If you lived in a perfect SEO world (or simply just 6-7 years ago), to get your site ranking, you simply would need to send as many target anchor links as possible and then sit back and enjoy the benefits.
In fact, this is exactly what I used to do.
The first site I ever ranked was an ergonomic chair review site. How did I rank it?
I posted about 30 articles on EzineArticles (R.I.P.) all pointing to my money site with the anchor “best ergonomic chair”.
Now obviously this tactic would not work today. Currently, we’re up against an algorithm that is built to detect unnatural patterns.
So, while we know what gets the needle moving with rankings…
We need to dress up our SEO story to look less unnatural.
This is what “pillowing” is.
In my example, the unnatural pattern was around anchor text. But balancing your anchor distribution isn’t the only form of pillowing you should be concerned with.
I’m going to discuss 4 highly overlooked forms of SEO pillowing that you need to take into consideration if you plan to rank in 2020.
Special Note: Whether you’re white, grey, or black hat you need to pay attention to this article.
At the end of the day, the algorithm doesn’t care.
Even though might be getting your links “naturally”, if you happen to receive an unrealistic pattern on one of the factors you see below, you will find yourself struggling to rank.
Determine Your Niche-Specific Anchor Text Distribution
So now that you know you need to create a natural distribution of anchors going to your website’s URLs, what defines “natural”?
Instead of simply guessing what the algorithm thinks “natural” is, use the data that is already available to you to find out exactly what Google has already approved on page 1.
You do this by looking at the top 5 rankers and reverse engineering their anchor text with a tool like Ahrefs, take the average, and then recreate that anchor distribution on your own site (read the guide).
What Kind of Links to Use for Your Pillow Anchors
A “pillow anchor” is an industry term used to define any anchor that isn’t a target anchor; so URL anchors, brand anchors, etc.
It’s a common understanding that you should use your strongest links for your target anchors, and then use lower power links for the non-target anchors.
But this is where people go very, very wrong.
People get carried away with saving money and end up getting poor quality links for their pillow anchors and burning their sites.
History Lesson:
Penguin 2.0 saw the end of sites pillowed with automatic tools like GSA and SENuke.
Penguin 2.1 was the first time we saw people get hit that were using Web 2.0s for their pillow links, backed by a tier 2 of spam.
In today’s “always running” Penguin mode, I see people tank their sites all the time with pillow links from Fiverr gigs that use automated blog comments and forum profiles.
So instead of pillowing with low quality links that can cause penalizations, I stick to what I call Class A and Class B links (learn more).
Business directory citations are great for URL anchors to the homepage. The same goes for social profiles (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Blogger, etc).
Quality press releases can get you dozens or even hundreds of anchors of your choice to any page of your choice. The keyword here is “quality”. Spammed out press release services will do nothing, at best.
But what I use for pillow anchors is outreach and PBNs.
Sure… the theory above about only using your most powerful links (like PBNs) for your target anchors makes logical sense… but if I can always send powerful or authoritative links to my site, even for non-target anchors, I rank with less links and need less pillowing.
Less is more.
This is my stance on the matter.
#2 Nofollow Pillowing
There’s dofollow links and nofollow links.
A dofollow is your average link without any modifications. They pass full link juice.
Nofollow’s use the nofollow attribute and pass negligible juice.
Google encourages use to use them for links that they don’t want us to endorse with link equity – such as affiliate links.
<a href=”https://Amazon.com” rel=”nofollow”>Buy from these D-bags</a>
If we go back to the concept that Google wants all the links that are built to your site to come in naturally, then what are the chances that 100% of links going to your site are dofollow?
Let’s investigate…
Here we’re looking at the nofollow/dofollow ratios of some arbitrary sites.
ESPN.com
TheWireCutter.com
GoatYoga.net (Chiang Mai SEO Conference inside joke)
Between these three example sites, they have a nofollow average of about 13%.
Just like with anchor text, you need to send a natural ratio of nofollow vs dofollow links to your URLs.
Again, as with anchor text, you look at the top 5 ranking URLs in your niche, load them up in Ahrefs, look up their nofollow/dofollow ratios, and take the average.
Let’s say for example you find out that the average nofollow link percentage going to the top 5 is 8%, then roughly 8% of your links should be nofollow.
