Backlink Spreading Explained
Google and other search engines used backlinks as the primary way of determining how to rank sites. The more links, better targeted they are and higher authority they carry, the better the site will rank. However, things aren’t always that simple, and there are quite a few aspects that affect how good any particular backlink is.
Google has been refining its ranking algorithm for many years and nowadays it is not just a case of building a ton of backlinks to your pages as quickly as possible. In other articles I’ll discuss the important link building factors but for now, I’m looking at the linking pattern of a page and a technique known as link-spreading, or drip-feeding.
Google has a spider that is constantly running and crawling websites looking for new backlinks. It looks at each individual link but it is also monitoring the frequency and source of those links to establish any patterns. Google prefers links that it deems are natural. What is a natural link? As an example, you may have a site about cats and write a post about how to groom your Persian cat in the winter. You might start getting backlinks from bloggers in the cat niche, people might be stumbling your page, bookmarking it at a social site or tweeting it to their followers. These are ‘natural’ links.
The reason we call these natural is because they’re created over time, in a fairly random pattern and come from different people and places. These are the links of links that Google likes but it’s not so keen on ‘unnatural’ links and does not rank them quite as highly. For example, one technique I mentioned was social bookmarking which is one of the IMAutomator tools. Individuals tend to use just a single bookmarking site but there are tons to choose from and as a promotional technique you can submit your own links to any number of these. 50 backlinks is better than 1! This is when automated tools such as IMAutomator are very useful.
However, it is not necessarily a good idea to submit all of those 50 links at once as this is what Google might determine to be an unnatural linking pattern. To circumvent this issue, we spread those links out over a period of time in a random fashion. This technique is called backlink spreading or backlink drip feeding and is what IMAutomator does.
Are there any negatives to this technique
There are always at least two sides to any story! Another benefit of posting backlinks to sites such as social bookmarking sites is that it is a great way to help your article get indexed in the search engines and this is particularly useful if you’re posting links to a brand new site. If you spread the links out over a long time, it may take a while for the page / site to get indexed.
Another possible downside is that you could potentially lose out on the benefit of a hot new trend. This depends very much on the subject of your article. The cat example I used earlier is something that is timeless – there will always be Persian cats that need grooming so this is an article that can sustain the test of time. However if you are writing about something new, such as an event that has just occurred in the news, then you might want more immediate attention. If there is a flurry of links coming into sites on a specific new topic, Google can see this as a hot trend and push the relevant article further up in the rankings for a while.
So, how many backlinks should be built at a time? This is a question that does not have a concrete answer so IMAutomator gives you the flexibility to control the link frequency. If you want to submit your backlinks fast you can opt to have your submission completed in a single day, or you can spread them out more if you prefer. IMAutomator puts you in control.
The social bookmarking tool in the IMAutomator suite allows you to choose a time period to spread your submission over. That bookmark is then submitted to all of the target sites in the IMAutomator system randomly over that time period. These sites change around a little bit but the database is always updated with new sites.
IMAutomator is a free tool that automates the task of link building to your website. It contains a social bookmarking tool which submits your bookmarks to several sites in a completely automated way. Create your free IMAutomator account now!
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