Web 2.0 Backlinks
Web 2.0 backlinks used to be extremely popular in the past, somewhere until 2011. But in 2011, Google rolled an update called Panda, which made web 2.0 profile backlinks have a lot less worth.
But what are web 2.0 links? What are web 2.0 sites? Do web 2.0 links work? We’re answering all of these questions and more in today’s article, so do keep on reading. Before we move on, we’d like to note that these notions are completely general and destined for folks who really know nothing about web 2.0 (they are not intended for SEO experts who might have used these techniques before).
What are web 2.0 backlinks?
First of all, while web 2.0 backlinks are definitely worth considering as a part of your link building strategy, you shouldn’t solely rely on them. In fact, some of them have become no-follow these days.
In general, these links are those that you would naturally acquire from bloggers that are in your niche. For example, if you run a food blog and you have your own domain and start building links, it would be OK if you were to receive a link from a blog like majorfoodie.wordpress.com.
In fact, WordPress is a great example of what web 2.0 sites are. Blogger, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, and a lot of other sites are in the same sphere.
Blogging platforms (even sub-domains) are going to allow you to create your own web 2.0 network. But sometimes, you might find that getting links from actual, real blogs makes a lot more sense than having to put together your own network. Of course, nothing comes for free, so you will have to pay that blogger to add a link to an older post or write a brand new guest post.
What are web 2.0 sites? Here are a few examples:
- WordPress.com
- Blogger.com
- Tumblr.com
- Joomla.com
- Weebly.com
- Edublogs.org
- Wikipedia
- Social media websites such as Facebook or Twitter (keeping in mind that these links are going to be no-follow)
- Video sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, etc
- Content and podcast hosting websites
Do web 2.0 links work?
The answer to this question is a bit complicated. If you build too many web 2.0 backlinks and you ignore the other types that should be a part of your link building strategy, it’s not going to work.
One way of getting such links would be for you to create several sub-domains. For example, if you’re in the food niche that we were mentioning above, you could create several different blogs on WordPress with names that are more or less related to your main keywords.
On top of that, one thing to always keep in mind is that Google doesn’t solely rank websites based on the backlinks they acquire. Social signals as well as the type of content (and its value) also matter, and the way you satisfy your users’ intent.
So for example, if you run an affiliate website and your content is written poorly, you don’t get any comments, and your CTR is really low, no matter the amount of backlinks (and web 2.0 links included) you build, it’s not going to help you.
Picking up links from all sorts of places, especially those that are obscure and completely unrelated to your niche, is definitely not the right way of going about things.
So while you shouldn’t majorly rely on web 2.0 backlinks as part of your strategy, you should definitely consider them. It would take a long time for you to get them naturally.
Fortunately, Google knows that having a sound and completely healthy backlink profile is practically impossible. People become victims of negative SEO campaigns all the time, with their competitors purchasing toxic links for them from low DR and low traffic sites or from sites that are in bad niches such as gambling or adult.
So, as long as you have a low number of web 2.0 sites pointing to yours, you don’t have to worry about anything.
Benefits of web 2.0 links
There are several advantages to using web 2.0 backlinks and we’d like to discuss them in this section. On the one hand, if you create your own network, you have complete control over it, but at the same time, you also have to update every blog’s content every now and then — which as you might know, can be a headache.
These links are also considered among the most cost-effective ones out there, because you can basically create the blogs yourself. So you don’t necessarily have to pay someone to add the links… although it might be a better idea to find real blogs with an actual readership and get links there.
As much as people might consider them unhealthy, the truth is that web 2.0 backlinks don’t go against any of Google’s policies. They can look weird, if there are so many of them, but they’re completely safe, so they aren’t going to get you penalized (especially with 2,3-tier strategies).
Finally, another notable benefit of using them is that you can get a lot of them from a variety of authority websites. There are a lot of blogging platforms out there, so you aren’t restricted when it comes to getting backlinks from WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and others.
You might create just one blog on any of these platform and improve your rankings and backlink profile (so long as you acquire other backlinks at the same time).
Risks of getting web 2.0 backlinks
Are web 2.0 backlinks safe? So long as you don’t get heaps of them, you’re probably not putting your website at a risk. But recently, John Mueller, who is a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, has basically categorized those links as being spammy.
But in order for them to become spammy, you actually need to acquire a lot of them. So building one web 2.0 link per month (and if you use the two or even three tier method it would be better) is definitely not going to be a bad strategy.