What Kind of Links to Use for Your Pillow Nofollows
This one is tricky.
Because nofollow links basically pass negligible link juice you don’t want to spend a lot of money on links for pillow nofollowing.
I have an inexhaustible supply of PBNs, so I typically use them for nofollows, but I do it in a way to not waste the link juice, by linking out twice from the same article.
The first link will be a dofollow and will funnel the juice to one page of my money site. The other will be nofollowed and go to a different page.
This way, the link juice is preserved as it will continue to flow through the dofollow link.
For those that do not have their own PBN, you need to get a little creative.
Citations are great for nofollows as many directories automatically nofollow their links by default. But these are typically only good for pillowing your homepage.
You can also use guest posts for nofollow pillowing.
When you land a guest post, pre-negotiate with the site owner to get two links placed in the guest post, but one of them will be nofollowed. Generally, I’ve met little resistance on this and have never been asked to pay more for that second link.
If you want to dip into the more affordable Class C links, forum links and manual blog comments are an option (see Charles’ guide for best practices).
#3 Image Pillowing
Just as not all links are dofollow; not all links are textual.
One website can link to another through images as such…
Depending on the niche, the percentage of links coming from images can be quite high or quite low.
Below, I use Ahrefs to compare the percentage of image links coming to Celebrity Style Guide vs Ahrefs themselves.
Mimic the niche’s average distribution of image vs textual links and you’ll not only look natural, but you’ll get a better result.
How to Beat It
Determine the Proper Image vs Text Ratio
I think you’re starting to see a pattern by now…
First you reverse engineer your niche and then you imitate.
Easy enough. But where do you get image links from?
What Kind of Links to Use for Your Image Pillowing
The great thing about PBNs is that you can use them however you please. Just as you could easily use them for nofollows, you can do the same by linking through an image.
You can also try to get link images in your guest posts, but from experience, this is more hassle than its worth.
More often that not, webmasters are picky about the images that are displayed on their site, and commonly strip out your images.
Or… they might not be tech savvy enough to paste in the HTML version of your article which would have ensured that your image link get placed.
Solution: Pinterest
Despite these challenges, image links are actually very easy to get through Pinterest.
Google recognizes, honors, and indexes image links on Pinterest easily.
Just make sure to get your various links placed on separate “boards” or else Google deems them to be coming from the same source.
Just as you wouldn’t send many links from the same referring domain without experiencing diminishing returns, the same applies to sending links from the same Pinterest boards.
Infographics
Infographics are a nice, scalable way to get image links.
There’s a catch though.
Most infographics are hosted on your site on a standalone page put up simply to post that infographic. Like this infographic of mine here.
This page most likely isn’t your money page that you need image pillowing for.
You have two options here:
Place that infographic on the money page in a minimized format. It doesn’t need to take up the full screen, like mine. Then when you perform your outreach, you would ask your prospects to link to your money page with that image.
Submit your infographic to infographic directories but when you do so, instead of putting the infographic page URL into the submission, put in your money page. Most infographic submission sites are automated, so they won’t notice. Just make sure to index the link once approved. They can be a pain.
#4 Inner-Page Pillowing
This is a big one and if you’re a grey hat SEO (i.e.: PBN user) then you need to pay very close attention.
This requirement started to come into play in late 2016, but in 2017 it’s mandatory that you take this into consideration.
Let’s say that you’re using PBNs to rank.
In 2016, I wrote an article called “The Truth about Link Diversity” in which I explained that you could completely use PBNs as your primary backlink.
This is still true, but in many niches, PBNs will only get you so far.
I have no idea, but let’s just say, for example’s sake, that its 65.
This means that 1/65th or 1.5% of the internet is made up of homepages.
The main benefit of PBNs is that you can link from their homepages and thus utilize their superior link juice.
But does it make sense that your website has 100% of its links coming from homepages when only 1.5% of the internet is made up of homepages?
When you start to get more links coming to your site, you need to start pillowing with links coming from inner pages.
How to Beat It
All you Need are Links from ANY Inner Pages
The problem isn’t with PBNs. You can actually use PBN’s to supply these links from inner pages.
Consider the traffic graph below. This is for one of my live money sites that had been stuck in the rankings for some time.
