A while back and without much experience, and too much time to kill, after a little work I achieved top ranking for six of my websites for their main keyword phrases. You want to know what the surprise is? Back then it was easy, the main things were your meta tags and getting some links, it really was that simple. Mostly reciprocal links and all I had to do to get in the top three of my category was put my main keyword phrase in the link text. That was it, it was so simple!
It had to happen eventually, the secret got out and everyone else knew to put their best keywords in their links, and bam, page one SERP's. Then the reciprocal link boom took off like a rocket. Everyone was trying to get more links faster than their competition, so software was released to help meet the growing need of more links.
I needed another edge so I started buying links, mostly run of site links. I would have the same exact link on 500 or more pages. I would do this with one or two sites and presto I would be right back in the top three. It was great! Think about it, $100 every 30 days to get thousands of visitors every single day. Life was good, especially when you consider that a lot of my competitors were spending that much per day with AdWords for a fraction of the traffic I was getting.
And again the masses found out and the rush was on, site owners would look at their competitors back links and then buy enough run of site links to outdo them. It is inevitable that when that many people find out about something so powerful there's going to be abuse, which attracts attention, especially that of the search engines and when that happens the party is usually over In an effort to stay on top, I started researching top ranked sites for fairly competitive keywords like clothes, gifts and shoes. Services sprung up to help get more links faster with less work, automated link software was released etc etc. Now I am really excited because all I have to do is get one way links to my site's from relevant content pages. But how am I going to get lots of people to give me a one-way link from a relevant content page?
While brainstorming one day, I thought what if I created a linking triangle where A links to B & B links to C then C links to A, everyone in the triangle would get a one way link. Really, how bad could it be?
I had no idea what I was getting into!
What a joke.
First it took weeks to find two sites willing to participate, then they wanted to put the links on irrelevant and spammy links pages. Next big issue was webmasters that wanted two of their websites in the triangle, both of which had the same IP#, this was like putting putting up a flashing neon sign that read "Link Scheme". Then there was quite a few shady operators who were actively seeking triangle links who wanted a good link from you, but wanted to link back from a link farm. What a nightmare this was turning into, almost a month and not one decent link. Where did I go wrong? And how the heck did I end up on this path to nowhere?
I look back now and think about the time that I spent trying to deceive the search engines could have been spent producing some valuable and useful content that would have naturally attracted one way links. Took a while for the light to come on, but real content is a sure way to get quality one way links. Plus if you have quality content it makes soliciting for one way links much easier. I must admit though it takes a lot patience to create content and wait for others to link to it.
The next article will deal with ways of getting one way links that are search engine friendly.