However, do take into account the fact that the most valuable links that you can acquire are PR links, those from actual websites with a great DR and massive amounts of traffic and more importantly, those in your specific niche. It might cost you a lot of money to be able to build an extremely healthy backlink profile, but it will definitely be worth it as you aren’t going to get your website penalized.
Will your site be penalized if you only get web 2.0 backlinks and generally low-quality links? The answer to this question is simple – yes. But you run the same risk if you get PBN backlinks, too.
How to create web 2.0 backlinks with your own network
This process can be a tad complicated, especially if you want to purchase blogs that have expired already and that already have a backlink profile. For this purpose, you can use tools such as Scrapebox or Domain Hunter Gatherer.
There are a lot of checklists that you might come across online, but what seems to work best when building your own network is making sure that all of your blogs look as natural as possible.
This means that if you don’t purchase an expired domain, you’ll have to first create the blog and then write a minimum of 10 to 20 posts before linking to your money site. Every blog needs to be grown slowly so that it doesn’t seem forced or unnatural in any way possible.
Unique articles are also recommended, with the average word count on each being between 500 and 1000 (if you can make them longer, that would be even better).
It goes without saying that you should also target keywords so that your blog ranks naturally on at least several terms. This practice can make the blog look even more natural.
Another aspect that we have to note here is that the blog should have pages such as ‘About’ or ‘Contact’ or even a ‘Disclaimer’ page. Create a welcome post, populate the blog with relevant content such as actual articles, infographics (you can share them from their creators), YouTube videos, pictures, and everything else.
Don’t use the same type of content for all of your posts — if you’ve added a video to your recent post, add two pictures in the next one. Variation makes it more natural.
This is what a blogger would typically do, after all, right? It would also be a good idea to place a resource link in every one of your posts. What we’d like to note here is that you should avoid Wikipedia (this goes for PBNs, too) as it is one of the most frequently used resources in unhealthy sites, too. Try to look for relevant sources from high-authority websites, instead.
How web 2.0 links can be used to improve your rankings
When it comes to how your network is actually going to work in your favor, you can use web 2.0 links as a tier 1 (buffer sites) or as a tier 2. Tier 2 links still pass on some link juice, although many people don’t seem to think so.
A tier 1 blog would be the buffer site between your money-making website and another, such as one from your private blog network, for example. This one is highly recommended as you can’t really assess the health of a PBN link, especially if it is owned by someone other than yourself.
A tier 2 strategy would involve you building one or two blogs, for example, and then adding a link in one of your posts — but wait, the link isn’t directly aimed at your website. Instead, it is pointing to another website, one you’ve acquired a link from (like a guest post, a PR link, even a local citation site).
What to avoid
You should try to stick to the safe side things as much as possible, which is why you should avoid practices such as building a Wikipedia page for every blog you create or putting together social media accounts for each of them off the bat.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew. You need to make things look really natural. Also, do not track or log into all of your blogs with the same Google account, especially the one you use for tracking your money site’s analytics.
This makes it super easy for Google to tell if you’re using shady link building techniques. Also, don’t pay someone else to boost your web 2.0 links because it’s more likely to do more harm than good.
Should you get web 2.0 backlinks from Fiverr?
Lots of SEOs discredit Fiverr, and for a number of pretty good reasons. Not all sellers do what they promise, so they don’t deliver the actual order — or not in the form you’ve wanted it.
In fact, based on the info that we have found about this, it seems that many of the sellers promise that they will get you a number of links on high PA web 2.0 sites, but it can actually be lower than what you’d expect.
So ask every seller for a list of blogs they have access to and then manually check each one’s PA. If it is any lower than 30, you probably don’t need that link.
Also when it comes to Fiverr web 2.0 links, it goes without saying that a huge list from any seller might contain just 3 or 4 blogs that are relevant to your niche. So instead of getting 100 links from completely irrelevant blogs, just get those 3 or 4.
Final thoughts
Web 2.0 backlinks can be a nice addition to your backlink profile, but you shouldn’t solely rely on them. Try a mix of guest posts, PR links, (1-tier and 2-tier) PBN links, and a variety of others along with web 2.0 links.
And if you don’t know whether the person you’re buying the web 2.0 or web 3.0 backlinks from plays it safe, it is always better to avoid purchasing such links. The last thing you might want to do would be to hurt your money site.
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Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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