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The Importance of Identifying and Avoiding Link Schemes

By Tinuiti Team

Have you ever been tempted or fallen prey to link schemes? If so, you need to understand why it’s best to avoid them. Link schemes are known as spammy link-building practices that complicate the Google ranking experience. There are several ways this can take place. Links can be bought or sold to pass PageRank. This practice includes exchanging money for links, or exchanging articles that contain links.

Links can be exchanged for goods and services. One can even send someone a free product in exchange for writing about it and featuring a product link within the article. Google considers these activities to be a means for deceiving search engine algorithms. Their purpose is to get poor-quality content to rank high, which is based on the large amount of backlinks.

Why Link Schemes are Bad SEO Practices

Link schemes ultimately result in a loss of search engine rankings. The high quantity of backlinks that lower-quality content possesses don’t promote a beneficial user experience. They make it harder for users to locate top-notch, relevant content that helps them answer questions and solve problems. Also, they put users at risk of acting on misleading information. Any proficient SEO agency knows those things are completely unacceptable. They all deviate from the core purpose of SEO practices.

The core purpose is to give users the online information and resources that enhance the quality of their lives. It’s about putting their needs above the pursuit of money. Furthermore, these schemes don’t encourage fair competition between businesses. Smaller businesses have a harder time ranking higher against bigger businesses with larger ecommerce marketing strategies and budgets.

How Google Penalizes These Activities

Two kinds of penalties can affect your website if you practice spammy link building. The first is an algorithmic penalty. This can occur when your website loses rankings due to an algorithm update through Google Penguin. Google Penguin launched in April 2012 to help detect black hat SEO tactics and encourage website owners to get rid of poor backlinks. There is no promise that removing spammy backlinks will restore rankings.

The second is a manual penalty. It can lead to the removal of your entire website from Google’s index. Working to remove a manual penalty is more demanding and can take weeks or months. In conclusion, they both can negatively impact your lead generation.


Avoid link schemes by constructing engaging and beneficial content for consumers.

How to Gain Natural Inbound Links

The key to avoiding bad backlinking is by building awesome content that helps readers. This content should be compelling, shareable, and easily linkable. You’ll need to research the latest trends of your target audience on a regular basis. Thorough examination of their likes, dislikes, challenges, concerns, and goals will help you craft content they can relate to.

Make sure it is comprehensive, well-organized and inclusive of compatible, widely searched keywords. Try to avoid keyword-stuffing. Go further by engaging in social media advertising and sharing to create natural inbound links. When conducting promotion outreach, don’t request anchor text or offer incentives. Follow all these tips, and you’re on your way to ranking high in Google search results, no matter if it’s for retail fashion, new technologies or anything else.

Adhering to good SEO practices doesn’t have to be a hard task. But if it becomes too much to do on your own, turn to a trusted search engine marketing agency. Elite SEM is committed to excellent growth related marketing. To learn of more interesting digital topics, read How Feed Quality Affects Google Shopping.

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