Are you inundated by ads for “backlink building packages”? You can’t surf the net anymore without relevant ads hitting you. If you are a blogger, or someone that’s trying to make money online – you’re going to see all kinds of things that seem like they are too good to be true (and they usually are).

In the past I hadn’t paid attention to most of these ads or web sites, but lately I’ve been asked by a few clients whether or not “this” or “that” was a good deal. Every now and then I see something cool – but usually it’s the same old thing.

I’m not going to give you the URL, but I want to show you this web site I saw yesterday. They seem to be spamming a lot of sites with a big graphic through adsense saying you can “Get 1,000 Backlinks for only $9.99”. Once again, sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Take a look at this picture from a web site selling only one service: backlink building

backlink building packages

Now first of all, wouldn’t you be a little suspect of a web site offering no other service but backlinks? I would, especially if it didn’t have any personal or business name, country, or address on it at all. So, I’m already suspicious, and then I see the content on the homepage in the image above. See how these are all “profile backlinks”? See in the green text where it says “permanent forum profile links”?

What they’re doing is taking automated software and creating 1,000 accounts for you in web site forums all over the world. You get 1,000 for $9.99 because they aren’t doing anything more than entering your profile name, web site URL, and maybe a keyword or two – and clicking “submit” to spam forums with new accounts.

Now the green text says “Permanent forum profile links”. What they don’t tell you is, nearly all modern forums have tools to remove unused accounts. Most profile owners are used to spammers creating profiles just for links – and the regularly deleted unused accounts.

Now, they have a package where you can get 10,000 backlinks for 49.99. Check out what it says on their FAQ page:

backlink building

Your site will NOT be penalized for getting so many links? What!? Are they insane?

I’ve been working online for 15 years now, and I think I’ve had about every single penalty google has to offer at one time or another. You most likely WILL get penalized, and I’ll tell you why.

RELEVANCY

Of all the STUPID things that you could do with a web site, getting 1,000 or more non-relevant links to your web site is probably the worst. Google is pretty smart – and the biggest tell tale sign that you’re trying to “game the system” is getting a bunch of unnatural links QUICKLY. Not only do I know this for a fact, I saw it in action this very year.

Back in Jan / Feb 2010 I had an intern building links for a brand new web site and he just went nuts. He did some awesome work, building links by blog commenting, on forums, many high pagerank places, social media – the majority were just average links. He built many looking for dofollow blogs with top commenter blocks in the sidebar, places where if you comment enough you get a sidebar link sitewide.

This paid off in spades, because within a month he had 5,000 backlinks built to the site. In two months that increased to 12,000 backlinks, and after about 3 months it went all the way to 26,000 backlinks+. Sounds awesome doesn’t it? Guess what, the site was never sandboxed, but during the ENTIRE 3 months of backlink building the site average about 10-20 pageviews per day. The backlinks were USELESS, because they were built too quickly, and because nearly all of them weren’t relevant to the web site. They weren’t permanent either, and dropped down to only 426 as of today – only 4-5 months later. To this day google only shows “3” backlinks.

Check this out from further down the homepage of that same backlink building web site:

relevant backlink building

They want 25 bucks to build 5 permanent relevant links. Wait a minute – you could get 1,000 permanent forum links for $9.95 – what gives? Well, first of all – that was automated, and people have to manually get these links. Also, as I just pointed out – RELEVANT backlinks are worth about 5,000% MORE than useless ones. I mean, my gosh – they want $2,499 for 500 permanent relevant links.

My advice to you is, learn how to build backlinks slowly and methodically. Build 20-25 per week, and take your time. If you’re not sure how to do this, you could always hire or consult with someone who does: JTPratt Media