During the past week, I dedicated a good portion of my free time doing link building specifically for my homepage and this home business blog. While doing so, I realized that some of the work I did to accomplish my backlinks building task would never have seen the light of day by many others. Others who chose to believe a different opinion from hearsay or a total misunderstanding of SEO. Let’s try to debunk a few of these link building myths to see if their fears are well founded.
Myth No 1.
It’s not good for your site to leave your link on an “inner page” that is new or has a low Page Rank like PR0 inside of a high Page Rank domain.
My thoughts
My recent link building efforts over the last 5 days is one good example and I practiced this. I linked to inner pages of PR0 of high page rank sites of PR6-PR9. After finding about 50 of these links, the result- My keyword phrase ‘online business opportunities‘ moved from 24th position to 7th position.
If you refer to an interview with Google’s Matt Cutts and read between the lines, you could make your own deductions. Here is part of it:
Stephan Spencer: OK. So, I guess, a follow on to that would be: a .edu and .gov link, and so forth, has, typically, a more pristine link neighborhood, so it is not just about the PageRank, right? The link neighborhood comes into play.
Matt Cutts: That is a little bit of a “secret sauce” question, so I am not going to go into how much we do trust that sort of stuff.
Stephan Spencer: OK. I am going to slap my wrist now. Ouch, ouch!
Matt Cutts: [laughing]
Myth No 2.
You must always obtain “relevant” links in the same niche as your website otherwise the links don’t help in your SEO or you will get penalized by Google.
My thoughts
While it is ideal to get links belonging to the same niche as yours, it will not hurt you if they come from non relevant sites. But only if they are high quality sites with high page rank. Google realized that there is no way to control incoming links to your website. If this were true, many nasty sites who want to bring the top sites down and rank higher than them would simply start linking lots of bad sites with them.
Another news worthy incident to prove this theory is this. Remember the day news broke out about then President Clinton having an …er indiscretion with a young intern that goes by the name of Monica Lewinsky? Well hundreds of thousands of very interested readers and websites linked to ‘The Drudge Report’ from the site of the same name. Yes that’s natural linking at its best! I have to say no penalty was ever meted out by Google to this site. In fact it became well known after all the linking 
Myth No. 3
If you build too many links and too fast, you will be penalized by Google
My thoughts
I think for the average person building too many links and doing it too fast should not happen. You’ll need to have tens of thousands of similar links to raise a red flag to Google. That probably fit the profile of a spammer and that’s what Google will be going after.
Myth No.4
I cannot see my backlinks in Yahoo Site Explorer, or some other “Backlink Checker” tool, so they don’t count.
My Thoughts
It can take some time before your links show up in Yahoo Site Explorer and backlink checker tools, but most of us know that Google will NEVER show them all to you. My own experience I mentioned above shows no backlinks found in Yahoo or Google but my SERP has improved 17 positions due to my 5 days-link building work.
Share with us your linking experience
Do you have any wonderful (or bad) experience to share with us with regards to your link building efforts. How long did it take to see your backlinks showing up in Google or Yahoo?
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July 27, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Peter, I am not quite sure that I agree with your number 3 myth. It sounds like you have never tried to have one of your sites lose 10 or pages in ranking over night?
July 27, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I agree with many of these points. I am still a little wary of building links to fast though. What I am starting to believe is that consistency is the key in that area.
July 27, 2009 at 7:21 pm
@ Mikael @ Retire Rich: Sorry don't quite understand your point. Could you elaborate on your thoughts for #3.
July 27, 2009 at 11:20 pm
@Web Career Girl: Yes being consistent is good. Growing your backlinks naturally and consistently is recommended. It's when you show Google you have gotten huge amounts of backlinks all of a sudden that you sound the alarm bells to them.
July 27, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I agree, Peter. The average person would have a heck of a hard time building links fast enough to raise a red flag. Here's a question regarding comment links …. is it true that nofollow links don't count much?
July 28, 2009 at 1:35 am
Informative Post. Can you tell me – paid link building is good or bad? I want only quality backlinks but how can i do so.
July 28, 2009 at 6:05 am
First of all, congrats on the ranking! Btw, I'm not clear about your practice “I linked to inner pages of PR0 of high page rank sites of PR6-PR9.”? Do you mean that you're commenting in a blog post with PR0 and the blog has PR6-PR9?
