Page 51 - The Dark Side of Back Link Building

THE DARK SIDE OF LINK BUILDING 51

Introduction To Blog Comment &

Forum Links

It’s my pleasure to introduce you to why rel=nofollow was created in 2005.

This tactic is so old and so spammy that Google created an entire tool to help
webmasters combat it seven years before the Penguin update.

That should tell you all you need to know.

Comment spam got so automated and problematic that Google cooperated with MSN
and Yahoo to create a way to fight it.

Now, most sites that contain user-generated content automatically apply a
rel=nofollow or rel=ugc tag to all outgoing links.

Since then, different kinds of user-generated content have popped up. Many people
still try to use sites such as Quora and Reddit for link building today. Google is pretty

wise to that. Not only are links from those sites nofollowed as a rule, but Google can
tell when websites are trying to boost their SEO using them.

It’s just not worth it. No matter what new form it takes or what new website it’s on,
putting links into user-generated content doesn’t work for SEO.

Should You Create Or Allow

User-Generated Content?

Yes!

There’s an argument to be made that providing a helpful answer on a blog or forum
can be helpful for reputation and building relationships.