Getting links takes work. The best way to get them is to earn them. Put up content that people want to link to then ask for the links. If you just ask for links to your front page your rejection rate is going to be high. If you create something designed to create links you will get more. Find a website that is missing something and create it and then ask them to link to it. It is more work but it you will get better links that way. You can even talk to websites and ask them if they need some content and make it for them.

"Put up content that people want to link to...." Now, how would I inform them that I have put up some useful content? The sites I am talking about are raw new and has no ranking / visibility as yet.

Akash,

If you built 50 or 100 "quality" sites, you would be in a position to give quality links. You'd run the risk of Google's views on purchased links, but at least you'd be able to sell or donate links.

Now for the tough part.

• What is your definition of a quality site?
  
• What is Google's definition of a quality site?
  
• Would the client recognise a quality link if it hit him in the face?
  
• Assuming you have the world-authority quality site about squid fishing, is your PR8 home page link to a client's cosmetic surgery site a quality link?
  
• How can you pick 100 topics for your 100 sites and hope that you will get clients who need links for such topics?
  
• What do you do when a client needs 100 quality links for one site, i.e. where do you find 100 sites from the same niche?
  

The reality:

• Many people get a free copy of some directory script and get the home page to show some PR - it is rarely more than PR3.
  
• The inner pages of such directories are usually greybar.
  
• They promote this as a "PR3 directory"
  
• If the client needs a link for topic x, they create that category and give a link. Such a link is almost worthless.
  
• Regardless, both seller and buyer feel good about this. :)
  

If a client wants 100 quality links, you'd be better off writing a few "quality" articles (not sourced from Wikipedia) for his website and then promoting that site (this can mean phone calls and customised emails) so that natural links will come forth. Not easy, but the solution is to attract unsolicited links.

Directory links are easy to get and provide anchor text value and can get you some basic PR. Directory links are the fist thing you should go after since it is so easy and so fast and can give you some long tail terms very fast. Also it is good to get started at the beginning because it can take some time for the links to get added to some directories and even longer for google to crawl the websites.

Also there is nothing wrong with submitting to a bunch of directories in one day. People think that google somehow knows about this. They don't. It takes them a long time before they can spider every directory on the net. Plus the fact that some directories take a while to get you entered. A proper directory will look at your website before it allows you in and some directories are ran by a single person and it takes them a while to get to it.

What do think about Reciprocal links? I just dumped about 200 today. Reciprocal links have a - factor don’t they? And as for quality if they don’t apply to your key words I think they will lower your PageRank.

Hi Web_Design, welcome to WebmasterWorld

And as for quality if they don’t apply to your key words I think they will lower your PageRank.

Not true.

Spammy links might get devalued, but your PAGERANK cannot go down through inbound links. PR, in its purest form, is devived from a simple(ish) formula. Its just that PR is but one of many factors that affects your RANK.

Your rank is also unlikely to go down due to inbound links. If you could break a site based on links, the more savvy SEOs would have destroyed their competition years ago.

Google has said you can break a site based on links. They implied that it was hard to do, but they've admitted it can be done.

You can get a penalty from just inbound links if you get too many. If you are doing something in bulk there is no way to hide that. I have had it done to me and seen it happen to competitors that were doing the same thing my client was doing.

Do not design a wordpress theme with your link at the bottom to a website that is not a web development company. Nor do counters. Google can penalize you. It is not guaranteed but it is a risk.

If you do anything to improve your rank in bulk there is a chance google will penalize you.

Ok, in the extreme, you could possibly break a site. But not in the casual "I got a poor link, whoops" type of way.

Anyone actually know someone who's had their site taken down by poor inlinks? Possibly some corporates might try it, but I've never seen a thread here about it. Seems like a lot of effort to me.

The problem with trying to hurt somebody with incoming links is there is a better chance you are going to help them. That is why Google feels very safe putting a penalty on a site with a lot of spammy links. If you have 10k incoming links from for a dental website from a word press theme that had a very specific anchor text on the bottom of each page of a lot of blogs they know you did it. Nobody would do that to a competitor because it can help you rank quite a bit and Google does not always penalize sites for that. As a matter of fact I saw a bunch of sites get a penalty for doing this for 4 months and then it just went away. They still have the links and get a benefit from it.

Sites can be penalised with IBL's if they are part of a network or purchased links. I've seen this on 2 occassions with Google.

Once the IBL's were removed , the sites regained ranking. More obvious practices probably were picked up by the algorithmn , more subtle cases probably got picked up by an editor.

Good links are hard work and like gold. Using large scale techniques puts your site at big risk.

You can get a penalty from just inbound links if you get too many.

Ok, that's good. Now I'm going to create 10,000 spammy links pointing to McDonalds and they will be dropped from the results. Is that's what you're trying to suggest?

Don't forget that high authority sites do not play by the same rules as we do. Also if you got 10k to McD it would not look spammy since they have 606k in yahoo backlinks.

If you notice what I said before google is not consistent and there is a better chance you would help them than hurt them.

The whole point is don't do that to a site that you want to rank for the long term because there is a real allbeit small chance you could get a penalty. Too many of us have seen it happen to ignore it.

The rule that says "you can't be hurt by incoming links" is not true. It is hard to get hurt by incoming links but it can happen.