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Grumpy SEO Guy
The Difference Between Good Backlinks and Bad Backlinks - A Review - Episode 114
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- [00:00]
Sam
This is grumpy SEO guy. Episode 114, the difference between Good Backlinks and Bad A review. 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 people are unsure about the difference between good backlinks and bad backlinks. So I decided it was time to do an episode and review these things. Okay, so listen, we already have a two part episode called the Difference between Good Backlinks and Bad Backlinks, and that's episode 37 and the difference between Good Backlinks and bad backlinks part two, and that's episode 39. So I would certainly recommend that you go back and listen to those. But you know what, maybe you just started listening and maybe you don't want to go back and listen to those. So let's do a little review episode. So listen, this episode isn't going to be like a complete list of everything you need to know, but it's going to be pretty good, okay? Because you want to make sure that you're not buying bad quality backlinks. Okay? So before I do that, let's do reminders and updates.
- [01:31]
Co-host
Okay?
- [01:31]
Sam
New episodes come out on Wednesday, 9am Central Standard Time. When you're listening to the podcast, if you're on YouTube, it's a little bit later than that. If you leave a comment on YouTube, I try to reply on Wednesday, but sometimes it's not until Thursday. If you like the video enough to leave a comment also, please consider subscribing. It would really, it would really help the channel. Every subscriber helps me to keep making these videos. And by the way, if you want to help support the podcast, you could do so@patreon.com Grumpy SEO guy. It will help keep the podcast free and much appreciation to my Patreon supporters. Also, if you have a serious SEO question or want to talk strategy or something like that, and you want to set up a zoom advisory call, you can email me at hellorumpy SEO guy.com and we can talk about getting that scheduled. Okay, so this episode is gonna be a little bit shorter. We are putting together an episode on AI and SEO because everybody's been talking about that. And here is a little sample of that episode. Well, not a sample, but just a little. A little thing to maybe kind of tide you over. Until then, I want everybody to calm down because, listen, a lot of people right now are saying, AI, blah, blah, blah. Guys, is AI going to change things? Yes, a little bit. Whatever. We'll talk about in the episode. But listen, most of these people, they're like AI, they're clickbait article titles, right? Because I guarantee you, you click on the article and you read it, or you click on the video and you watch it. And I bet you. I bet you they don't actually say anything or teach you anything, right? Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I've read a couple of those articles. There was no actionable information. Well, there's very little actionable information in any of them. Anyway, we're gonna get to that, but that's probably gonna be next week. Also, the studio that I used to record this podcast is going to be renovating itself. So it's not going to be renovating itself, but it's having renovations. So I'm going to have to record from a different studio for a while. The equipment's gonna be different. I hope everything sounds good. I hope. We'll see. I'll try to make it work. Don't worry the quality. Don't worry. The content we produce will be awesome. But my voice might sound a little different because the microphones and stuff are gonna be different or I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. I was checking out a different studio recently anyway, so. Yeah, okay. So look. Okay, let's get on to talking about. Oh, one more. Wow. A little bit out of it today.
- [04:02]
Co-host
Okay.
- [04:03]
Sam
Also, we are thinking. Leave your opinions in the comments below. We're thinking about doing videos because even though Grumpy SEO Guy is a podcast that you listen to, people seem to like videos for some reason. I'm not quite certain why. Because you're listening to information and watching somebody talk versus listening to them. I don't know why there's a difference, but there is a difference. So we might be doing some videos. I might be in a place where I can do some videos and still maybe maintain as much Anonymity as I want to with the podcast. So let me know. Do you care? Would watching me talk make the podcast any better than listening to me talk? Like, honestly, tell me in the comments. So let's get on to talking about the difference between good backlinks and bad backlinks. 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. So let's back up a little bit and do like, a little. A little refresher, okay? Just a little refresher. Because there's probably some people out there, they're like, why do you need backlinks? I don't get it. Okay, as you know from grumpy SEO Guy, which, as you know, is a podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work like clickbait videos that don't actually teach you anything, okay, as you know from Grumpy SEO Guy, there are four things you need to rank. There are four things. I'm gonna tell you what they are. Ready? This should be a review for you, but maybe not. So here they are. Number one, no penalties. Your highest priority is not having a penalty.
- [05:51]
Co-host
Okay?
- [05:52]
Sam
Doesn't matter how good your SEO is, if you have a penalty, you don't rank. Like, period. Number one, no penalties. You wanna learn about penalties? Episode two.
