After reading so many horror stories I decided to write this article to better inform the new blogging community about a problem that usually ends with a new bloggers site getting banned from google due to spam. When you first start out blogging what is the first thing you do? most research on google about how to blog, build traffic to their new blog, adsense and backlinks and so on. There is a deep rooted issue here and to me it seems very funny most established bloggers don't touch this subject like it is a conspiracy or something and it relates to not building backlinks yourself.
When you do a google search about getting traffic to a blog the top two suggestions are, write quality content and get backlinks by which ever means possible. Now the first is true and is a golden rule but the second blows my mind away. You may not understand this at first so please read on.
You may be shocked to learn the biggest reasons for a blog getting a slap from google are, duplicate content and spam. So whats the deal right, getting backlinks isn't spam, are you sure? You see you have to look at this from a new bloggers perspective, When they or you research how to build a great blog and get traffic to it and you/or they read something like this below
Get backlinks by posting in forums, submitting to article directories, comment on other blogs, buy links, get 10 to 100 backlinks a day and never stop getting backlinks
They or you could be committing blog suicide. How? well lets focus on how a new blogger interprets this. They only really have one interpretation and it is to follow that advice word for word without deviating. So they go on their way buying links making comments on fellow blogs, forums and so on, on a daily basis until they awake one day to find google hates them now and wiped their site from it's search engine. Then reality sets in, something went wrong it must have, because they followed the advice from professional bloggers. They wrote that good quality content, they got those backlinks, they did the work you are suppose to do for a blog to make it on the big G and yet their blog was penalized or even worse removed but why, how, whats going on here?
The next few steps are made almost exactly the same for every person. They search on google for the problem, sometimes for hours and days or even months to the best of their ability only not to find an answer to their exact problem. Then almost like clockwork they head to googles help forum, which in my opinion is a bloggers nightmare. First let me rant on about googles so called help forum. It just doesn't work, the users on their promote their own websites when people go looking for help just to make themselves money"disgusting" also a blogger will get slammed up the you know what when they post a topic asking for help by the community and usually will never get the help they seek. When that fails they head to forums for help, which is much better but still real sensible advice is hard to come by and is almost like hitting the lotto to find a person that went through the same problem and found the answer that the new blogger is looking for.
Then this is the crucial turning point for what determines if a person will ever make a living in blogging. They keep searching and learning and building new blogs or back to the 9 - 5 job. Now if you are smart or they are smart enough to realize the first option is best then your in the right direction. Over time one learns the back linking that was done got them banned. All it takes is a few to report your blog for spamming or eventually google to pick up 10,000 backlinks to a new blog on a bunch of low PR blogs or websites to realize you have been up to no good. Also google keeps track of link farms and sites that offer link buying and eventually will catch it.
So what the hell right, you only did what other bloggers said to do and besides how is getting backlinks spamming? ah ha but it is the fashion in which these backlinks are collected. Look if it was that easy to just make a blog and get 1 million backlinks, I think every one would do it, but it is much more then that. Do some research and you will see many top bloggers caution about building backlinks in an unnatural way, because they know what can happen. For the most part any person can slap a blog post up telling you to get back links when they do not even do it themselves or they are new as well and just want traffic from people like you searching how to get traffic. You may be starting to understand now at lest I hope you are. For the life of me I can't comprehend the lack of bloggers willingness to get down to business and explain how dangerous building back links to fast can hurt a blog. Sometimes google is slow to pick up and a person can start to make a living from getting backlinks at a fast furious pace, improving their page rank because of all those back links and getting tons of traffic. Then after a year google finally catches on or they make a algo change and bam bye bye blog.
Here is how you should get backlinks
Whether you take this advice or not, whether you built 10,000 backlinks in a month, it simply is risky and no one can deny it, that has any experience as a true blogger. So this is my system for getting proper backlinks.
Back links from forums - Yes you can use a forum to get back links and even have the back link in your orum signature but do not put your link in your forum signature in every post if you have the option not to. Also when posting links in a forum keep it to under 5 per month besides the forum signature.
Commenting on other blogs - Look unless the said blog you want to comment on has a high page rank it self, do not put a link on it. First if you put links on a low PR blog like this one is right now it actually can hurt your blog rather then boost it. Second is how much traffic will come from these blogs? not much while they have a low PR. I once had the same person try three times to post their link on another blog I have and every time I deleted their spam comment they tried again, Do not be like that person, those are the people that get reported to google for spamming. If you feel you must do this, keep it to under 1 a month.
Buying links - Never do this or ever join a link farm
Using hubpages or squidoo - Yes do this, but only make a few with a link, not 1,000 because they will ban you, you won't even have to worry about what google will do.
Blog directories - Yes you can use them, but avoid the directories which ask for a reciprocal link, You will never see this on a professional bloggers website. It looks like crap having 100 little links all over your site to blog directories. Submit to a few and that's it.
This is the reality you must understand, you are not going to make it rich in a few months! it will take time even a year or a few years for your blog to even make a few thousand dollars per month but over time it could and much more if you just get the get rich scheme out of your head. Be natural the best back links are natural ones. Let people link to your blog on their own, this takes a long time but you will never be in trouble with google this way and people search your site will respect you more because they wont see your link slapped everywhere on the net. So how can you get traffic then or increase your PR. This has nothing to do with traffic because I assure you all it takes is one good article submitted to social sites like
Reddit to get 10,000 visits in a single day, NO JOKE. A blog works like this, one person tells another, those two tell two more and so on. Also if you have good content over time google will boost your rankings with age anyways, then you get more visitors from google and more people link. I hope I explained this well enough to help you on your way because I truly do not want to see you somewhere in googles help forum crying that your blog was removed. I care because I had to learn the hard way.