not engaging in link spamming. Go ahead and pack it with your most important keywords. And build in as many links as you can.

--Rick Hendershot
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