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Co-host
Okay.
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Sam
Number two, content. Now, Content. It's not about how good your content is. People mistakenly believe that. Oh, by the way, I think we're gonna do an episode on why people think the quality of content is a ranking factor. But anyway, if you're just starting out, I want you to just, like, stop what you believe for a second. Cause you've probably been told somewhere that content is king. And the understanding is that if you somehow write good content, you will rank closer to the top of the search engines.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
SEO does not work that way. It does not work that way.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
The people that are teaching that don't understand SEO or they are purposefully misleading you. The people who try to rank by only writing good content won't end up ranking. Okay? There's a very common thing that happens in SEO where people will say, look, I've been doing I don't get it, guys. I've been doing this for six months or 12 months or whatever, and they're like, I've been writing really good content and I've been hiring experts and I'm an expert myself. And the content is good and it's better than anything else. And I just. Guys, I just can't figure out why we're not ranking. Well, the reason you're not ranking is because the content quality is not a ranking factor, okay? And eventually sometimes people get it and then they realize that there's other things. Then maybe they find grumpy SEO guy and they learn what actually does rank. Anyways, number two thing you need is content, but it's not about the quality of the content. You need content for two reasons. And yes, I know we talk about this a lot, but this is important. Number one, the reason you need content is because you need stuff on your site. You can't rank a blank website. I mean, you might be able to, but even if you could, once somebody got to your website and it was blank, they would leave because what a silly website. Are they going to learn anything? No. Are they going to buy anything? No. There's no point to a blank website. So reason number one, you need content is to have stuff on your site, right?
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Co-host
Okay.
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Sam
Number two is because content creates relevancy. Relevancy means what is the topic of your website?
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Co-host
Okay.
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Sam
Is your website about toasters? Is it about refrigerators? What is your website about? Okay, that's called relevancy. Content creates relevancy. Now, there's other ways to get relevancy, but content is the easiest way. So so far, the two things you need, one, no penalties. Two, content. The third thing you need is relevancy. Relevancy. We just talked about it. It means what is the topic of your website?
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Co-host
Okay.
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Sam
Why should your website show up in the search results? When somebody searches for something, one of those reasons is the relevancy. Okay, if somebody searches for dishwashers and your website is about dishwashers, you should show up. Now, that doesn't mean you will show up, okay? Because there's one more thing that you need, and that is authority. Number four, Authority. Okay, so one, no penalties. Two, content. Three, relevancy. Four, authority. Authority is how much power does your website have? How much trustworthiness does your website have of all of the websites that are online, why should yours appear in the results? That's what authority means. So make sense. There's other episodes that go further into this. So anyways, the only way to get authority is from getting backlinks, okay? The only way to get authority is from getting backlinks. You don't get authority from site loading speed, you don't get authority from content, you don't get authority from user experience, you don't get authority from dwell time, you don't. I don't know. Anyways, nothing. You don't get authority from title tags, you don't get authority from meta descriptions. You only get authority from backlinks. Okay, so we're almost to sharing why or the difference between good backlinks and bad backlinks.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
So every. Here's, here's how authority works. Every website on the Internet, for the most part, has some authority, okay? And there's different ways of measuring this authority, but most of them aren't very accurate. So it doesn't matter. For right now, look, let's, let's assume that it's a scale that goes from 1 to, to 100, okay? Let's just. It's not, let's just assume for the sake of discussion, authority is a scale that goes from 1 to 100. 100 is the most, 1 is the smallest, okay? Every website on the Internet has some authority somewhere between 1 and 100 in our, in our, in our, you know, fake scale that we're using right now, okay? The more authority a website has, the more authority a backlink from that website has, okay? So if I link from my website to your website, that backlink shares authority with you. It shares some of my authority with you. If I have a lot of authority, if my website is 100, 100 out of 100 authority, that backlink is going to give you a lot of authority. If my website has one authority, then it's going to give you a bit of authority, okay? Do you understand? The more authority a website and this, guys, this is, this is a, this is a huge simplification of the process. But the more authority a website has, the more authority a backlink provides, okay? And remember, the only way to get authority is from backlinks, okay? The reason, by the way, if you've done everything else right, if you have no penalties, if you have content, if you have relevancy, but you're not ranking, the reason is feasibly that you don't have enough authority, okay? And how do you get authority? What's the only way to get authority? Backlinks, okay? So that's why backlinks is a big part of SEO, even though people like to say it's not. It's probably the biggest part of SEO, once you have no penalties, content and relevancy, backlinks becomes the biggest part of SEO. Okay, so there are good backlinks and there are bad backlinks, because not all backlinks are the same. Now hold on for a second. Because people learn, oh, we need backlinks, and then they go out and they get a lot of backlinks, but they get rubbish backlinks that aren't going to help them and it might even hurt them. Okay, so not all backlinks are the same. Remember I said if I give you a backlink and my website is 100 authority, it's going to give you a lot of