Listener (5:26)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (5:27)

But I have to tell you, there are two exceptions to everything that I say, and I'm gonna save those exceptions for the end. Okay, just to start, we're going to do a lot of different kind of backlinks. Don't worry. That sounds like complicated. Oh, no. A lot of kinds of backlinks. No, just trust me. It's not. We're gonna do them from least effective to most effective. And then we're gonna talk about those exceptions that I mentioned, okay? Because exceptions change the rules on everything. Just like when I tell you about how you have to rank all the things that you have to do, you have to do, but the exception is if you have a penalty, nothing else matters. Well, there's an exception like that for backlinks, too. Actually, there's two exceptions. So we're going to discuss those exceptions at the end. Okay, let me start. This is the last little comment I have to make before we start. Backlinks are about quality. They are not about quantity.

Listener (6:29)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (6:30)

So, and I'm just saying this because, like, let's say maybe you're just starting in the world of SEO, or maybe this is the first episode of Grumpy SEO Guy that you've ever listened to, okay? And you might have some incorrect theories about backlinks in your Head because you've been hearing some terrible information from some other sources that is unhelpful. So the first thing that people think of when they learn that backlinks are important is, well, I'm gonna get a lot of backlinks. I need to get a lot of backlinks. Okay, first of all, that's the wrong way to think about it. But don't feel bad if you think about it, because that is a logical thought. It's just not the manner in which you do it. Okay? So that kind of idea is perpetuated by people that are selling huge quantities of backlinks. Because as soon as you learn about backlinks, probably the first thing you do is search for something like how do I get backlinks? Or how do I buy backlinks? Or something like that. And you will see people selling hundreds or thousands of backlinks for a couple dollars. That's the wrong way to do it. I don't even have to know anything else about whatever the service is. If you're getting one backlink for a couple dollars, it's already not going to help you. But, but look, if you're getting hundreds or thousands of backlinks for a couple dollars, they're not going to help you. They're going to hurt you.

Listener (7:50)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (7:51)

Backlinks are about quality. They are not about how many backlinks you have.

Listener (7:57)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (7:58)

1,000 backlinks does not mean you will rank better than five backlinks.

Listener (8:03)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (8:04)

One high quality backlink will outrank thousands of spam backlinks. And most backlinks for sale on the Internet are trash. How about that? Most backlinks for sale on the Internet are trash. Like literal trash will not help you, likely will hurt you. So just guess what, we're gonna cover all that. Let's get started. Okay, so one more thing that I wanna say before we get started. A very, very common question that I see on the Internet and that people ask me is, well, my website has 10,000 backlinks and we're being outranked by somebody that only has 500 backlinks. What's happening? Like, okay, this question makes perfect sense for somebody who doesn't understand that backlink quality matters.

Listener (8:53)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (8:54)

Backlink quality matters. One good backlink can help you more than 5,000 bad quality backlinks.

Listener (9:02)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (9:03)

And a lot of that has to do with how much authority the website has that's giving you the link. Okay, but that's a different topic for a different episode. We've talked about that a lot in the past. We'll talk about that more in the future. This episode is about types of backlinks, irrespective of how much authority a website has, okay? Because there are good types of backlinks and there are bad types of backlinks. But if you learn nothing else from this episode, just remember, quantity does not matter. Quality matters. I would rather pay a lot of money for one good backlink than pay a little money for thousands of bad backlinks. And that is how you should approach SEO too, by the way. So from least helpful to most helpful, that's how we're talking about these backlinks, okay? So the first kind of backlink we're going to talk about is blog comment backlinks. Now, you've probably heard of these before. Blog comment backlinks are just what they sound like. It's when you're posting a comment on some person's blog and you can leave a backlink to your site, right? Like you type your name and your email address, and then there's like a URL field where you can put your website address and then, like the comment field, and then you could submit it, right? Well, blog comment backlinks are pretty useless. Let me tell you why they're useless. We have a whole episode that covers this. But the short version of why they're useless is because they can be automated. There are literally programs that will post thousands of blog comments when you run the program.