Currently my link building practices will be commenting in blogs and writing guest post (Not often), Peter mind to share your experience on which link building strategies that you found very useful when it comes to improving search engine ranking?
Regards,
Lee
July 28, 2009 at 9:35 am
@ Make Money At Home:No Lee I'm not referring to blog comments. I'm referring to finding high PR sites like some social networking sites that are dofollow. Their main page say is PR7. I will create my profile and put my links using the anchor text I'm ranking. You see my profile page is PR0 and their home page is PT7 for example. This post of mine proves that you get very good backlinks under such situations.
If you go to my last post (comments):
http://www.peterleehc.com/blog/work-from-home/h…
a reader was kind enough to share with us by giving a PR7 site that we can get a free dofollow link. This time I put up a blog post with my links. You see, for some sites, not all pages are dofollow. So it takes time to first find high PR site and second which pages (like profile, about me etc) that allow you to put your links. But you have to check that these pages your links are put are dofollow. Otherwise you're wasting your time.:-)
July 28, 2009 at 9:47 am
@ Nick Mutt: Not sure exactly how you defined 'paid link building'. Buying links is totally out. You should never do that not matter how attractive the terms or if these links are purportedly high PR like PR9. I know Google is always on the hunt for such activities. The risk is too high so stay away from this. I was penalized too for putting up paid links on this blog because I had used TLA script and had a handful of people who advertised on this blog. I have sinced removed TLA scripts and all ads removed too.
But paying someone for link building services is another story. If the company is legitimate, this is OK. For example I know some good legitimate companies search for good sites with high PR and provides a service to do link building work. They are legitimate because they only provide a service and not selling links to you. When they finished the work, they provide you a report of all the linking work done on behalf of your site or blog and which pages of the sites they had linked to.
July 28, 2009 at 10:35 am
@ Top GBG Distributor: Thanks for the visit. Actually there's a lot mentioned on this post if you have missed it:
http://www.peterleehc.com/blog/work-from-home/n…
July 28, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Peter, I got what you mean right now. I personally added my link in my Google profile as what you taught in your last post. Anyway, are you going to share these sites with us?
If you don't mind, you can send me an email for the list as well. Btw, how do you check the site is either dofollow or nofollow? View page source and check the link?
Thanks for your explanation Peter!
Regards,
Lee
July 29, 2009 at 12:38 am
I think your 3 myth is right and your thought about that is also right. When we do so fast then Google start staring towards us.
July 29, 2009 at 9:31 am
@ Make Money At Home: You mean share with everyone the 50 high PR sites (PR6-9)? Sorry I can't do that. I am subscribing to Angela Edward's Backlink Builder and I'm not allowed to share, sell this list of websites to anyone and she means it and she takes this copyright infringement seriously and will take legal action against culprits blah blah. But you can join her services. Let me know if you are keen and I can provide her contact to you
July 29, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Thanks for sharing your knowledge…it is amazing how many misconceptions there are about link building.
July 29, 2009 at 6:23 pm
@Meaghan: Absolutely! Good to see you here again.
July 30, 2009 at 12:42 am
Oh I see, then can you please send me her contact to my email? kahoong_lee@hotmail.com. If it's affordable then I would like to give it a try too.
Thanks Peter!
Regards,
Lee
July 30, 2009 at 8:08 am
@ Make Money At Home: I've sent an email to you with the contact.
July 30, 2009 at 10:07 am
thanks but uh, i don't understand whats with the follow/nofollow links, can you tell me more? i mean more direct examples if ever, thanks peter.
August 1, 2009 at 11:22 am
I dont understand what you mean in Myth 1 above “My recent link building efforts over the last 5 days is one good example and I practiced this. I linked to inner pages of PR0 of high page rank sites of PR6-PR9.” Are you saying linking out to another site helps with a link strategy.
August 1, 2009 at 11:42 am
@goranwebsitedesign: Oops that's a typo it should be “I linked from inner pages of PR0 of high page rank sites of PR6-PR9…” sorry about the confusion and thanks for spotting the typo.
August 2, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Very good thoughts, I have learned some useful stuff here, and the most exciting thing is the discussions on comments!
August 3, 2009 at 8:18 am
gotta read this again, this something useful you know.