authority. But if my website is one authority, it's going to give you only a little bit of authority. That's only part of it. Okay, that's only part of it because there are other factors at play. So let's explain why that's the case, and then we'll talk about the difference between good backlinks and bad backlinks. And I know people are going to try and jump forward in the podcast. I just want the list. I want the list. I want to know what makes a bad backlink so I know what to avoid. Guys, SEO is not a checklist. In fact, you should go listen to. One of my favorite releases that we've done is called. SEO is a Competition, not a checklist. Okay, listen, if you understand the. This is what I can't. I truly think that, like 10% of listeners actually understand this. Right. By the way, the successful 10%. I truly think this. If you understand why something is the case, you won't need to use checklists. First of all, checklists don't exist. But you won't need to, like, focus on every little thing because you will understand the reason. It's kind of like we have an episode called how to Determine if Something is a Ranking Factor or Not.
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Co-host
Okay.
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Sam
I get a lot of emails from people, hey, is this a ranking factor? What about this other thing? What about this other thing? What about this? What about that thing? Listen to the episode. It explains how to tell if something is a ranking factor. Then you won't have to send me all those messages because you'll know the answer.
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Co-host
Okay.
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Sam
Or you can still email me. I don't care. I'm just like, I don't care either way. I'm just saying if you understand the reason, everything will make sense to you, hopefully. So here's the reason that quality of backlinks matters. Okay, what is one of the main ranking factors. Authority. How do you get authority? Backlinks. We good so far?
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Co-host
Okay.
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Sam
People are like, no, backlinks don't matter. I don't like you, grumpy SEO guy, because content is king, okay? By the way, that person is not ranking. So anyways, look, anyway, okay, so if you were a search engine, okay, if you. And I want you always to think, and I want you, as you're listening to this, to think about what would you do if you were a search engine, okay? Because part of the search engines purpose is to stop people from manipulating the results, okay? SEO is manipulation. When we're ranking a client's website, we are manipulating the results. It doesn't matter how you're doing it. You know, people are like, oh, white hat is not manipulative. Yes, it is. Because some people divide SEO into white hat and black hat, which are. And also gray hat, which is maybe like a mix of the two, whatever, I don't know. Or maybe some like questionable practices are considered gray hat. I don't know. Look, it doesn't matter because even the most authentic, straightforward white hat SEO, and by the way, I'm not going to define those right now, but even the most like, like, like transparent white hat SEO is still trying to manipulate the results. So don't even start with, well, whitehead, SEO is not manipulative. Yes, the purpose of SEO is to get websites to the top of the search engine. That's literally manipulation. You are doing something to cause a result. That's manipulation, okay? So anyway, the purpose of SEO is to manipulate the search engines, okay? If you're a search engine, right, you want to stop that from happening, right? Because you only want, ultimately you only want websites that fit your criteria to rank, okay? And if people are faking the results, so to speak, whether they're doing that, you know, honestly or dishonestly, if they're faking the criteria, you want to stop that from happening. So you're a search engine. Remember, you're a search engine. You know that backlinks provide authority. So you need to come up with a process to distinguish good backlinks from bad backlinks. Because anybody can go out and buy a thousand backlinks for like $15, okay? But those backlinks are garbage and they're not gonna help you. But you're a search engine. You need to have some sort of classification. How do I know these backlinks are bad versus how do I know backlinks that are good? And I only want to give importance and emphasis to the Good ones, so the bad ones don' and the good ones do help.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
If you understand why that's the case, it will make this process so much easier for you. Okay, so let's go through a relatively brief list of good backlinks versus bad backlinks.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
The quick version of this explanation is anything that could be classified as spam. So anything that could be spammy, anything that can be automated, or anything that is easy to do, which counts as automation, right? Cause automation is easy to do, probably is not going to help you. Okay, let's talk about what that looks like. Oh, finally, he's getting to the list. I just want to know the list. That's why you're not successful at SEO.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
And I don't mean that, I don't mean that like condescendingly, but guys, look at the other, like, SEO content that exists and it's a bunch of clickbait nonsense and it doesn't actually teach you anything. And if it does, some oversimplified rubbish that won't actually, like, you know, enhance your website at all. So anyways, here's your list though. All right? Whatever.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
Good backlinks are one of two kinds of backlinks. They are either citations, which is like a mention of your business with name, address and phone number and other things, whatever, okay? Or that's a different topic. Or they are contextual. What does contextual mean? Contextual means it appears in a sentence.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
If I say, hey, look at this. Okay, let me start over. If I'm writing a post and I say, this website over here has some really good information and maybe like, this website is the link that you can click on or something, but the link is in a sentence in a blog post that's contextual, okay? It's words in a sentence in a post that's contextual. So what is not contextual? Okay, Blog comments are not. Well, a blog comment technically could be contextual because it could be a sentence, but blog comments are spammy. Why are blog comments spammy? Because they're easy to do. And if something is easy to do, it's probably going to be done at large scale and therefore it's not going to provide much value.
