What if a Human Reviewer Looked at your Backlinks?

Posted Tuesday, July 29th, 2008. Filed under Google.

So last night I gave my "Quiz" asking you to find the "unnatural" link. It was really a rhetorical question - the point is that you really couldn't see which link might have been influenced by a link builder. You just didn't know.

Even though many of us know tricks that can "beat" algorithms on links, we should really be taking the approach of asking "if a human looked at this, would they know?" Many links I've seen, and I've certainly been guilty of this in the past, can't pass a human review. The better you get, and the higher you rank, the higher your chances of having your links scrutinized by a human review.

Anything that looks like a short-cut to getting links is dead anyway, and shortcuts shouldn't be an option for a company thinking long term. The links you need you can't buy from any broker - you have to find them on your own: identify, analyze, make contact, influence, and move on.

I still believe you need the right link text linking to the right pages to rank for competitive phrases, and I don't believe linkbait alone can do that most of the time. If you agree, the biggest question you should ask yourself is: can your links survive tomorrow, or more specifically, can they pass a human review?

I'm not perfect, and there have been times I did what worked best for the moment, then had to re-look at some past moves and remove those that were no longer beneficial. But I'm always getting better at what I do.

Do you think about human reviews like I do, or do you think I'm too paranoid?