Listener (10:40)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (10:41)

And it's like, it just. Look, a general rule in SEO is that anything that can be automated will be devalued. Okay, let me say that one more time. We have an entire episode about this, but let me say it one more time. Anything that can be automated will be devalued. So what does that mean? If you can write a program that will create thousands of blog comment links, they will be devalued. The search engines will say, hey, hey, everyone. Blog comment backlinks can be automated, therefore they are not a reliable source of authority. Therefore they will not be counted anymore. So you can get blog comment backlinks. It doesn't matter, but they're not going to help you, okay? And by the way, blog comment backlinks is one way to do negative SEO, which we don't teach on this podcast, but we literally talk about it sometimes because it's a thing. And episode two, if you want to learn more about negative SEO, talks about a client of ours that got negative SEO'd and what we had to do to fix the situation. But let me just say it this way. If blog comment backlinks are so spammy that they can be used for negative SEO, that's probably not the kind of backlink you want to your website.

Listener (11:55)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (11:55)

Just leave it like that. And the last thing I'm gonna say about blog comment backlinks, if you're buying backlinks from somebody, don't buy blog comment backlinks, okay? Just don't. I don't care how cheap they are. I don't care if it's $10 for 50,000 of them, don't buy them. They're not gonna help you. You heard it here, okay? Don't buy them. They're not going to help you. Okay, next type of backlink. Forum profile backlinks. Forum profile back. Well, let me tell you what they are first. You know how when you join a forum on the Internet, you can create your username and then there's like a profile page where you can put in information about yourself, like maybe where you live or what your interests are and that kind of thing. And there's a URL field where you can put in a link back to your website. I literally have no problem with that. Here's the problem with getting backlinks from there, though. Exactly the same problem as blog comments. You can write software that will do it for you. It's automated, it's devalued, it's super spammy. I'm not saying that one forum profile backlink is going to hurt you, okay? But you can use forum profile backlinks to negative SEO your competition. I'm not suggesting you do that, but I'm saying forum profiles can be used for negative SEO.

Listener (13:06)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (13:07)

So considering forum profiles can be used for negative SEO, they must be so spammy that you probably don't even want to use them on a website where you're concerned about its rankings.

Listener (13:21)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (13:21)

Again, if you're a member of a forum and you placed your URL in your profile, that's fine. That is totally fine. But don't waste your time trying to rank your website with forum profile backlinks, considering it's not even gonna work.

Listener (13:40)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (13:41)

And by the way, if you see somebody selling backlinks, you need to ask questions. You need to ask them questions like, what kind of backlinks are you selling? Because you can't just say 500 backlinks for $5, or like, whatever they are, right? That could be anything. It could be literal garbage. It could be one page with 500 backlinks on the same website, which would be garbage completely unhelpful. Okay, 500 backlinks doesn't mean anything.

Listener (14:04)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (14:05)

So one of the questions that you have to ask a link seller is where are these backlinks coming from? So anyways, if somebody's selling forum profile backlinks, just completely avoid that seller. Don't even buy that package. It's not going to help you and it could hurt you. Okay, let's move on to the next type of backlinks. Footer links. What are footer links? Footer links are. Footer means at the bottom. So like a footer link is when you get a link at the bottom of every page on a website. This is very common in blogs. You might see, for example, a parent company is linked to at the bottom of every post on a blog, right? Or maybe like, you'll see this a lot with web developers, right? Like if some web development company is making websites for different clients, they might put at the bottom of every page designed by so and so with like a link back to their web development company or something. That's a footer link. Basically, a footer link means at the bottom of every single page on the website. Now, footer links are problems because they are at the bottom of every single page on the website.

