Free Backlink Generators: Are They Good for SEO?
Are Free Backlink Creators Good or Bad for SEO?
If you are working on building your company’s digital profile, you already know that search engine optimization is going to be a major factor in your goals. You will want to rank highly for keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business. If you know how to do the research, you can even figure out which keywords to concentrate on. You can start working on optimizing those words on your own, also. This DIY approach to SEO is used by a number of small businesses and startups. It only has one problem: it is very labor intensive. This leads to a lot of entrepreneurs looking for labor-saving alternatives, including automatic SEO applications like the various backlink generator programs out there.
What Are Backlink Creators?
As mentioned above, they are programs that automate your SEO. They do it by creating spammy comments that include links back to your domain in them, particularly. These comments are not usually relevant to your content, and they pop up randomly on the web on sites that are also non-topical for you. These traits are the issue that makes them controversial because backlinks that are irrelevant or otherwise judged as poor quality can actually hurt your rankings. Even when they don’t hurt your rankings, they do count for far less than “good” backlinks do. In this scenario, you have to disallow a lot of those backlinks before you start getting results. This can add unnecessary effort and investment into your SEO strategy.
What About “Free” Backlinks?
The major reason that so many people who are new to SEO have for using these tools is their cost. They provide the user with the opportunity to get backlinks for “free.” Obviously, this is more appealing than paying for them by hiring an SEO company to take charge of your digital marketing. The fact is, if you want “free” backlinks, you can still create them yourself. They won’t be as fast as using a program. They won’t be as fast as hiring an SEO agency either, but they will at least get you started. All it takes is learning how to tell “good” backlinks from “bad” ones, and then creating them yourself. Many DIY guides recommend about 10 per week while you are starting up.
How to Create “Good” Backlinks
The fastest and often most cost-effective way to get good backlinks is to hire an SEO firm like Momentum to provide you with search engine optimization services. Sometimes, though, that investment is not feasible yet for startups. Sometimes, companies like to start on their website and SEO work before they talk to outside consultants. Either way, building backlinks that will increase traffic on your page for a long time involves a few simple criteria:
- Creating links that fit naturally into the language on a page or comment
- Making sure they are hosted on sites that are relevant to your keywords and your audience
- Placing them where they are actually used by people looking to navigate to your site
If you follow these criteria, then the links you create should receive traffic through them, which is a sign of a good link. They should also fit naturally into keyword analysis and readability when the pages are crawled by Google’s Panda and Penguin bots, so they shouldn’t be penalized on those fronts either.
What Happens if You Have “Bad” Backlinks
Search engine crawlers are slow, and it takes time before they fully recrawl your site. This can create negative consequences for users who take advantage of backlink generator programs and other “black hat” SEO tactics. That’s why it is important to keep an eye on all of your domain’s backlinks. If you have too many bad links, the bots that crawl the site for readability and quality of material will wind up penalizing you, which will cost you rankings and stall future attempts at growth.
To prevent this from happening, the best thing you can do is to get rid of any bad backlinks you have and to keep an eye out for them in the future. There are three ways to resolve these links that most website owners use:
- Contact site owners asking them to remove the bad links
- Change names of documents on your site to 404 the links
- “Disavow” the links through Google
Automating Your SEO for ROI
If you want to get a solid return on your investment, it’s important to remember that SEO is labor intensive. You might be able to give your company a better start if you begin your SEO strategy while you are developing your website. Eventually managing the research, analysis, planning, and execution of your digital marketing efforts will become very time and energy consuming. At that point, you will want to look for an SEO agency. Momentum will help you create a digital marketing plan with a long-term growth focus that will help you build backlinks and increase traffic. Contact us today to get started.
