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Grumpy SEO Guy
This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 101, the Ethics of Link Building. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because there is some question over the ethics of link building. So in this episode, we're going to talk about that. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical. And based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. Before we do that, though, I do want to thank everybody who messaged me and said, congratulations on episode 100. Okay, so I know we just did a really big review episode, but we're going to review a little bit in this episode too, because it's similar to what we're going to be talking about. So some of you may know that you need four things to rank. One, you have to avoid penalties. Even if you have the greatest SEO ever, if you have a penalty, you will not rank. Number two, you need content. Content doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be bad. It just has to exist. And the reason content has to exist is because content helps determine relevancy, which is another point we're gonna talk about shortly. Relevancy means what is your website about? But content is one of the ways to establish relevancy. If your website is about blue Wid and somebody searches for dishwashers, you should not show up in those results because you are relevant for blue widgets rather than dishwashers. Okay, so that's why relevancy is important. Anyways, content creates relevancy. So the third thing you need is Relevancy. We just talked about this. Relevancy means what is the topic of your website? What is your website about? Okay, and the fourth thing you need is authority. Authority means how strong is your website? How trustworthy is your website? So the only way to get authority is from backlinks. Okay, so there are four ways to get backlinks. But contrary to what some people tell you, authority does not come from how neat your website looks, it does not come from how good your content is, and it does not come from how long your website takes to load. Okay? Authority only comes from backlinks. So you need backlinks because you need four things to rank. One of those things is authority. And authority only comes from backlinks. Therefore, you need backlinks to rank. In almost every case, if you've got almost no competition, that's a different story. But most people need authority, and so they need backlinks. Now, there are four ways to get backlinks. One, do nothing. Let people find your website and link to it. Okay, that's awesome. However, if you do not rank, nobody's gonna find your website, so you're actually not gonna get any backlinks that way. Number two, you can buy backlinks. Some people say you shouldn't buy backlinks. They say it's against the terms of service. It's manipulation. Okay, that's fine. I say you shouldn't buy backlinks because most link sellers are terrible. And if you are going to buy Backlinks, we have two episodes that you should listen to. Episode 37 is called the Difference between Good Backlinks and Bad backlinks. And episode 39 is called the Difference between Good Backlinks and Bad Backlinks. Part two, you should listen to those episodes if you want to buy backlinks, do not buy backlinks before you listen to those episodes. Anyway, we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Number three, you can do what's called guest posting or link outreach. Guest posting is when you find a website and you say, you email them and you say, hey, I will write an article for you, and in exchange, you will give me a link. And then maybe they will, maybe they won't. It's pretty good. They get content. You get a backlink. However, what people don't tell you is sometimes you have to pay for that backlink. We'll talk about that in a minute. Link outreach is when you find a website and you say, hey, you have an article about this topic. I have a website about this. Topic. Can we please have a link in your article? And guess what? They might charge you for that too. So some people, Let me just talk about this now. Some people think that link building or whatever is unethical because it involves money. Well, if you have to pay for guest posting and link outreach, doesn't that apply to that as well then? Yeah. Anyway, look, so that's what link outreach and guest posting are. So they can be effective. We don't really do it that way, but they can work. I just want you to be aware that from what I hear, they have about a 2% success rate. So you might message 100 different websites and get two yeses. Like if that sounds good to you, maybe try it. I don't know, maybe you'll do better. I don't know. I'm just saying that's what I've heard. It has about a 2% success rate. But you might also have to spend money. Okay. And I think that's where people's like ethical problem shows. But I don't know, we're not even there yet. So. Okay. The fourth way to get backlinks is to build your own portfolio of authoritative websites and use those to link to your website. If that sounds complicated, we have a three part series, episodes three, four and five that explain how to do this. Just understand that you are running your own authoritative blogs and using those to build links to your websites instead of paying someone else for it or asking someone else for it. They're still links. The only difference is they're on websites that are yours instead of