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Co-host
Okay?
- [18:44]
Sam
Blog comments are spammy. Forum profile backlinks are spammy. Why are forum profile. Wait, what are forum profile backlinks? You know, forums on the Internet and you can create accounts on them. And in your account, in your profile, you can have a link to your website. That's a forum profile backlink. There are. There There is software that. There are tools out there that will create hundreds or thousands of forum profiles and have your backlink in all of the forum profiles. Okay? It's all automated.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
It's automation. It's spammy. They do not help.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
Forum profile backlinks are spammy. They are bad. Okay, what else? Footer links.
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Co-host
Okay.
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Sam
Do you know footer links? You scroll down to the bottom of a website and the footer is what's at the bottom of every website. Sometimes it will say. It could say anything. It could say about us, copyright, whatever. You can put links in the footer of a website. Okay, and it's spammy. Why? Because it appears on every single page on the website. And then what happens? Maybe the website has 70 pages. Maybe the website has 70 pages. You have a link at the bottom of all 70 pages. That's spammy. Why would a website link to you 70 times? That's weird. That looks unnatural. That's spammy. Okay, look, the other reason that footer backlinks are bad is because back in the day, people used to buy them. It's very easy to insert a footer link on your website.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
Just be like, especially if it's not. If it's not relevant to the website. If your website is about toasters and you have a footer backlink for refrigerators, that doesn't even make any sense. Why would a website that doesn't make sense? Well, it might make sense, but you have to examine it contextually. Does that make sense? Okay, we're gonna talk more about that later. Anyways. And blog role links is another kind of bad backlink. What's a blog role link? Usually it's in the sidebar of a blog, which is like the navigation section, the side. Right. So it'll say like, this is a thing from like the early days of blogs. It would say like, blog roll. And it would basically, it would be like other blogs that you're linking to. It's spammy. Why? Because it's easy to do and because it appears on every single page on your website. So if you have, you know, 90 pages on your site and you've got a blog roll in there, you're gonna have 90 links to the same website from every single or no, every page on your site is going to have a link to this, to whatever pages are in your blog roll. So that's going to be 90 links on your website. Why would one website link to another website 90 times? It wouldn't. That's bad. Don't do it. So let's review good backlinks, citations or contextual backlinks, and contextual meaning in a sentence in a post. Bad backlinks are blog comment backlinks, forum profile backlinks, footer backlinks, and blog roll links. Okay, now there's more to it than that.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
You also have to view the website itself. But grumpy SEO guy, this is so much work. Yes, this is why SEO is hard. So remember, we have an episode called SEO is Simple but not Easy.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
It is simple. I could explain the concepts to you very quickly, but it's not easy.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
This is why good SEO is expensive. So look, you have to look at the website too. Let's talk about what good websites look like.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
So let's assume you're getting backlinks from different websites.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
Good backlinks will come from websites that are on unique IP addresses.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
At the first or second octet, I guarantee you there's somebody listening to those who doesn't know what I'm talking about. So let me do this really quickly. We have a whole other episode. We have numerous episodes that explain this topic. Let me do this very quickly. Your IP addresses is a set of four numbers or a group of four numbers that are basically the address or the location of the server that your website is hosted on.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
It looks like this. It's the first number and then a dot, and then the second number and then a dot, and Then the third number and then a dot and then the fourth number. So a hypothetical IP address might be 80.100.150.100. I just made that up. I have no idea. Right? I don't want to explain this right now. This is like too much for this short episode, but I guess I will anyways.
