Does The Ping-Back Link Strategy Work?

Posted by Paul B | October 10, 2008 .

I’ve now had a good chance to test ping backs and see if they are a valid way of gaining links and visitors. The theory is to link to other posts from your post in the hope of getting links back and visitors.

My conclusion - It’s a crock of shit.

I’ve spent time adding “related links” section to both old and new blog posts. All in I created over 1700 outbound followed links to other blog posts in the hope of getting links back. Out of those I actually got links back from less than 5%! Of all those links I can count the number of visitors (in a month) on 2 hands. In reality all I’ve done is provided votes for a huge number of sites and in return got back a few no-followed links and a couple of visitors.

So why do so many experts push this as an awesome link building strategy? My theory is that because it’s so easy to do. It takes no time to knock up a bit of software that uses the blog search engines/directories to find blog posts by keyword that accept ping backs. Auto generate a bit of HTML to copy into your post and you’re done, Wordpress/Blogger takes care of the rest. Unfortunately most ping-backs have to be approved for a start. Have enough people think that what you’re doing is junk and you’ll find yourself in the Akismet auto spam category, trust me, I know!!! In the meantime you’re damaging your link profile by linking out to all and sundry. It’s very hard to damage your link profile by gaining “bad” links (because that’s out of your control), however it’s very easy to damage it by linking to bad sites. The ping-back method encourages this.

Overall this is a rubbish method for gaining links and traffic, don’t use it if you value your site. I’ve now got the fun job of going back through removing those links, oh joy.

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2 Comments so far

Taylor Thompson October 20, 2008 6:25 am

You’re doing it all wrong man. Link out with a NoFollow, and hope you get back a link with a DoFollow.
Taylor Thompson’s last blog post..Fan Page - Get your link on this page!
Paul B October 20, 2008 3:30 pm

That’s not the method though, it’s supposed to be about mutual benefit. Besides I got a tiny fraction by linking out thousands of followed links, by going NoFollow you’ll get a hell of a lot less and a lot more spam reports.

But good luck with it. Although I’d suggest writing some good content instead and getting real links.