After proper analysis, I realized that this particular site was a bit late in the game when it came to pillowing with inner page links.
This is something I typically have timed very well and I discuss this in The Lab, but for some reason, it slipped my attention.
Alas, this mistake turned into a great opportunity for a new experiment.
I decided to use PBN inner-pages to supply these pillow links.
Note that these links supply zero link juice. They’re placed on brand new pages (not posts) that have zero internal or external links going to them.
Nonetheless, traffic and rankings started to climb because the link profile started to look more natural.
The problem with the use of PBNs for inner-page links is that is extremely wasteful.
As said above, PBNs do their magic because they give homepage juice, so if you’re not taking advantage of that, you’re paying way too much for a juiceless-link.
An alternative would be to use a PBN for multiple inner-page links to multiple money sites, but this will soon create an outbound link (OBL) footprint when done at scale.
Forum and blog comments are an option here, but inner-page pillowing needs to be done in large amounts, and I prefer not to send many, if any, Class C links at my site.
So, what do I use for inner page pillowing instead?
Outreach: The Best Solution for Inner-Page Pillowing
Hand’s down, the best supply of links from inner pages comes from outreach.
Getting links from real sites, with real traffic is your best bet because:
It’s actually the cheapest “quality” option for inner-page links – PBNs are out of the question because non-toxic ones are too expensive to use just for inner page links. But outreach, when done right can get links at low cost, from quality. Thus, you’d rank with even fewer links, making the effective cost go down dramatically.
Futureproofing – We have plenty of ways to game the algorithm now, but as machine learning starts to enter the scene more formidably, then our list of permissible sites will come down eventually to real sites with real traffic. Get ahead of the game.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not going white hat.
I’ll wear whatever color hat gets me the best result, and what I’m seeing right now is that…
A combination of grey hat PBN links for link juice and power plus outreach links for authority, trust and inner-page pillowing is the combination to beat in 2020 and beyond.
Where to Get Outreach Links
For those who have an in-house team, outreach is best done in-house.
A typical outreach team consists of:
Link prospectors
Content writers
Outreacher
Project Manager
If you can setup this system properly, you’ll be able to have the precision and care to be able to get difficult links, as well as save money due to the in-house staffing.
For around a year, I modeled my in-house outreach team around what Ryan Stewart and Ninja Outreach teach (check out their module in The Lab).
It works.
Authority Builders Co. (ABC)
This year I switched over to outsourcing my outreach links to another company, mainly because I was able to scale a hell of a lot faster.
They were able to get me as good of links (if not better than I was getting on my own), on sites that were ranking and had traffic. And the cost was right.
I liked this company so much, I invested in them, became a partner, and we rebranded as Authority Builders.
Check us out. We’ll place you on sites with at least 1k traffic or more or you’ll get a full refund.
Summary
While the golden days of link building were simply about making yourself look powerful and relevant, today’s age is asking for those things plus believability and naturalness.
That’s where SEO pillowing comes into play, but do not limit yourself to just anchor pillowing.
These four pillow types are what I’m currently working with today, but that’s not to say new types will emerge in the coming months.
I’m so glad you said this Matt, “Spammed out press release services will do nothing, at best”. Almost every penalty I shift seems to have lots of these kinda links. I’m not saying that it causes the penalty, but it certainly makes your link profile look unnatural. Excellent post BTW – keep them coming. I’ll refer my clients to this article when they ask what sort of links they need to make their profile look more natural.
nice post … But I faced a problem in my google search console 5 domain link to my site and give 1000 link. so I use disavow tool before 2 months. But this link is not removed by Google. what to do now?
Great post and as always thanks for your continued value and knowledge sharing.
With regards to internal pages, I’m just wondering, if pretty much the same principles apply. I think I understood that part but wanted to clarify.
If I wanted to rank an internal service page, should I build generic links to that page as well, to keep the ratios looking natural such as:
http://www.yoursite.com/internal-service-page “visit website” and so forth like that pretty much in a similar way as building homepage ratios? Example – 1 exact match, 1 generic, 1 brand, 1 topical, 1 naked, but following your analysis techniques for matching competition.
