Links and our obsession with it!

I have been thinking about this for quite some time now. It is amazing how people will go to any extent to get their website urls published wherever they can. The comments policy in my blog is quite open, It is easy for anyone to leave a comment behind. I need to approve it before it gets published, though. In spite of the spam that I receive (I had expected that), I also receive some genuine feedback as well, so I have continued to maintain the same policy so that users find it easy to comment.

Many of these comments of course are through software; I have instances where I have received the same spam comment for each and every post. There seems no manual intervention of any sort. These are random, and are so completely irrelevant.

For most webmasters, getting incoming links from good quality sites are very important. It certainly helps in your effort to reach the top (pun intended!)

But, what happens when this strategy becomes obsessive?
It starts losing its importance.Instead of adding value, it takes away any value added.

The fact that there is life beyond links has been forgotten. The focus for some webmasters is to get links by whatever means possible. Posting irrelevant comments in the comments section of a website, and expecting to get a link benefit because of that; is certainly not a strategy that is recommended.

Among some good feedback, my posts also get some comments that are not relevant and are full of urls. These comments are posted so that if the comment gets published, the urls will get published too, and some link benefits will come out of that.

Will there be any link benefits even if such comments get published?

Does this kind of strategy do anything good for a website’s ranking?

On the contrary, it works against it. The moment we start spamming website with urls and irrelevant comments, such comments land up in the spam folders and the urls get blacklisted. There are no short cuts to building links. Links are valuable and a lot of hard work goes into making a success out of linking strategies. The webmasters who employ such tactics need to understand that by blindly posting the URLs everywhere, they are doing more harm than good.

Mentioned-below are some articles that might help in the link building strategy.

Linking for Users
Do links help or hamper?

I have found especially where links are concerned, slow and steady wins the race. By combining SEO best practices with hard work, commitment, and an effective linking strategy, you will most likely succeed. The key here is not to get lots and lots of urls posted across the internet; the key is in getting relevant traffic to your website from those links.

Relevance being the most critical factor.