websites that are someone else's. Anyways, let's talk about ethics. Okay, let's talk about ethics here. Let's talk about the first method. Waiting for people to find your website and building links to you. Is that ethical? Probably. I mean it just, it's not going to be effective because if you do not already rank, nobody is going to find your website. And if nobody can find your website, how are they gonna build links to you? They can't find you. So I mean it works well if you rank. But if you're a beginner and you just started and you have a great website with no backlinks and no authority and you're not ranking, it's not gonna work for you probably. Cause you're probably not gonna rank for anything. So nobody's gonna find you and nobody's gonna link to you. So you might think maybe I should build my own backlinks or buy backlinks from somebody. Maybe. Maybe that's something you need to think about. Anyways, I should also tell you now that since backlinks and authority are such a huge ranking factor, there is a business built around this. Most SEO is buying and selling backlinks. Okay? Now, it may be against the terms. It might be, but I'm telling you, there is a business built around it because it is so powerful and important. And without authority, you do not rank. So buying backlinks, is it unethical because you're spending money in exchange for backlinks? I don't know. Maybe a lot of people do it. I'm pretty certain that whatever websites are outranking, you have probably bought backlinks. Most websites have bought backlinks. If you are a beginner and you're just starting out and you're not ranking for anything, you probably need backlinks. And buying backlinks is one way of getting them. I'm not telling you to go buy backlinks. I'm just saying you need backlinks. How are you going to get them? How are you going to get them if you're guest posting and link outreaching? Well, are you paying for those? I mean, those. Again, those can work. Anyway, let's discuss those now. So this is number three. Guest posting and link outreach. They can work. But I wonder if some people have an ethical concern with paying for them versus not paying for them. Many link outreach and guest posting consultants will pay for the links because the people with the websites are requiring payment. So just FYI, if money is the reason, something might not be ethical for you. Just be aware that maybe even guest posting and link outreach is unethical. Okay, Building a private blog portfolio or PBN or private blog network. Number four, is it unethical? I don't know. I mean, you need backlinks. Is it unethical if you're putting them on your own website instead of paying somebody else for them? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Some people think SEO should only be writing good content. Good content is not adequate. To rank, you need authority. You need four things. We talked about them. One of them is authority. Just having good content is not enough. Good content is not. Search engines can't tell if content is good or not. So you need authority to rank. I think it would be good if the Internet would rank websites based on how good the content was and how helpful the content was. But there's a lot of problems with that and that's not how it works. So you need authority. Okay, let's be very clear about this. Too. The purpose of SEO is to get websites to the top of the search engines. In order to do that, you must have authority. How are you going to get authority? You need backlinks. How are you going to get backlinks? While we're on the topic, one of the questions that I get most often is something like, hey, I just made a website, it's really awesome, but we're not ranking. How do I rank? Now, there is no easy way to answer this question because when you're looking into this, it takes extensive research into your website and into your competition. Okay, remember, SEO is a competition. It is about how what you do compares to what your competition does. Okay, So I can't just look at your website and tell you what the problem is because I need to take a lot of time to look into your competition. Okay, but generally speaking, in many cases, the problem is you do not have authority or you do not have sufficient authority compared to your competition. Many websites have 1, 2, and 3. They have avoided penalties, they have content, and they have relevancy. Most websites that are not ranking do not have sufficient authority based on their competition. Okay, so you again, you need backlinks. You need authority. Which method are you going to use to get your backlinks? The only thing that I would consider unethical in SEO would be negative SEO. Negative SEO is when you try to get your competition a penalty. And the reason that's unethical is because you are trying to damage another website. The purpose of SEO is to get to the top of the search engines. Okay, that's going to require backlinks in most cases because you have to have authority. Okay, so maybe SEO is unethical if it's all about buying and selling backlinks or getting backlinks. You know, I don't know what to tell you, but I would ask you to consider, how are you going to get backlinks? Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEO Guy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks, and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com Grumpy SEO Guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday for another episode.