Or would you suggest creating linkable blog content with internal links to the service pages and then build links to that blog post and pass juice internally (which I imagine to be safer but not as powerful)
Spot on, as always, Matt. I think the link diversity issue is pretty easy for SEOs to understand: find the “formula” of different link and anchor types from ahrefs, as you explained, and mimic. The challenge is all about how to not to spend a crap load on the nofollow and non related anchor links. We hate to use our best link opportunities for anchor text like “click here,” but sometimes there’s few other options. You got it head-on by saying do outreach for the “lower quality” links from bigger sites. Since their is a perceived low value from the sites giving nofollow links or image links, etc., they are much more willing to give them out. Another strategy is to do a lot of guest posting where they use nofollow and you know that in advance. Writers don’t want to guest post there, but for link diversity it’s valuable. Sites like SEMrush are easy-peasy for anyone to guest post with and have high authority and even poor following of G webmaster guidelines. The not following G guidelines from dumb mistakes also adds diversity. They do more innocent mistakes, like not canonicalizing thin content (go figure, they are an SEO tool!) Only thing I don’t “get” is the 2 links from one site: G could see that as a pattern pretty easily. It may work now, but I’d question if it does in a month or two?
Great informative post and I couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve put Matt.
Its also because of this need to have a more natural and diverse link profile I try to dissuade people from using the disavow tool like a sugar loaded 8 yr old in an arcade disavowing citations and directory links, simply because it isn’t natural. Every website owner is going to want to shout about there business and utilize these places to advertise or get their name out there.
Who has just high authority dofollow links? that alone would be suspicious enough!
I’m finding that inner URLs from PBNs can be very effective for ranking purposes while still getting power and relevance. Create a page with relevant content with a link to your money site from an inner URL on a PBN. Then have a link from the home page on the PBN linking to the inner URL either on a post on the home page or even a sidebar. This way your inner URLs are not “orphaned” pages. There is no question that linking directly from a home page sends more power. But, you can still get power this way.
Thanks for the post, Matt. Lots of good info there.
It’s not unnatural because that’s what the niche is expecting and needs. A big theme of this article is that you need to check the top competitors to see what is “natural”.
Thanks for this important piece of information Matt. Launched my website 8 months ago and scaling through SEO has been my primary focus. Your articles have been very helpful to this end
Great article Matt. Glad you mentioned directories as another seo expert said they don’t work when I went from position 29 to 8 in two months from just setting up about 40 (free) directory entries.
Hi, thanks for this informative article. I was a bit confused by a couple of things:
“Penguin 2.1 was the first time we saw people get by using Web 2.0s for their pillow links, backed by a tier 2 of spam.” When you say “get by,” do you mean that aiming a ton of low-quality links at 2nd-tier 2.0s is an effective ranking strategy? Does “get by” mean get past the penalties, or does it mean “do pretty well” (those are similar, but I am interested in the exact meaning!)?
Also, when you say “spammed-out press releases” don’t work, does that mean you recommend high-quality press releases? (Should those always avoid any target kw phrases?)
What is the definition of a “spammed-out” PR as opposed to a good one?
Does “spammed-out” mean “containing spam in the content” or does it mean “haphazardly emailed to too many places”?
Would you say that it is okay to start a site and then wait for about 3 months before doing the social signals, press releases and eventually links? I think I need about 2-3 months to write all of my text before actually doing all of that.
What are your thoughts on waiting before starting your link blueprint?
Firstly the inner pages pillowing. It make sense you want that. From my PBNS i get 2 links. One Index and one from the post it self. That is a inner page link.
Did i do that wrong?
When u say Class C links. You mean 2 links from 2 different sites on same c class correct?
Thx for the insights on pillowing Matt. The thing that made me go hmmmmm was the 1 do 1 no-follow link which I never thought about doing 🙂 But let me get this straight, these links are pointing to the same domain or are they used for different ones?
Thx for the info.
Take care man and all the best with the ABC venture 😉
thank you for that great article. I really had some issues with pillowing in my niche. Your ideas will help me a lot, I also like that nofollow from the PBN idea.
I have 2 questions regarding your article: 1. Why do you only put 2 links in your PBN article, I mean you could also go for 3 or 4 nofollow links as they wont eat up the juice?