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Co-host
Okay.
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Sam
In the world of SEO, but not in real life, but in the world of SEO, those four numbers are referred to as A, B, C and D. So the first number is A, the second number is B, the third number is C, and the fourth number is D. Or more precisely, the first number is called the A class, the second number is called the B class, the third number is called the C class, and the fourth number is called the D class. Okay, great. What you want to look out for, and I'm not going to go into the reasons why, just trust me on this. You want to make sure that the websites you're getting backlinks from are unique at the A class or the B class.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
So if the first two numbers are the same, that would Be unique at the C class, okay? And that's probably not so good. And if the first three numbers are the same, that would be unique at the D class. You definitely don't want that. And if the websites are all on a single IP address, that's really bad. You really don't want to do that. We're not going to talk anymore about that for now. Probably don't worry about that too much for now, but you're going to need to understand it. Okay, here's another thing that good websites display. Good websites do not link to gambling, pharmacy or adult websites. So before you buy a link or ask for a link or watch whatever on a website, look at the website and see, is this website linking to gambling, pharmacy or adult websites? If they are, you do not want a backlink from it. That is a bad website. Well, questionable. Okay, Just no, no. In other words, if they link to pharmacy or gambling or adult, you do not want them to link to you. Okay, here's another thing.
- [24:45]
Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
We also do not want the website to have backlinks from pharmacy, adult and gambling.
- [24:51]
Co-host
Okay?
- [24:51]
Sam
So check their backlinks. There's other episodes that explain how to do this. You can use tools like Ahrefs, that's a h r e f s.com or SEMrush s e m r u s h dot com. There's different tools that will check who. Sometimes they can't necessarily find all of them, but they will check who is linking to a website. You want to make sure that the website you are thinking about buying or requesting a link from does not have links from pharmacy, gambling or adult websites.
- [25:25]
Co-host
Okay?
- [25:26]
Sam
Just. You don't want to be mixed in with that kind of thing, okay? There's other reasons for it. Not ethical reasons, by the way. Just listen, just assume that this is correct for now, okay? So if you see a website and it looks like a great website and you see it has a lot of backlinks from, for example, pharmacy websites, right? Where you can buy medications online without a prescription, right? You do not want a link from that website. Just assume that this is correct.
- [25:54]
Co-host
Okay?
- [25:55]
Sam
I mean, we have other episodes that explain it, but. Okay, so another thing that you want to do is you want to look at the website that you're thinking about getting a backlink from and you want to see if it has backlinks from other countries that have nothing to do with the websites. Now, now remember I said before, it has to make sense. So I want you to look at this and then check. Does this make sense?
- [26:20]
Co-host
Okay.
- [26:20]
Sam
Because backlinks from another country, for example, are not necessarily bad. Let's say, for example, you're getting a backlink from a website, an American business website that has a lot of backlinks from Korea. Okay, now hold on. You might be like, well, that doesn't make sense. What if that business does a lot of negotiation with Korea? Maybe they have a lot of clients in Korea. Maybe it makes perfect sense. They would have a lot of backlinks from Korea. It might make sense. You have to look into it. Okay, that sounds like a lot of work. I don't want to do that. Right. SEO is hard. Good SEO is hard. And this is why it's expensive. Okay, here's another thing. So another thing that you want to check is the website that you're thinking about getting a backlink from. Look who is backlinking to them.
- [27:06]
Co-host
Okay?
- [27:06]
Sam
Look who's linking to them and see what the language is. Languages should make sense, okay? Remember, it all has to make sense. So for example, if you are getting a backlink from, let's say, let's say some. Let's say you find a website, it looks good, everything checks out so far, and then you notice it has a lot of like, Japanese backlinks.
- [27:29]
Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
Japanese language backlinks.
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Co-host
Okay?
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Sam
Does it make sense? Does it make sense that a lot of Japanese language websites would link to this website in Japanese? Does that make sense? Well, maybe you should check into it because it might make sense, but it also might be a bunch of adult spam, okay. In which case, do not get a backlink from them.
- [27:50]
Co-host
Okay?
