As I over­see most new client pitch­es at Hal­lam, I am often privy to infor­ma­tion from clients who have been approached by oth­er SEOs, includ­ing details of the work they would under­take if giv­en the go ahead.

In this post, I will out­line 4 out­dat­ed linkbuild­ing tech­niques, and explain why SEOs need to stop using them for good.

Links are an unde­ni­ably huge rank­ing fac­tor. How­ev­er, there are some ques­tion­able tech­niques still being employed that I encounter fair­ly often, despite the fact Google have pub­li­cal­ly warned against using such tac­tics over the past few years.

1. Private Blog Networks

A pri­vate blog net­work is a tac­tic of using a set of web­sites under your con­trol to build links to tar­get sites. For exam­ple, it has been known for dodgy prac­ti­tion­ers to buy a range of domains relat­ed to a spe­cif­ic top­ic and set up blogs upon which they can host con­tent link­ing back to their clients’ web­sites.

Google have been clamp­ing down on PBN’s since 2014. How­ev­er, as recent­ly as last month I was shown a pitch that ref­er­enced the use of their PBN to dri­ve links back to the site:

The use of PBNs is a strat­e­gy that Google are clamp­ing down on. I’d strong­ly sug­gest that SEOs steer clear of the use of PBNs as part of any long-term SEO activ­i­ty for their clients.

2. Followed Giveaway Links

Giv­ing away prod­ucts to blog­gers in return for a prod­uct review con­tain­ing a link back to the client has been a pop­u­lar tac­tic for over the past few years. In all hon­esty, this is a tac­tic both PRs and SEOs alike have employed pre­vi­ous­ly to great suc­cess. How­ev­er, Google released a warn­ing against this very tac­tic in May this year, sug­gest­ing that any­one par­tak­ing in a prod­uct review style arti­cle should:

• Nofol­low any links back to the client who donat­ed the prod­uct
• Dis­close why the review has been writ­ten

Google have since start­ed issu­ing man­u­al actions to blog­gers over the use of free prod­uct reviews for the pur­pose of build­ing links. Despite this, prod­uct review links are still being used to build links:

Like many oth­er linkbuild­ing tech­niques, some clients may find they get away with the use of prod­uct give­away links in mod­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, if linkbuilders’ con­tin­u­ous­ly offer prod­uct give­aways in return for links they will even­tu­al­ly end up land­ing both their clients and their net­work of blog­gers with man­u­al actions.

3. Keyword Rich Anchor Links via Guest Blogging

Like me, I’m sure many of you made a start in the indus­try learn­ing about key­word rich anchor text and its ben­e­fits. Until rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, SEO’s used key­word rich anchor text on oth­er sites such as guest blog arti­cles to link back to client sites.

Google start­ed clamp­ing down on guest post­ing using ‘opti­mised anchor text’ back in 2013, advis­ing web­mas­ters not to manip­u­late the anchor text used on guest posts link­ing back to their web­site.

That being said, we still reg­u­lar­ly encounter poten­tial clients still uti­liz­ing this tac­tic in an attempt to increase their search engine rank­ings:

Don’t get me wrong, you can still use guest blog posts as part of your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, but if you are guest blog­ging with the intent to gain key­word-rich anchor text links, then I would encour­age you to con­sid­er chang­ing your approach.If you want to link back to your site from any piece of con­tent, you can safe­ly use gener­ic terms like ‘click here’, ‘read more’, or link via your brand name or your raw web­site URL. More often than not, you will nat­u­ral­ly acquire a small per­cent­age of anchor text links over time – and it’s this nat­ur­al bal­ance that Google will be hop­ing to see when review­ing your

If you want to link back to your site from any piece of con­tent, you can safe­ly use gener­ic terms like ‘click here’, ‘read more’, or link via your brand name or your raw web­site URL. More often than not, you will nat­u­ral­ly acquire a small per­cent­age of anchor text links over time – and it’s this nat­ur­al bal­ance that Google will be hop­ing to see when review­ing your web­site’s back­link pro­file.

Notice that I linked to Hallam’s web­site ear­li­er in this post? It’s unlike­ly that Google will penal­ize me for doing so because:

• It is not a tac­tic that we have used on a large scale
• I have not use key­word rich anchor text, it is a com­plete­ly nat­ur­al ref­er­ence

So to sum­ma­rize, if you get your clients the occa­sion­al arti­cle pub­lished on a rel­e­vant web­site, and that arti­cle is infor­ma­tive and pro­vides val­ue to the read­er then you are prob­a­bly not going to put your clients at risk.

4. ‘Design by’ Links

The use of ‘design by’ links has been seen as ques­tion­able for sev­er­al years, and Google have recent­ly con­firmed their stance by stat­ing that these types of links should def­i­nite­ly use the nofol­low attribute to avoid pass­ing author­i­ty to the site who added the ‘design by’ link.

This is a tech­nique often employed by web design com­pa­nies that place ‘web design by’ links in each of their clients’ sites. These are essen­tial­ly self-made links and there­fore should be con­sid­ered an adver­tise­ment. Despite this, fol­lowed foot­er links are still wide­ly used by many design agen­cies today:

How­ev­er, this isn’t just applic­a­ble to com­pa­nies offer­ing web design and devel­op­ment – I have seen plen­ty of exam­ples of this being used by those offer­ing SEO ser­vices:

There can be no doubt that being ref­er­enced on high-qual­i­ty con­tent and well-designed web­sites can help build rep­u­ta­tion, but these ref­er­ences should not be used as a method of build­ing your page author­i­ty via fol­lowed links. Alter­na­tive­ly, you could cre­ate a page on your own web­site to show­case your work, just like the guys over at Dis­tilled have done on mul­ti­ple occa­sions.

Linkbuilding done right?

This arti­cle should pro­vide some much-need­ed warn­ings to those who are still try­ing to game the sys­tem. Link build­ing is by no means dead, but the rules have changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the past few years, and agen­cies need to adapt their strate­gies accord­ing­ly.

In my opin­ion, the best way to acquire valu­able links in the cur­rent cli­mate is to cre­ate high-qual­i­ty, rel­e­vant con­tent that can nat­u­ral­ly gain pop­u­lar­i­ty online. Tak­ing the time to research con­tent ideas and the types of con­tent that earn links will pro­vide your clients with sig­nif­i­cant long-term val­ue.

What do you think? Is it pos­si­ble to stay com­plete­ly with­in Google’s Qual­i­ty Guide­lines and build qual­i­ty links? And if so, how? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the com­ments below.