2. What do you think, do Nofollow Links still count into anchor ratio these days?
1) It’s just because its a non-common event. I try to stick to the bell curve. 2) Some say yes. Some say no. It’s hard to test and I haven’t had the time to crack it yet.
that was a good information for u Matt.. but can i ask u something?? what should i do, if i play SEO in the spammy niche??? do i need to research all the competitor and make a spammy backlink with the same anchor text like them?
Trying to wrap my head around this. Maybe this is simply because I’m dealing with a lot of local clients. I know you do some local so you know yourself you already get a lot of links coming in from inner pages. Go get 100 of 150 citations and build out the top 50 social profiles and you have 200 or so inner page links.
Bada bing, bada boom! You have as crap tone of pillowing done from doing the norm.
Then you can just hit the clients sites (homepage normally right) with strong money anchors from PBNs as long as you stay within ratios. If you need more PBNs go pillow more plus copying competitor links and citations so you can use more money anchors on PBNs.
So for my question. Is basically the inherent nature of ranking local sites this way following your guide anyway? So nothing extra is needed?
Second question if I could good sir!
If you want to rank an inner page. Lets say it’s local once again. Say a client does plumbing and electrical work. The homepage is plumbing focused. The inner page is the electrical page you want ranked for a city. And you have all your bases covered with supporting content so that electrical page can rank and you’re not shooting yourself in the foot.
So for the question. How does it work? If page one or the top 5 on page one are homepages then you get you anchor texts, nofollow, image ratios from the homepages? And you apply that ratio to you inner page? As if I see what’s going on with page one for other inner pages it’s normally just big sites that rank from their authority anyhow like Yelp. And they have like 3 links to that inner page or no links.
1) Ranking local sites needs a bigger variety of links and relevance that affiliate sites, but I wouldn’t classify it as pillowing. Get your directories, industry, and locality relevance. 2) Don’t stress it. Your inner pages have an equal chance to rank, regardless if they’re inner pages. Just stick to the plan.
I used to get Web2.0 links as part of my pillow links strategy, but I no longer feel comfortable using. I’m planning to do more Press Releases instead. The previous PR links for this site are all pointing to the homepage with brand and URL anchor texts. Is it okay to have PR links point to an inner page (which is actually my main money page)?
Mozbar shows that my competitors have a lot of links pointing to their money page, while mine (which is currently stuck on page 2) has less than 10. I was thinking that this PR links will help add to the link count.
Hey Matt! Should I have to use different IP address for forum and comment link building. Is using same IP address for forum post risky? Please answer me I really need it.
Hey Matt, what are your thoughts on guest posts on orphaned pages? Aside from what you’ve mentioned that they make profiles look more natural by providing inner-page pillowing, do they have any value (considering they’ve got no juice and 0 traffic)?
Revisiting after almost 9 months – not sure I recognized the value of the info the first time I read it. Thanks.
The inner-page pillowing has gotten me thinking. As a test I’m moving posts from blog home pages to inner pages, keeping all content the same in an attempt to balance the ratio.
Any thoughts as to whether this might lead to some sort of slap, akin to changing anchor text? I’m sure I’ll soon find out, but curious if you’ve investigated.
Just realized that many of my pages who stuck on page 2 are suffering from this. For instance, out of 20 links, 8~12 are coming from homepages (Web 2.0 or PBN) so got it fixed.
Just cuirious, how long does it take to see the results from your experience?
Hi Matt, love your content and ideas! Also love using Authority Builders. Just a question, why do you think of the value of an outreach link to a business social profile page like FB or LI?
This is a list of the tools and services that I'm currently using to rank my own sites. Everything you find here has been tested and proven to show value in the many tests you've seen on my blog.
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Amazing Guide for pillowing anchor text…!
I’m so glad you said this Matt, “Spammed out press release services will do nothing, at best”. Almost every penalty I shift seems to have lots of these kinda links. I’m not saying that it causes the penalty, but it certainly makes your link profile look unnatural. Excellent post BTW – keep them coming. I’ll refer my clients to this article when they ask what sort of links they need to make their profile look more natural.
Interesting that you point that out too. You would know, even more than I would about penalization causes. Thanks for stopping by, Rick.
So don’t use HQ PR’s because they make your link profile look unnatural?
My first project failed only for this reason 🙁 . Thanks for the nice guideline of anchor ratio and link pillowing.
