Modern Day Black Hat SEO

My Link Building Recommendations

By Charles Floate
So now that we’ve gotten through all the theory and Google bashing, it’s time to get into what I
actually recommend to do with your link building into 2017 & beyond.

Build HQ Pillow Links (In Small Amounts)

I highly recommend to still build pillow links… However only build them from high quality sources
and in small amounts.

A prime example of a high-quality pillow link is Yahoo Answers, not only does it offer a niche
relevant NoFollow link on a high-quality domain… but it (with proper setup) can also send a ton of
highly related traffic to your site. Essentially, you’re killing 2 birds with one stone by building these
types of links.

At the same time, don’t go overboard with your pillow linking… If you’re a local business owner, you
really aren’t going to have the time to build 50 or 100 citation links, so why (as SEOs) are we doing
that? It just looks like plain over optimization in Google’s eyes.

Try building 5 citations from the citation sites that are actually ranking in your SERPs, it’ll have way
more effect than those 50 or 100 packages.

Use White Hat Anchors For Tier 1

Let your OnPage optimization rank you for the actual keywords, you don’t need to over-optimize
your tier 1 links as future updates could take you out.

As an example of anchor texts that I use:

If your keyword is “Best Wireless Router 2017” then make your anchors:

• PCMag’s guide on The Best Wireless Routers

• Best Wireless Routers in 2017 Reviewed

• This guide on the top wireless routers in 2017

We’ve done a lot of testing, and it seems that long anchor texts tend to not trigger any anti-spam
algo’s, so even dodgier links can get passed due to looking like a white hat anchor text.

Don’t Use These Link Types

It’s a pretty blanket statement for sure, but from our own testing 95% of the time these link types
just don’t work and really don’t push the needle. Most are out-dated techniques that were used
years ago.

• Press Releases – Who wants mass distributed, duplicated content on a ton of poorly built
domains? Yes, 1 press release on Yahoo Finance (if your site is related to that niche) can be
an effective link… but building 150 press releases on shitty sites isn’t going to do much for
you.
 • Social Bookmarks – Who actually uses these anymore when you can just favorite a page? It’s
very unnatural, and outdated.
• Forum Profiles – We aren’t using XRumer anymore guys...
• Syndication – Again, duplicated content across a ton of randomly built domains and 2.0s that
haven’t gotten any links pointing to them. The only time I see fit to use this type of link
building (with a tool like IFTTT) is if you’re trying to index pages, generally mass page creator
style sites.
• Sitewide Links – From our testing, Google only counts the first page indexed of a sitewide
link, and if that page happens to be a contact page or an about page, it’s likely not going to
pass any juice at all… So it just ends up being a waste of money. As well as the fact that it can
fuck with your reported anchor text ratios and various other things.

Metrics Are Bullshit

Again, a pretty blanket statement but it still astounds me that to this day people rely so heavily on
metrics, whilst barely checking the links themselves and if the site they’re trying to get a link on has
any traffic or not.

• PR, DR, DA, TF – It Doesn’t Matter

• Traffic & Link Profiles – They Matter!