Are free backlinks effective anymore?

charlie3

charlie3

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So I started doing some whitehat SEO for a friend of mine and it's not turning out how I expected. I've just been doing free linkbuilding, such as Web 2.0s, bookmarks, forum profiles, and articles. Each has a lot of content, is unique, and all the like, but I'm just not seeing results.

So my question is, are free linkbuilding techniques still effective? It seems that all the threads in the BST these days are for high PR backlinks (usually rented) or posts on relevant blogs.

I remember a time when you could just do linkbuilding with free methods, but it doesn't seem as effective anymore. Can anyone shed light on this? Do we have to spend money on high PR backlinks now to rank in the search engines?
 
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It just depends on quality. Most link building is essentially free, some people just have better tools to do it with.
 
Yes they do! Keep in mind that guest posts are free, having your website listed as a resource on similar websites is free (most of the time it just takes an email or two) and you can even build up wordpress subdomains to have PR (although it is very time consuming).
 
donaldbeck said:
It still works. I recently ranked several sites with all free links.

How many links did you build?
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Not many, probably around 5 solid Web 2.0s, each with at least 15 posts (at least half were text). Then around 20 high PR blog comments, 30 or so high PR bookmarks, and a few articles.

So not a ton of backlinks, but they were all high quality.
 
focus on keywords a bit more and than plan your strategy of link building.
 
Have you checked your backlinks for indexation. Because building backlinks is not enough, you also have to ensure that they are indexed otherwise it would be similar to not having built any links at all.
 
infocraze said:
Have you checked your backlinks for indexation. Because building backlinks is not enough, you also have to ensure that they are indexed otherwise it would be similar to not having built any links at all.
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I think a lot of them were indexed, but you're right. I'll probably run them through a service and see if it makes a difference.
 
In my opinion, you just need to make more links. And make sure to make a 2nd tier pointed at your 1st. I saw movement directly because of tiered linking very recently.
 
donaldbeck said:
In my opinion, you just need to make more links. And make sure to make a 2nd tier pointed at your 1st. I saw movement directly because of tiered linking very recently.
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Thanks for your input. I'll definitely start building more. I imagined that was it, but I just wasn't seeing good results with just free links so I wasn't sure if it was that or the amount.
 
That is a great start! Add in some doc submissions, a press release, and then some high PR guest posts. Adding in those things will help a ton, especially the guest posts.

charlie3 said:
Not many, probably around 5 solid Web 2.0s, each with at least 15 posts (at least half were text). Then around 20 high PR blog comments, 30 or so high PR bookmarks, and a few articles.

So not a ton of backlinks, but they were all high quality.
Click to expand...
 
It depends on the keywords too. If you're going after keywords that the top 10 are all buying links on high PR sites/pages and you have a brand new domain, no social proof and you're only pushing free links, it's just not going to get you there.

Doing a little keyword research will hopefully result in keywords "down the road" from you main keyword that is easier to rank with free links.
 
Does anyone have any advice on how to get guest posts? I've never done it before.
 
 
These kinds of free backlinks are very effective but never build the too much backlinks of website. Slow and steady win the race will provide you good ranking and result in search engine.
 
All these methods are still working. It's just taking longer for google to show them. This is obviously a dampener effect google has put in place, it has become more and more prominent in recent months. Just like indexing such links is taking more effort and more time these days. But the link building still works mate. Just keep em coming. Build some tiers, run em through pinging and crawling services. It's just that what used to take a few days to a week, can now take a few weeks. That's all.
 
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Yeah free link building still works and it takes time. I figured I'd give my two cents here though seeing as nobody mentioned to double check your on page. Links are all fine and dandy (and yes free links DO work fine) but if your site sucks or is penalized or whatever you won't rank no matter how many links you have.

Though judging by your post # and rep I'm going to guess you've already covered this. It still had to be mentioned
 
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