Listener (15:18)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (15:20)

Footer links, just like blog comments and forum profiles, are pretty spammy. Look, when you get a lot of backlinks from the same website, that's suspicious. Why would one website link to the same page multiple times? That's weird. That would probably never happen. Now, yes, they're footer links and it makes sense that a footer link would link to the same website every single time. That makes perfect sense. Here's the problem. Footer links, just like blog comments and forum profiles, have been taken advantage of by spammers and therefore they have become devalued. Do not buy footer links. Previously it was common that you could buy footer links because, let's say, I mean, think about it. Like, think about it, okay? If the amount of backlinks you have matters, think about why this would be a good idea.

Listener (16:12)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (16:12)

By the way, the amount of backlinks you have doesn't matter. The quality of those backlinks matters. But. But the amount of backlinks you have doesn't matter. But think about if it did. Okay, let's say you have a website with a hundred pages on it and you sell somebody a footer link service or something. So every one of those hundred pages you have, they get a backlink from that to their website. Well, that would be awesome. If the number of backlinks you have matters, but it doesn't. The, the quality of those links matters. Anyway, footer links have been taken advantage of. They're pretty useless now. And by the way, I just want to mention this because I'm certain that somebody had this idea while I was listening to this. They probably said, wait a minute, wait a minute, Grumpy SEO guy. You just said that some web development companies will put a footer link at the bottom of their clients websites. Back to their site. Website built by so and so, Right? Well, wouldn't that affect them negatively? Yup. Web developers have gotten themselves in trouble by doing this, okay? And it seemed like it would be smart. Like, I'm gonna be completely honest with you, okay? Like 12 years ago, like 14 years ago, if I had a web development company, I would have done exactly the same thing, okay? Because first of all, anybody who views that website, they're gonna scroll down to the bottom and say, oh, it appears that a certain company made this website. This website's pretty cool. Maybe I'll let website. So good way to get new clients. Okay? Smart. And then the second reason is because back in the day, footer links were not useless. They were actually helpful.

Listener (17:50)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (17:51)

