As a blogger or publisher, naturally you may want to build quality links back to your site. But what about links from relevant article directories and syndication? Are these types of links seen as good or bad?
Like if you run an art and design site, would it help you to get a link back on a relevant design article on a site like Ezine or republish a social media article on Social Media Today?
While this may have seemed like a good idea back in the 90s, Google Webmaster Matt Cutts reveals the answer once and for all: no, these types of link backs are not helpful. Just look at ezines traffic chart direction above via Alexa! While syndicating your articles on larger sites could get you a few extra views, the engineers at Google see most user-generated content on these sites as low quality or even spam, where people often slap a few hundred words together with several keyword rich links back to their site (and original article). Even worse, if you syndicate your articles to other sites that likely have more search authority than your own, your original version of an article will likely appear below the other site’s copy in related search results. This means you’ve basically given the other site all future hits to your article in the hopes that Google will give you some props for that link back to your site. But Google won’t give you any such props. Not to mention, Cutts has also recently come out against guest blogging on a bunch of sites to get links back. So the days of content farming and mass syndication that plagued the early 21st century appear to be officially over, folks! I doubt this will prevent all those guest bloggers and “SEO Experts” from sending you their spam pitches anytime soon, though.
So the best way to build links to your site these days, thankfully, is to come up with quality content and an awesome social strategy to make it go viral where it belongs: on your site.
Video by Google Webmasters