We live and we learn. Nearly everyone fails on their first project. Myself included.
nice post … But I faced a problem in my google search console 5 domain link to my site and give 1000 link. so I use disavow tool before 2 months. But this link is not removed by Google. what to do now?
If its disavowed, its gone.
That is worth reading guide, i do PPL in generator niche and it is hard to find any good site for gues post, any advice will be welcome 🙂
Authority.Builders
Damn, that goes straight to my bookmarks! never really thought of image links pillowing, guess I have been doing it with infographics.
Hi Matt,
Great post and as always thanks for your continued value and knowledge sharing.
With regards to internal pages, I’m just wondering, if pretty much the same principles apply. I think I understood that part but wanted to clarify.
If I wanted to rank an internal service page, should I build generic links to that page as well, to keep the ratios looking natural such as:
http://www.yoursite.com/internal-service-page “visit website” and so forth like that pretty much in a similar way as building homepage ratios? Example – 1 exact match, 1 generic, 1 brand, 1 topical, 1 naked, but following your analysis techniques for matching competition.
Or would you suggest creating linkable blog content with internal links to the service pages and then build links to that blog post and pass juice internally (which I imagine to be safer but not as powerful)
Thanks again
Anchor distribution is computed on a per page basis.
That could change, though? What do you think?
Absolutely.
Thanks a lot and really love to read and especially your Inner-Page Pillowing guide makes me glad.
Great post
I was about to ask you about anchor text diversity in The Lab. But you explained it here in great detail.
Thanks
Salman
Spot on, as always, Matt. I think the link diversity issue is pretty easy for SEOs to understand: find the “formula” of different link and anchor types from ahrefs, as you explained, and mimic. The challenge is all about how to not to spend a crap load on the nofollow and non related anchor links. We hate to use our best link opportunities for anchor text like “click here,” but sometimes there’s few other options. You got it head-on by saying do outreach for the “lower quality” links from bigger sites. Since their is a perceived low value from the sites giving nofollow links or image links, etc., they are much more willing to give them out. Another strategy is to do a lot of guest posting where they use nofollow and you know that in advance. Writers don’t want to guest post there, but for link diversity it’s valuable. Sites like SEMrush are easy-peasy for anyone to guest post with and have high authority and even poor following of G webmaster guidelines.
The not following G guidelines from dumb mistakes also adds diversity. They do more innocent mistakes, like not canonicalizing thin content (go figure, they are an SEO tool!) Only thing I don’t “get” is the 2 links from one site: G could see that as a pattern pretty easily. It may work now, but I’d question if it does in a month or two?
Always appreciate your insights, Eric.
Great informative post and I couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve put Matt.
Its also because of this need to have a more natural and diverse link profile I try to dissuade people from using the disavow tool like a sugar loaded 8 yr old in an arcade disavowing citations and directory links, simply because it isn’t natural. Every website owner is going to want to shout about there business and utilize these places to advertise or get their name out there.
Who has just high authority dofollow links? that alone would be suspicious enough!
I like your metaphors. 🙂
I was about to ask if you should use PBNs for brand/url and other non target anchors and then you made this post
#amen
I’m finding that inner URLs from PBNs can be very effective for ranking purposes while still getting power and relevance. Create a page with relevant content with a link to your money site from an inner URL on a PBN. Then have a link from the home page on the PBN linking to the inner URL either on a post on the home page or even a sidebar. This way your inner URLs are not “orphaned” pages. There is no question that linking directly from a home page sends more power. But, you can still get power this way.
Thanks for the post, Matt. Lots of good info there.
Good workaround.
Thank you so much for this! I wish I had this guide sooner, but I guess we all have to learn the hard way sometimes…
Very informative. I’ve been wondering what pillow links are for a while, and now I know. Thanks Matt!
All my competitors here in Brazil have a lot of backlinks ( 1000 to 3000 ) and all are dofollow.
they are in top 1, top 2 and top 3 to several keywords… This is unnatural
How do you explain this? Why they are not penalized?
It’s not unnatural because that’s what the niche is expecting and needs. A big theme of this article is that you need to check the top competitors to see what is “natural”.