August 4, 2009 at 4:33 am
About the links from “related sites”. That is quite a tricky issue. What is related? Is the site related if you and the linking site use the same keywords? And what about the directories, for instance blog directories. When I choose Business/Financial and submit my blog ( with all the information needed ), does the link increase my PR at Google? And what about, if I have a Reverse Mortgage Loans Blog and I write blog comments on the work at home business blog about blogging? It sounds related, but does Google think so too?
August 4, 2009 at 8:25 am
Hi sir, I have got your mail. Thank you lots. Sir I have one request to you that please change my anchor text to “legitimate work at home jobs” in my blog http://internetjobscams.blogspot.com. thank you.
August 4, 2009 at 9:28 am
Nice myth-busting work Peter. I was always pretty skeptical about so much attention being given to relevent links. I'm sure they count nicely, but as you say, you cannot always help where a link comes from so it's smart of Google not to put too much importance on that factor.
I heard that Google was considering putting an “opt-out” system in it's webmaster tools whereby you could confirm whether or not you wanted certain links to be counted or not. What would you think of a system like that?
August 4, 2009 at 6:39 pm
@ moonheart009: Done!
August 5, 2009 at 3:03 am
I'm referring to finding high PR sites like some social networking sites that are do follow. Their main page say is PR7. I will create my profile and put my links using the anchor text I'm ranking. Thanks for the information.
Pro Home Income
August 8, 2009 at 8:04 am
Thank you for update my anchor text.
August 10, 2009 at 5:03 am
Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Greatfull tips on a subject that is very important to know to help getting a website ranked on the major search engine.
August 10, 2009 at 5:46 am
@ Email Marketing Software: You're very welcome!
August 26, 2009 at 6:50 am
Sounds like a useful technique. 24 – 7 is pretty impressive, is it a highly sought after niche?
August 26, 2009 at 7:00 am
Did the chap from google confirm this?
September 6, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Thanks for sharing your knowledge…it is amazing how many misconceptions there are about link building. Great full tips on a subject that is very important to know to help getting a website ranked on the major search engine.
[url=http://www.prohomeincome.com/?t=vanetech]Pro Home Income[/url]
April 10, 2010 at 1:03 am
It made sense google doesn't show all external links to your site even in webmastertool dashboard for your domain. Google is very human indeed, they know if a bunch of webmasters get together and start sharing information then these webmasters would be getting close to their ranking secret sauce.
I won't rule out the possibility links that give you the most juice wouldn't show up altogether. I've tried a few type of link building, which include inner page links from high PR site, blogs commenting and bookmarking.
My experience, blog commenting is most interactive and lively, inner page is boring and not too sure about its effectiveness and bookmarking don't work.
These are my own experience, I began to doubt my way of using bookmark is not right after reading Peter's sharing.
April 10, 2010 at 6:03 am
It made sense google doesn't show all external links to your site even in webmastertool dashboard for your domain. Google is very human indeed, they know if a bunch of webmasters get together and start sharing information then these webmasters would be getting close to their ranking secret sauce.
I won't rule out the possibility links that give you the most juice wouldn't show up altogether. I've tried a few type of link building, which include inner page links from high PR site, blogs commenting and bookmarking.
My experience, blog commenting is most interactive and lively, inner page is boring and not too sure about its effectiveness and bookmarking don't work (at least for me, I began to doubt my way of using bookmark is not right after reading Peter's sharing.).
On myth #3, strongly agree with Peter after all how many links can one build in a day manually, unless spammer who uses software to spam and that's thousand of links in a day.
November 4, 2010 at 6:37 am
#3 is definately wrong. You dont need thousands of links. Throwing a few hundred article links at a site overnight and doing nothing else has caused sites of a friends to be dropped from the rankings. The “trick” is to make it look natural, build the links gradually and consistently. Dont just do 200 links one day and none for another month.
June 23, 2011 at 9:54 pm
This is really good information which shared with us. I think this information will know every man doing SEO work. Link building and other SEO works like article submission, directory submission are the best way to generate more traffic.
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July 13, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Peter, you're awesome. Thanks for these myth busters. I'm a noob and full of question marks in my head, like the fact that none of my links are showing up on Alexa several weeks after placing them, and a really big issue to me: high pr vs low pr backlinks. The one obvious difficulty is that there are very few high pr sites that offer dofollow comments. But now that I know they are vastly more important, I'll spend the time to find them. thanks again