So you're not only getting new business by having footer links, but you were also getting an SEO boost. So if somebody searched for like some, you know, web design company or something, you might show up to the top. If you had a lot of clients and all of those clients had footer links back to you because you'd have a lot of links. It was a great idea back in the day. It's a terrible idea now because why they were overused and now they don't help anymore. So yes, web design companies did actually find themselves damaged by all the footer links they had built. In conclusion, don't use footer links, don't buy footer links. If somebody's selling you a package and it's footer links and you know, because you asked them, right, don't buy it. Okay, One more type of kind of bad link because remember, this is going from worst to best. And to be fair, like blog comment backlinks and form profile backlinks, they're both terrible. So like, it doesn't matter which one I put first because neither of them is good. Footer links. Same thing. Okay? We have one more bad kind of backlink and that is blog role links. What's a blog role? Okay, you've got your blog. And sometimes, not always. I don't Think people even have this anymore, but you might still see it sometimes in one of the columns, there'd be something called a blog role. And it's just like other blogs that are maybe related that you want to link to, right? Like, maybe your blog discusses blue widgets, and maybe there's another blue widget blog on the Internet. That's pretty awesome. And so you put them in your blog role, right? It's just like. It's like a long, long, long time ago when there was what was called a webring. Like, like, man, I don't know if anybody has been using the Internet as long as me, but in the, like, mid-90s, there was stuff called web rings. Cause like, search engines weren't really that good back in the day. And so, like, at the bottom of your website, you would have something called a webring, which was like related websites. Like your website, you know, talks about blue widgets and you are hanging out on bulletin boards because this is, you know, the mid-90s. And it was. It wasn't really forums, it was bulletin boards. But anyways, you're hanging out on bulletin boards. We guys are talking about blue widgets, and you built a blue widget website, and this other person built a blue widget website, and you're like, hey, we should link our websites together. And then all these other people that have blue widget websites, they all link their websites together, because how else are you going to find out about blue widget websites? Search engines aren't that great back in the day. So you'd have. It's called a webring, and it just referred to the sites that were part of this group. And there would be options. I actually bet that nobody listening to this podcast even knows what I'm talking about right now, because I feel like I've been on the Internet for longer than most people. Okay, but anyway, and there would always be two buttons on the left and two buttons on the right, and it would be like, next site or next five sites to the right, or previous site or previous five sites to the left. And it was like, do you want to go to the next site in the ring, or do you want to jump forward five more sites in the ring just to help get people to a larger variety of websites. Anyways, it was pretty cool because like I said, you couldn't really find a lot in search. But maybe somebody else on a different bulletin board that knew a mutual acquaintance of yours from the Internet was in this web ring. And look, the point is, it's basically a predecessor of Blog rollings. Okay, but back in the day there was no authority and there was no, like, it didn't matter. It was a good idea back in the day, but today, you know, they don't use, they don't use web rings anymore, but they use blog roles. I think they actually, I don't think anybody uses blog rolls anymore. I'm sure somebody does. Anyway, if somebody's selling you blog roll backlinks, don't buy them. They're bad for the same reason as blog comment backlinks and forum profile links and footer links. Okay, they're all bad for the same reasons. Because look, if you get a blog roll backlink, it's gonna be on every single page on the website. That's suspicious. And they were used by spammers to sell link packages a long time ago. They got devalued. Don't use them. They're not going to help you. They might hurt you. Okay, this brings us to the end of bad backlinks. Now let's talk about good backlinks. After that, we're going to talk about the two exceptions that basically override everything I've talked about so far in this episode. Okay, the first kind of good backlink is a citation link. What is the citation link? Let's say somebody writes an article, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Blue widgets, whatever, great blue widgets article. And then you have a website about blue widgets. Okay. At the end of the article, just like when you were in school. And you list your sources at the end of the paper. So there's this article. And then at the bottom, they will have sources that they used to write the article. Those are citation links. They are sources they cited while they were writing the article. Those are fine. Why are those fine? Well, couple reasons. First, they're probably on a page that is at least somewhat relevant to your topic. If the article, for example, was about blue widgets. And then at the bottom of the article they have a link to your website and your website is a blue widget website. Well, that's kind of contextually relevant, isn't it? That makes sense. So that's helpful. And number two, that link isn't on every page on the website. It's on one page, which means it's not spammy. Okay, Citation links are nice. Now, I don't know if anybody is selling citation links, but every once in a while you will get them. And usually they're a pretty good kind of backlink. Okay, now let's talk about the best kind of backlink ready. The best kind of backlink is a contextual link. What does contextual mean? Contextual means the link is in the content and makes sense to be there. Okay, let's say your website is about blue widgets and somebody is linking to you from within the content. And they might say, like to learn more about blue widgets, check out this website. And blue widgets is the link back to your website. That's a contextual link. It's in the content, it is a logical place to put the link, and it is in content that is related to your topic. Now, in that specific case that I just gave, blue widgets is the anchor text. Anchor text is whatever the link says. And I have an entire episode on anchor text and why it's important. So if you want to learn more about that, go listen to episode 29 which is called what is anchor text and why is it important? Or how to rank any website for any keyword. Okay? But generally speaking, contextual backlinks are by far the best kind of backlink you can get. So let's go over these again one more time. We've got blog comment backlinks, they're terrible. We've got forum profile backlinks, they're terrible. We've got footer links, they're terrible. We've got blog role links, they're terrible. We've got citation links, they're pretty awesome. And we've got contextual links, they are super awesome. Okay, I hope this all makes sense so far. Now let's talk about the two exceptions. Because everything that we've talked about so far in this episode is just types of backlinks. We have not considered anything else. We haven't considered the quality of the page providing the backlink. We haven't considered the attributes of the link. Okay? So I'm mentioning this because I know somebody out there is thinking, well, what if it's a no follow backlink? What if it's those other kinds of backlinks? Look, it's kind of a different topic. The only thing I'm gonna say about it now is don't worry too much about follow versus no follow, alright? Just don't worry about that for now, okay? But let's continue to those two exceptions, okay? The first exception to everything I just said is if the site is spammed, okay? If you're getting a backlink from a spammy low value website, okay? And that could mean a bunch of different things. It could mean a website that is penalized, okay? It could mean a Website that is a link farm, okay? A link farm just means a website that has way too many backlinks on it compared to the amount of content it has on it. It could be a website that links to suspicious websites, okay? For example, if you have a website that links to a lot of pharmacy and gambling or adult websites and then that website also links to you, that could negatively affect you, okay? If the website is low value or spammy, okay? Then it doesn't matter what kind of backlink you have, you still don't want it. So the best, most amazing contextual backlink on a spammy website that links to your website, it's not gonna help you at all. You don't want it. Okay, now let's talk about the other exception. Okay, the other exception is like pretty much just the opposite of what I just said. If a website is super high quality, okay, like, let's say IBM.com. i'm just randomly picking this, you guys. It doesn't matter. Like IBM.com because they probably have more authority than me and literally everyone else listening to this podcast combined, okay? If IBM.com wanted to give me a footer link, I wouldn't say no, okay? Because it's IBM.com now. They're not going to give anyone a footer link. Probably, but you get the point, okay? Anyways, okay, the second exception is pretty much the opposite of the first one. Look, if you get a backlink from a super high value website, let's say IBM.com wants to give you a backlink, okay? And it's not a perfect contextual backlink. Like, who cares because it's IBM.com I would take a backlink from IBM.com I wouldn't write them and say, excuse me IBM.com I only want contextual links within the blog post with my keywords as the anchor text. No, I would say, holy cow, I just got a backlink from IBM.com that's all. Awesome. Okay, now just a little side note here, and I've talked about this before, I think this isn't what I'm talking about at all in this episode. But I just want to say backlinks from super authoritative domains aren't necessarily awesome because every once in a while you will have somebody selling backlinks on an extremely authoritative domain. But those pages with the backlinks don't get indexed. In that case, you completely wasted your money. I have seen people sell. I'm not gonna name these places, but I've seen people selling on very authoritative media outlets, okay? Places that if I said them, you would know who they are, okay? For like four figures per link.