Great Post! You’ve now given away the kitchen sink Mr. Diggity 🙂
Thanks for this important piece of information Matt. Launched my website 8 months ago and scaling through SEO has been my primary focus. Your articles have been very helpful to this end
Great article Matt. Glad you mentioned directories as another seo expert said they don’t work when I went from position 29 to 8 in two months from just setting up about 40 (free) directory entries.
Hi, thanks for this informative article. I was a bit confused by a couple of things:
“Penguin 2.1 was the first time we saw people get by using Web 2.0s for their pillow links, backed by a tier 2 of spam.” When you say “get by,” do you mean that aiming a ton of low-quality links at 2nd-tier 2.0s is an effective ranking strategy? Does “get by” mean get past the penalties, or does it mean “do pretty well” (those are similar, but I am interested in the exact meaning!)?
Also, when you say “spammed-out press releases” don’t work, does that mean you recommend high-quality press releases? (Should those always avoid any target kw phrases?)
What is the definition of a “spammed-out” PR as opposed to a good one?
Does “spammed-out” mean “containing spam in the content” or does it mean “haphazardly emailed to too many places”?
Thanks!
1) You caught a typo. Fixed it. Thanks.
2) Spammed, meaning the quality of the syndication goes to spammy sites.
Excellent article. Thank you for sharing this 🙂
But I have one small question.
Would you say that it is okay to start a site and then wait for about 3 months before doing the social signals, press releases and eventually links?
I think I need about 2-3 months to write all of my text before actually doing all of that.
What are your thoughts on waiting before starting your link blueprint?
Thank you in advance.
Yes, its ok to start later.
Very good guideline for the link pillowing. Thanks a lot 🙂
Hey Matt,
Great work. Love it.
A few thinks I bit a mark on.
Firstly the inner pages pillowing. It make sense you want that. From my PBNS i get 2 links. One Index and one from the post it self. That is a inner page link.
Did i do that wrong?
When u say Class C links. You mean 2 links from 2 different sites on same c class correct?
Have a grt day i good old Thailand 🙂
1) The PBN is still linking from its homepage.
2) Not sure I understand.
Ahh Goat yoga talk and beers…#Goodtimes
Thx for the insights on pillowing Matt. The thing that made me go hmmmmm was the 1 do 1 no-follow link which I never thought about doing 🙂 But let me get this straight, these links are pointing to the same domain or are they used for different ones?
Thx for the info.
Take care man and all the best with the ABC venture 😉
Buyseech
I suppose you could point them at different domains.
Hey Matt,
thank you for that great article. I really had some issues with pillowing in my niche. Your ideas will help me a lot, I also like that nofollow from the PBN idea.
I have 2 questions regarding your article:
1. Why do you only put 2 links in your PBN article, I mean you could also go for 3 or 4 nofollow links as they wont eat up the juice?
2. What do you think, do Nofollow Links still count into anchor ratio these days?
Thank you very much 🙂
Nils
1) It’s just because its a non-common event. I try to stick to the bell curve.
2) Some say yes. Some say no. It’s hard to test and I haven’t had the time to crack it yet.
Hi Matt, Reguarding this information?
The first link will be a dofollow and will funnel the juice to one page of my money site. The other will be nofollowed and go to a different page.
Do we use the same anchor text
You can use whatever anchor text you want.
that was a good information for u Matt.. but can i ask u something?? what should i do, if i play SEO in the spammy niche??? do i need to research all the competitor and make a spammy backlink with the same anchor text like them?
Best regard’s JK
It’s always best to mimic the niche in terms of optimization. But build cleaner links than them to future proof yourself.
Great article to use anchor text I have learned more from the board in conjunction with the post of the hoht. !
😉
Thanks a lot for this Amazing Guide for pillowing anchor text… 2018 is here. Time i start using them for my sites
Great info, thanks Matt!
I’ve got a question though.
How quickly do you start building links for a new website?
Check out my Backlink Blueprint Timeline.
Does building Branded/Generic Anchors from Good PBN’s still push your main keyword up in the serps?
Good question. Often yes, especially when it was the anchor you needed. Or if you simply needed link juice when you had little of it before.
Interesting. Let me try some of these tips.
Great content Matt, per usual.
Quick question, what qualifies a post as a Guest Post and not a PBN other than one you own the other you don’t?
Because a guest post will eventually become an inner-page. Unless I’ve got it all misconstrued.