- [27:51]
Sam
Why? Because they are associated. Well, first of all, because they're associated with adult and you don't want that. And second of all, because it doesn't make sense. It has to make sense. This is. People seem to not understand this concept. And I deal, I get with a lot, I get a lot of questions from people that ultimately can be answered by me asking, does this make sense? Okay, Everything has to make sense. You know, when we talk about PBNs and private blog networks and if you're building it correctly or not, and how should you create the content and how should you build the links and everything? Does it make sense? Does it make sense if your website is about a certain topic and you randomly link off to a lot of other websites that have nothing to do with the topic of your website or that have nothing to do with the topic of the article of your website or that have nothing to do with the topic of the discussion or the tangent that you're going off on or something like that. If it doesn't make sense to the overall theme of your website, do you think it's a good idea? No, it's not. It has to be logical. Okay? I mean, it's. Look, it doesn't have to, but like one of the, like, quick giveaways of a bad PBN ignoring the technical things, right? Like wrong IP addresses and stuff is when it doesn't make sense. I can find a PBN in like 15 seconds. But like, I don't. I feel like. I feel like a lot of people just don't care and they're just like, well, we're just gonna sell articles and links to whoever wants them. Which is another huge red flag. But probably not gonna talk about that in this episode.
- [29:24]
Co-host
Okay.
- [29:26]
Sam
What else does a good. Oh, let's review. Okay, so good websites have different IP addresses. All the websites linking to have different IP addresses. They do not link to adult, gambling or pharmacy. They do not have backlinks from gambling, adult or pharmacy.
- [29:41]
Co-host
Okay?
- [29:42]
Sam
They have mostly links from countries that make sense.
- [29:47]
Co-host
Okay.
- [29:48]
Sam
And they have mostly backlinks in languages that make sense. Okay, now what else do good websites do? They have normal looking content. Okay, so when I started talking about this probably over a year ago, I said they don't use spun content.
- [30:07]
Co-host
Okay?
- [30:07]
Sam
Spun content is term from a long time ago. It's basically when you take an article and you put it through this program that uses a thesaurus on every word and it creates maybe grammatically correct but still nonsensical content. Right? It doesn't make any sense. If you read a couple articles on the site that you're thinking about getting a backlink from and they don't seem right, avoid it. Okay, you're right. Avoid it. I'm also gonna tell you now I'm 70% sure that this is going to become true in the future. I would avoid getting backlinks on websites that have obvious AI content. Okay, There's a term, AI slop. Have you heard that term? It just means like garbage written by AI for the sake of basically being content. But it doesn't really like contribute anything. It is a contested point or discussion if search engines are identifying AI content and devaluing it. I have arguments for both sides of that. But in the meantime, I am going to tell you, based on somewhat anecdotal experience, that probably, if a website seems to be using AI content, you might want to think twice about getting a backlink from it.
- [31:21]
Co-host
Okay?
- [31:22]
Sam
You can do whatever you want, but I'm Telling you, if it looks like it's all AI content, probably don't get a backlink from them.
- [31:30]
Co-host
Okay.
- [31:31]
Sam
Anyways, you know what? I feel like this episode's long enough for what it needed to be. So there are. Yeah, there you go. There's your list of good backlinks and bad backlinks. Also, the episodes we mentioned earlier will explain this in more detail. The only other thing I was gonna say was because I didn't specify it the first time. Just because you have backlinks from a different country, that's not immediately bad. If it's like a lot of backlinks from a different country, that doesn't make sense because you can't control what websites link to you. And maybe, maybe this website in Japan just really liked you and thought your website was cool and wanted to link to you. So if you see a backlink from some other country, nice, that's cool. But if it's like 80% okay, and it seems like weird and spammy and maybe think twice about it, maybe don't, you know, get a backlink from them. Same thing with like, foreign language, right? Maybe they just thought it was cool. Maybe they're just like, hey, this is a cool website. You should check it out, but see if there's a reason for it. Okay. Like, I don't know how else to explain it. I hope this makes sense. Anyway, good backlinks will help you. Bad backlinks will not help you. If it looks automated or spammy or low value or low effort, it's probably going to be considered eventually to be bad. And then worst case, you get a penalty neutral case, it doesn't do anything at all. Well, that's still a bad case because you spent money. And if you didn't spend money, you at least spent time trying to get it. But if you look for good quality backlinks, okay, that are contextual or that are citations and that are on websites that appear legitimate, okay, they're probably going to help. You think that's a good review. For now, let me know what questions there are, post them in the comments and I will try to reply. 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. Sam.