Listener (28:39)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (28:40)

And you know what? These links, they never get indexed, okay? The pages with the links, they don't get indexed. So why is that a problem? Well, because if a page isn't indexed, then any link on it doesn't matter. So if you pay thousands of dollars for a backlink from some super famous media outlet, for example, okay, that's cool. That's cool. Because you can tell people, hey, we were mentioned on such and such website. Okay, that's cool. But guess what? As far as SEO goes, if that page is not indexed, you wasted your thousands of dollars. So if you want to pay thousands of dollars to tell people that you're featured on some website, that's cool, I guess. But from an SEO perspective, if the page doesn't get indexed, it's worthless. It's completely worthless if it, if a page is not indexed, the links on that page have no value. It does not matter what domain they are on. But for like 99.9% of things that you're gonna do with backlink building, just don't ignore the first exception. Like, stay away from backlinks on spammy websites. That's the worst. It doesn't matter. Like a contextual link, Like I said, a perfect contextual link in the middle of amazing content on a spammy website is still gonna hurt you, even though that's the best kind of backlink you you can get. Okay, so just for like pretty much every case that you will ever be involved in, just pay attention to what we talked about on this episode. Blog comment backlinks are spam, don't use them. Forum profile comments are spam, don't use them. Footer links are spam, don't use them. Blog role links are spam, don't use them. Citation links are pretty awesome if you can get them. And contextual backlinks are always the best. Contextual backlinks are always the best. You should try to use them if you can. We only build contextual backlinks, which means a backlink in the content that makes sense to be there to our clients. Why? Because they're so much more effective and so much better than literally everything else. And that is all that you need to know about good backlinks versus bad 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 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 grumpyseoguy 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 when we talk about link attributes like nofollow and others.