In the eyes of the bots, not much really. Guest posts are typically on real sites though, that might have a readership and traffic.
Got it. Thanks for reply. Keep killin’ it.
I have a beauty site. I’m going to start working with infographics.
Thanks for the tips.
some still live in GSA SER 2008 world. Seems theydrive Delorean also
Nothing wrong with a Delorean. 🙂
Some great actionable tips here. Thanks Matt!
Matt,
First up, great article! Thanks for the insight!
Trying to wrap my head around this. Maybe this is simply because I’m dealing with a lot of local clients. I know you do some local so you know yourself you already get a lot of links coming in from inner pages. Go get 100 of 150 citations and build out the top 50 social profiles and you have 200 or so inner page links.
Bada bing, bada boom! You have as crap tone of pillowing done from doing the norm.
Then you can just hit the clients sites (homepage normally right) with strong money anchors from PBNs as long as you stay within ratios. If you need more PBNs go pillow more plus copying competitor links and citations so you can use more money anchors on PBNs.
So for my question. Is basically the inherent nature of ranking local sites this way following your guide anyway? So nothing extra is needed?
Second question if I could good sir!
If you want to rank an inner page. Lets say it’s local once again. Say a client does plumbing and electrical work. The homepage is plumbing focused. The inner page is the electrical page you want ranked for a city. And you have all your bases covered with supporting content so that electrical page can rank and you’re not shooting yourself in the foot.
So for the question. How does it work? If page one or the top 5 on page one are homepages then you get you anchor texts, nofollow, image ratios from the homepages? And you apply that ratio to you inner page? As if I see what’s going on with page one for other inner pages it’s normally just big sites that rank from their authority anyhow like Yelp. And they have like 3 links to that inner page or no links.
How would yo approach this one?
1) Ranking local sites needs a bigger variety of links and relevance that affiliate sites, but I wouldn’t classify it as pillowing. Get your directories, industry, and locality relevance.
2) Don’t stress it. Your inner pages have an equal chance to rank, regardless if they’re inner pages. Just stick to the plan.
Thanks for the insight!
Hi Matt,
I used to get Web2.0 links as part of my pillow links strategy, but I no longer feel comfortable using. I’m planning to do more Press Releases instead. The previous PR links for this site are all pointing to the homepage with brand and URL anchor texts. Is it okay to have PR links point to an inner page (which is actually my main money page)?
Mozbar shows that my competitors have a lot of links pointing to their money page, while mine (which is currently stuck on page 2) has less than 10. I was thinking that this PR links will help add to the link count.
Is this a safe and efficient approach?
You can send PR links anywhere you want. Just remember to go with quality. Check this out first: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ignores-press-release-links-25979.html
Hey Matt! Should I have to use different IP address for forum and comment link building.
Is using same IP address for forum post risky?
Please answer me I really need it.
You don’t need a separate IP. Google can’t see through backends. At least I hope not.
Hey Matt, what are your thoughts on guest posts on orphaned pages? Aside from what you’ve mentioned that they make profiles look more natural by providing inner-page pillowing, do they have any value (considering they’ve got no juice and 0 traffic)?
Theoretically, they’d supply an anchor, zero juice, and possible trust/authority if the referring domain is sexy.
Revisiting after almost 9 months – not sure I recognized the value of the info the first time I read it. Thanks.
The inner-page pillowing has gotten me thinking. As a test I’m moving posts from blog home pages to inner pages, keeping all content the same in an attempt to balance the ratio.
Any thoughts as to whether this might lead to some sort of slap, akin to changing anchor text? I’m sure I’ll soon find out, but curious if you’ve investigated.
Many thanks for the great article as always.
Not likely. Posts rolling off the homepages is a very natural occurrence.
Just realized that many of my pages who stuck on page 2 are suffering from this.
For instance, out of 20 links, 8~12 are coming from homepages (Web 2.0 or PBN) so got it fixed.
Just cuirious, how long does it take to see the results from your experience?
Totally varies. Impossible to give a quote.
Hi Matt, love your content and ideas! Also love using Authority Builders.
Just a question, why do you think of the value of an outreach link to a business social profile page like FB or LI?
It’s not exactly the same scenario but go ahead and review this post.
Hi Matt!
Is this pillow linking guide still applicable?
Definitely!