A backlink is a link from one website to another. Quality backlinks are important for SEO because they signal to Google that your site is authoritative and worth ranking higher in search results.
Backlinks are important for two reasons: they are an indication of the quality of your content, and they help improve your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). Quality backlinks can improve your organic search traffic because they indicate that other reputable websites think highly of your content. And although Google's search algorithm has changed over the years, links still remain one of the most important factors for ranking a website. However, it's important to create backlinks responsibly, as too many links from low-quality websites can hurt your website's reputation and ranking. So how many backlinks is it safe to create each day?
In this episode, we'll take a look at how many backlinks are safe to create each day - and how you can get the most out of your link-building efforts.
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Atiba de Souza: So you want to create backlinks and you're wondering how many can you create in a day that's safe and won't get you slapped by Google. That won't get you a manual or even an automatic ban from Google. How many? What's the answer? Well, we're going to dive into that today on Traffic Keys. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Traffic Keys. I am your host, Atiba. And today we're going to be talking about backlinks and creating backlinks. And how many is too many? And what's not going to get you a penalty from Uncle Google if you're doing it. But before we get into all of that, do me a favor, hit that like, and subscribe button for me, please.
Thank you very much. I appreciate you. So now, let's jump into this topic. And before we jump into this topic, let me just say this plainly and bluntly, okay? Google has been very clear. It is against Google's terms and conditions for you to purchase a backlink to your website. It is against Google terms and conditions for you to purchase a backllink to your website, to any page on your website. Google says that you should instead allow backlinks to happen naturally. Okay. So now let's talk about what naturally means. Well, what naturally means is number one, that someone found your content, found it helpful and decided to use it and reference it from their content.
So that requires what? That requires, one, your content being able to be found, which if you just wrote it, it can't be found. That requires someone looking and doing research on your content that they want to include in their content. So you need someone who's creating content related to your content. And then they have to like your article or your information enough to actually include it in their content.
So that is one way that Google tells you naturally you should allow for backlinks to happen. The other way that Google tells you that "naturally" you should allow for backlinks to happen is to use the content and promote the content. Send out an email blast, share the content, tell people that you wrote the content, share it on social media.
Again, in all of those scenarios, you're hoping that someone sees the content, likes the content and then wants to reference your content. And then the third way that Google tells you that you can naturally allow for backlinks to happen would be to find people who are talking about your topic. And have already created content around your topic and to reach out to them and offer your content as an addition to what they've already done and say, "Hey, I saw that you wrote this great piece on gasket covers for my Toyota Camry 2005, my 2005 Toyota Camry. I also wrote an article about gasket covers for the 2005 Toyota Camry. Here's a link to my article. Thought you may like it. May have some stuff that you want to reference." That's the other way to naturally allow for links to happen. Okay. So now that we've covered that and that's, what's called White Hat SEO. Then there is Black Hat SEO, which Google says not to do, which is to say to someone, "Hey, I've got a link. Can I pay you to put the link on your website? Yes, I can. How much do you want? Okay. You want $10? Great. Here's $10 and here's my link." That's a black hat SEO. That's against Google's terms. Then there's the more gray area in here, where instead you say, "Hey, Mr. Site owner, or Mrs. Site owner, would you be willing to write an article about XYZ topic? Going back to my 2005 Camry gasket covers, right? Would you be willing to write about this topic and in writing about this topic, link to an article on my website. Now I know it's going to cost you time to write the article on your website. So I'm going to give you some money to cover your time to write that article." Another gray area is where you write an article and submit it to the site owner and say, "Hey, I will pay you X amount of dollars if you post this article on your website for me." Okay. So those are the different areas, White Hat, the naturally occurring, Gray Hat, and then Black Hat— don't do 'em, ways of building links to your website. Okay. And building your backlinks. So now jumping into this question about how many backlinks can I create a day? Well, the first thing was understanding White, Gray, and Black Hat tactics. On the white hat side, there really isn't a limit. Because those are naturally occurring that people finding you and wanting to link to you.
That's great. However, the question is being asked here is how many can I create a day? So if you're trying to create, if you're trying to control the process, then you're probably somewhere in the gray or the black hat type of area. And let me just be blunt, how many black hat links can you create a day?
Zero. Don't do it. Don't do it. Now, I know there are lots of places where you can go and you can just pay some money and buy a link and have it up. I get that. I completely, completely get that. And it's very tempting. Heck, there are people who are on Fiverr and other networks will tell you, "Hey, give me $50 and I'll get you 500 links."
Yeah, don't do it. Don't do it now. Here's why you don't. You don't do it because today there won't be a problem, tomorrow there probably won't be a problem, but soon enough, Google will catch up with you. Soon enough, Google will realize, and oftentimes it has nothing to do with you at how they realize. What ends up happening is they realize that one of the sites that you used is a black hat website that's taking money for links, and then it goes through and it finds all of the links from that site and then turns around and says, "Hey, all of the sites that were linked here, we're assuming that all of these guys paid to be on the site." And then they may slap you with either an automatic or a manual penalty.
Now, what does that mean? When you get slapped with a penalty, Google delists your website from search, you can no longer rank. You can't rank anymore. So the value that you receive short term, by doing some black hat SEO stuff, isn't worth the long-term risk of your site no longer being able to be listed in Google now on the gray hat side.
You know, I'll be honest with you and tell you just about everybody does some sort of gray hat SEO when you're doing link building. I would limit it as much as possible because the line between gray and black is so fine and it takes nothing for Google to decide to change its mind about what it considers gray or black, even though they don't ever truly use those terms.
And then all of a sudden the links that you've built are now considered purchase links. And Google wants to give you a manual penalty. I actually saw an article on this a couple days ago from Google that said it's better— it's easier to, and I'm paraphrasing the article, it's easier and it's more time efficient to build white hat SEO links than to manage something called a disavow list.
Now, what is the disavowal list? The disavow list is, the point in time when you start to realize, "Oh, boy, I've got links that Google may consider to be spam links or to be purchased links. And I want to get rid of them." They changed the algorithm and links that used to be okay are no longer okay because of the way I acquired them.
And so now I got to go in and find all those links and disavow them. And the Google article was saying, instead of wasting your time doing that and trying to cheat the system today, instead of doing that, build white hat links, right? Share your stuff on social, build a network of people who are in your industry who write about similar topics and share your articles with them.
Send them an email blast saying, "Hey, I just wrote this new article. Why don't you check it out?" Because when you do those things, it's going to drive organic traffic, right? To your website, which is then going to help with your search engine rankings and help that article get boosted up in search, so that now someone who's doing research on that topic will actually find your article and it all is synergistic and it all starts to work together, my friends.
But it's easy. It's really easy. And it's really tempting. I know I'm telling you because I've done it. Okay. It's really easy. And it's really tempting and also very dangerous to look at the black hat methods and say, "Oh my gosh, it would be so easy if we could just do it this way. We can just buy this. Hey, I can just buy relevant links? Yeah, let's go do it." The long-term penalty is not worth it. It's not worth it. If you've got a different opinion from me on this, I love to hear it. I'm telling you what I tell my clients and how we work with our clients. But I would love to hear if you've got a different way of building links and or something that you feel really works and doesn't violate Google's terms of service. If you do, drop me a line, let's talk about it. Love to hear from you. If you've got any questions, also drop me a line. Love to hear about it. Alright, everybody talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
