Do the ends justify the means when it comes to building backlinks? In this episode, Mark explores the ethics of link building for SEO, walks through scenarios ranging from legitimate to clearly spammy, and shares Cliff Ravenscraft's response to a question about passion from the Dan Miller interview.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- Cliff Ravenscraft's direct response about passion and podcasting
- A framework for thinking about backlinking ethics across multiple scenarios
- The difference between business risk and moral risk in SEO
- Why value-driven content is the long-term answer to the backlink debate
- A tool tip for managing newsletter overload
Episode Summary
Mark celebrates reaching 60 episodes and introduces new show music from Music Radio Creative, along with a new Golden Age Project Pre73 MKII microphone preamp.
Cliff Ravenscraft's Response
In the previous episode with Dan Miller, Mark wondered aloud whether Cliff was passionate about podcasting itself or about what podcasting allowed him to do. Cliff heard the episode and offered his own answer: he is passionate about podcasting, but his deeper passion is entertaining, educating, encouraging, and inspiring people. Podcasting is the vehicle that unlocked those opportunities.
The Backlinking Ethics Question
Prompted by a detailed post from Glen at ViperChill showing that spammy backlinks still work, Mark examines the question from multiple angles. He identifies the stakeholders (Google, searchers, legitimate webmasters, profit-driven webmasters), walks through a continuum of link-building scenarios from completely organic to fully automated spam, and discusses both the business risk and moral dimensions.
His conclusion: create excellent content, promote it with an acceptable level of risk, and always aim to make the internet a better place. Spammy links on top of thin content harms consumers. Quality links supporting quality content serves everyone.
Tool Tip: Unroll.me
Mark shares how he went from 6,500 emails to inbox zero using Unroll.me to mass-manage newsletter subscriptions.
Key Takeaways
- The ethics of link building exist on a continuum, not as a binary
- Business risk and moral risk are separate considerations
- Spammy links can work short-term but create fragile businesses
- The safest strategy combines excellent content with ethical promotion
What's Changed Since This Episode
Mark recorded this in August 2013. Google has made significant progress in detecting and penalizing artificial link schemes since then. The Penguin algorithm became part of the core algorithm in 2016. Modern link building focuses on digital PR, expert content, and relationship-driven outreach rather than the forum spam and blog networks Mark described. The underlying ethical framework he outlined remains relevant.
Resources Mentioned
Listen and Subscribe
Listen to Late Night Internet Marketing on Apple Podcasts or subscribe at latenightim.com/internet-marketing-podcast/. Have a question for Mark? Call the digital recorder at 214-444-8655 or drop a comment below.
Great show Mark! Great music and love the new infusion of energy!! I agree with Cliff – I think Dan simply misunderstood the question and the follow-up was appreciated.
You or Cliff said “dare to imagine what you may do with your interests”.
I think this actually nails a lot of the backlinking issue. How so? We can both rattle off dozens, maybe hundreds of people making a nice income online by sharing their passion and expertise on a hobby, interest, knowledge or skill. Granted if it is too finite one can become burned out as Cliff eluded too so well. If so, maybe the person could/should simply scale up their topic.
IMO a niche can be too finite, which creates burn-out or an animal slap. Imagine if Cliff’s show were Podcastequipmentanswers.com. He’d be having a tougher time broadening his scope. I think this is true across many spectrums.
Conversely, those I find that have hundreds of micro sites seem to always be re-grouping, or making the bulk of their nice living selling tools, software, etc. Nothing wrong with that – but I call it the Follow the leader burn-out syndrome. At some point, people simply move on because when they try one of the recommendations (link wheels as an example), by the time they get it up and running on 5, 10, or 30 sites – they get a major slap.
Thanks again Mark!
Wow Mark! You outdid yourself on this podcast. The back linking ethics discussion was intense. It really made me consider a lot of angles to what is an important question. I found myself not only debating with myself about whether certain practices were ok or not, but I also learned about some additional methods that I could probably be using but haven’t.
I think that the hardest part of the link building discussion is for new businesses. Due to the way google is set up a new business would never be found if it played 100% by the rules. The way that you start a business, in my very newb opinion, is by developing a community that knows and trusts you and your product. That entails connecting with people on social media, forums, other websites through guest posts or comments. Rambling aside, a new business has to take part in gray and even sometimes black hat tactics in order for them to get their brand found.
While I like the music and think Mike and Isabella do good work, there’s a handful of podcasts that I listen to that are all starting to sound the same from a music/voiceover standpoint.
One thing I liked about your process was that you started talking over the music as you faded it out. Nice touch.
As far as morality and link building, I view it like this. Yes, putting some content out there for the sake of link building is probably not making the internet a better place. But these are mainly sites that are popping up in the top of search results anywhere so how many people are actually reading it.
However, if 100 people reviewed your main site along with the sites in the top of the search results and 90 agreed your content was the best, then you are making the internet a better place by doing what it takes to get that site to the top of the search results. It’s a big gray slippery slope.
MARK! Unroll.me might just save my sanity. Seriously thank you for sharing this tool, it is awesome!
I also thought the discussion on backlinking ethics was very unique and valuable, and you looked at it from a way and presented some arguments that I had never heard before. Thanks for your hard work as always.
Dan Franks
P.S. Love the new music!
Hi Mark. Your podcast brought me to work today on my run/commute. Great discussion. I really like how you walked through the various options along the continuum as you see it.
With regards to asking for reviews/link in return for something, is this not the same as publishers giving away copies of their book for a review? I just got a request this morning from someone looking to give out free copies of their ebook in exchange for an Amazon review.
Anyway, great episode. Loved your non-judgemental style.
I think the best advice is – make the web a better place. Or, in the words of Chris Burres and Charles Lewis of ‘SEO Podcast – Unkown Secrets of Internet Marketing’: “Don’t be a douche”!
http://www.e-webstyle.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO-Podcast.asp
By the way, the bit that gave me goose bumps was your very last comment. Don’t spend so much time doing internet marketing that you miss your kids growing up.
I really love the tool tip which your have given above regarding back linking ethics. It’s essential to have more back links for a website to earn money or even to have a good rank. Few Toronto seo company are trying to help the clients to get a good back links to their sites. Great post.
Regards,
<a href=”http://www.canadianseoagency.com/”>www.canadianseoagency.com</a>
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