29 Bad Practices to Build Links You Should Avoid

Here are a few link building methods that may destroy your brand or get your site banned/penalized/filtered from major search engines, or both. Bad link practices keep your ideal customer from finding your site, and hurt your trust flow and SEO. Read the practices below and make sure that you're avoiding all of these link-building tactics.

Forum Spam

1. List 100 Web sites in your signature file.
2. Exclusively post only when you can add links to your sites in the post area.
3. Post nothing but "me too" posts to build your post count. Use in combination with a link-rich signature file.
4. Ask questions about who provides the best [WIDGET], where [WIDGET] is an item that you sell. From the same IP address create another forum account and answer your own question raving about how great your own site is.
5. As a new member to various forums, ask the same question at 20 different forums on the same day. 
6. Post on forum threads that are years outdated exclusively to link to your semi-related website.
7. Sign up for profiles on forums you never intend on commenting on.

Blog Spam

1. Instead of signing blog comments with your real name, sign them with spammy keywords
2. Start marketing your own site hard on your first blog comment. Add no value to the comment section. Mention nothing other than you recently posted on the same subject at _____ and everyone should read it. Carpet bomb dozens of blogs with this message.
3. Say nothing unique or relevant to the post at hand. Make them assume an automated bot hit their comments.
4. Better yet, use automated bots to hit their comments. List at least 30 links in each post. Try to see if you can hit any servers hard enough to make them crash.
5. Send pings to everyone talking about a subject. In your aggregation post, state nothing of interest. Only state that other people are talking about the topic.
6. Don't even link to any of the sites you are pinging. Send them pings from posts that do not even reference them.

Garbage Link Exchanges

1. Send out link exchange requests mentioning PageRank.
2. Send link exchange emails which look like an automated bot sent them (little or no customization, no personal names, etc.).
3. Send link exchange requests to Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer, Tim Converse, Google, and Yahoo!.
4. Get links from nearly-hidden sections of websites listing hundreds or thousands of off topic sites.

Spam People in Person

1. Go to webmaster conferences and rave about how rich you are, and how your affiliates make millions doing nothing.
2. Instead of asking people what their name is, ask what their URL is. As soon as you get their URL ask if they have linked to your site yet and if not, why not.

Be Persistant

1. Send a webmaster an alert to every post you make on your website.
2. Send a webmaster an email every single day asking for them to link to your website.
3. Send references to your site to the same webmaster from dozens of different email accounts (you sly dog).
4. If the above do not work to get you a free link, offer them $1 for their time. Increase your offer by a dollar each day until they give in.

Getting Links by Being a Jerk

1. Emulate the RIAA. When in doubt, file a lawsuit against a 12-year-old girl. (Failing that, obtain bad press by any means necessary.)
2. Steal content published by well known names. Strip out any attribution. Aggregate many popular channels and just wait for them to start talking about you.
3. Send thousands of fake referrals at every top ranking Web site, guaranteeing fame or millions of dollars in free, unclaimed money.
4. Wear your URL on your t-shirt. Walk or drive your car while talking on a cell phone or reading a book. When you run into other people say "excuse you, jerk".
5. Spill coffee on people or find creative ways to insult people to coax them into linking at your site
6. Sue other webmasters for deep linking to your site. Well, this is more "hilariously dumb" than it is a "bad linking practice".

List borrowed from Aaron Wall and Andy Hagans of SEObook.