Help! My backlink strategy backfired!

So I've been reading about link wheels and related strategies, and I've tried a few things. This is a story about what's happened with one of my attempts to raise rankings for a money site. I'd sure appreciate guidance from the more experienced.

I bookmarked the money site at some high-ranking SB sites and I submitted the money site's feeds to RSS directories. Then I created a bunch of spammier links to the SB pages and the feed directory pages that link to the money site. I used scuttles and some unmoderated Japanese bulletin boards, primarily. My thinking was that I didn't want these crap links showing up as links to the money site, but I did want to give a boost to my bookmarks and such.

Here's the result. Some of the bookmark pages and feed directory pages are ranking for my keywords in the first two pages of Google. But the money site is nowhere to be found. Specifically, there are two Linkagogo pages, two Backflip pages, a Feedmap page and a Feedagg page in the top 20, all pointing to my money site. But the money site isn't there.

What do I do now? Do you think that Google will eventually sort it out and pass the juice to the money site? Or should I work hard on more legitimate links directly to the money site?

And for future projects, what's the best way to take advantage of the spam link methods (which sure are effective, at least in the short run) without getting this unhelpful kind of result?

Thanks very much for all suggestions.

Boomer23

Whats SE Nuke?

boomer23 said:

Thanks very much for all suggestions.

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I take it back. Thanks for any helpful suggestions. Those with unhelpful suggestions, please don't bother to respond.

If it's a fairly new site this can be a normal rejigging of your ranking. My new sites go from first page to fifth page, etc. Over time they come back to the first page (unless you really upset the Google Meister).

It's a known fact that social bookmarking sites and article directories like ezinearticles are popular with the search engine and it's difficult for your money site to compete with them unless you have hundreds of good links.

Just make use of them to get visitors to your money sites. I find that I can get sales from them. In fact almost all my sales are from them.

bOnEhEAd said:

Sounds like another victim of SE Nuke....

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No offense, but before you go around acting like a "bonehead" then know what you're talking about...

What does anything in the OP have to do with SENuke??

Absolutely nothing. If you want to learn what SENuke actually does, then read the salespage.

coolnamebob said:

Whats SE Nuke?

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Its a tool to automate promotion of your site. It's not cheap though.

If your money site is a new domain...it won't show up on page 1 so fast. Google will naturally show the web 2.0 pages since these websites have authority. Your website will take a few weeks to surpass them. I suggest getting a few high pr links from blog commenting to your money page.

Yep this is not unusual at all..

If you set up a site you can't expect it to be ranking number one straight away.. you've got to give it time.

On the brightside, once you surpass all these sights you will own a lot of the top 20 results with your own site at number one

Oh and in future I wouldn't really change much this is quite common - if you don't want sites to come up for your domain name then make sure the pages on Linkagoo and all those sites dont use your name but other keywords you want to rank for.

Personally I would just be patient.

Junior member. oh yeah

Consistency will pay off in the long term... don't be discouraged and KEEP at it... continue to spam your outer ring (mini-net) but NEVER your money sites... Always build quality links to your money site.

You are doing nothing wrong and it has not backfired... it is merely ramping up to speed. You've started the race... just go the distance.

You followed the following strategy:

Make pages on strong domains -> backlink them as hell to get them some credit -> put a link from the ghost sites to your mone site.
This one pays off iff you site is already high PR and after those ghost sites actually get PR.

Think about it. Your ghost sites have backlinks, no PR yet! So how do you expect the juice to flow if there;s no juice yet? Afterthe get PR, it will flow.

Hey, thanks everyone for the help and encouragement. I guess I wasn't so off-base after all.

Here's a little tip I've picked up along the way that someone may find helpful. Some of the SB sites are better than others at providing very specific pages and feeds to be bookmarked or submitted. For example, On delicious and diigo you get two specific URLs for each combination of accountname and tag. One is a page and one is a feed.

Create a bookmark on diigo under account accountname with tags tag one, tag two, tag three and you end up with these URLs in addition to your main account bookmark page:

(Well, I don't have enough posts here to put full URLs. Just imagine diigo's home page URL in front of all these):


Those can be backlinked. Then you have three corresponding RSS feeds that can be submitted (also with the diigo prefix, of course):


One great thing about these URLs is that they have your keywords right in the URL, which ought to give a little extra juice.

Boomer23

This is a great thread, and there are all too-few on this topic considering it is the backbone of IM. I agree, the OP is doing nothing wrong. Web 2.0 linkwheels are meant do provide targetted traffic much more than page rank.

However, something showbizvet said caught my attention.

spam your outer ring (mini-net) but NEVER your money sites... Always build quality links to your money site

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What does everyone think about this... I mean, how can google algorithmically tell a spammy link source from a regular link source? Look for the word viagra maybe....but automated? I don't think so.

Seems you didnt understand how linkwheel works with reading so it shown you and you learned the hard way.

Whats it really matter? if i got the Top 10 links to be Web 2.0 or bookmark sites all pointing to my money site, do i really care if my actual money site is #1 in google? when they click on the bookmarks... THEY GET REDIRECTED TO YOU IN THE END ANYWAY lol

But i'd say its more google dance than anything else causing this ranking oddity for ya.

I said that because if you lose and/or sandbox one of the outer ring sites... big deal... but if you do that to your money site, could be a major problem. As to whether or not G can sniff it out... don't know, I was referring mainly to the quantity of links... like if you did an xrumer blast.

Micallef said:

This is a great thread, and there are all too-few on this topic considering it is the backbone of IM. I agree, the OP is doing nothing wrong. Web 2.0 linkwheels are meant do provide targetted traffic much more than page rank.

However, something showbizvet said caught my attention.



What does everyone think about this... I mean, how can google algorithmically tell a spammy link source from a regular link source? Look for the word viagra maybe....but automated? I don't think so.

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Micallef said:

how can google algorithmically tell a spammy link source from a regular link source? Look for the word viagra maybe....but automated? I don't think so.

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I think that's a great question. I've been watching some pages that rank high for buy viagra or buy cialis. I find that some of them jump onto page one on the strength of thousands of very spammy backlinks, but they usually don't stay there very long. I'm not entirely sure why.

I looked for any verification from Matt Cutts, who AFAIK is the only one who reveals anything publicly that's reliable about Google's algorithms. I searched for anything he'd posted about link farms or splogs. The closest I got (without spending too much time) was this:

...sites where our algorithms had very low trust in the inlinks or the outlinks of that site. Examples that might cause that include excessive reciprocal links, linking to spammy neighborhoods on the web, or link buying/selling.

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(from his blog, May 16, 2006)

This certainly implies that they believe their algorithms can identify "spammy neighborhoods." But notice that he says "linking to spammy neighborhoods" not "linking from spammy neighborhoods". Makes me wonder whether the conventional wisdom about not spam-linking your money sites is wrong.

Boomer23

iglow said:

Seems you didnt understand how linkwheel works with reading so it shown you and you learned the hard way.

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A word of advice: try reading the whole thread.