Do Trust Links (Aka Know'em Links) Move the Needle?

[stackcash]

I've finally build out our processes on one of our affiliate sites enough that I actually have time to do some link building.

For the most part, @Steve Brownlie and @GarrettGraff are doing a great job at keeping the site stocked with high quality backlinks each month.

However, I need to get the site to about 1,000-1,250 referring domains (about 10x growth from where I'm at right now) in order to really dominate how I'd like to dominate.

So, every two months going forward, we're going to work on a link campaign internally.

One of the link types we'll be building for our first campaign are trust links / know'em links.

Here are a few lists of these types of sites to get links from:

1. https://knowem.com/
2. https://www.serpwoo.com/blog/experts/increasing-your-domains-trust/
3. https://www.serpwoo.com/blog/tutorials/ORM-Like-A-Pro/

I have a few questions for y'all about these:

1. Should I only build out the links on sites that are reasonably relevant to my site?
2. I never, ever see these links show up in link trackers like Ahrefs. Is this ok? Should I do anything specific for the link trackers to find them?
3. What is the best way to get these types of trust links to move the needle quickly?
4. Quality vs. Quantity..... should I focus on building as many trust links as possible, or focus on building fewer links at a higher quality?

 

[Stephen]

From past experiences Vin, I've found very marginal uplifts from Knowem mainly due to the profiles created don't tend to pass any authority as most, if not all are No-follow theses days.

There is the old debate which I sit on the fence about, which is having a mix of do/no follow links looks more authoritative and I suspect it does, but whether it really pushes things along I'm not sold, that said the service is pretty low cost and could be quite time-saving.

Point 1, with any off-site activity I will always try the path of relevance before authority if possible!

 

[stackcash]

From past experiences Vin, I've found very marginal uplifts from Knowem mainly due to the profiles created don't tend to pass any authority as most, if not all are No-follow theses days.

There is the old debate which I sit on the fence about, which is having a mix of do/no follow links looks more authoritative and I suspect it does, but whether it really pushes things along I'm not sold, that said the service is pretty low cost and could be quite time-saving.

Point 1, with any off-site activity I will always try the path of relevance before authority if possible!

You articulated my thoughts pretty nicely there, @Stephen !

Yeah, links to the site up until this point have been relevance-first all the way.

It stinks that these don't work as well as they used to in the past. There were times where I could just make a mini-net of these and would need very little else to rank a smallish site. But, all good things must come to an end!

I'll probably just build out a few per day just to cover my ass. Definitely not going to be a big focus going forward.

 

[chanilla]

YOu could just reverse engineer what some of the companies that order content from you do... some of them really know what they're doing!

 

[Ryuzaki]

I never, ever see these links show up in link trackers like Ahrefs. Is this ok? Should I do anything specific for the link trackers to find them?

It's nice to know that Ahrefs, as an example, is showing you as much data as possible so you can make the right decisions, but they'll never find all of your links. They'll find some insane trash as their crawlers get lost in those webs, but then they'll never find some great stuff too. Ahrefs really needs to let you submit a list of URLs to be crawled. It'd help them find more data with more starting points too.

But what link trackers find is irrelevant to your rankings. It's all about what Google finds, and their crawling is leagues beyond anyone else's. Anything you do to help link trackers find these links will help Google too. A nice trick I used to use was High PR dofollow Blog Comments. One or two to each profile would help assure they get crawled at least, because Google crawls high page rank pages more frequently and thoroughly than low page rank ones.

The real question is: Crawling vs Indexing and whether or not a link must be indexed to count. I'd wager the answer is no, but it's always nice to see them indexed. That's where all kinds of extra time has to be spent on these profiles, fleshing them out and using them some so the crawlers have a more likely chance of finding your profile. This also generates internal links that flow page rank to the profiles, increasing the chance they get indexed and crawled.

What is the best way to get these types of trust links to move the needle quickly?

I'm not sure there's much we can do to force the needle to move any faster than it does these days, but depending on your tolerance for risk, you can tier links to and through them.

What I always try to do when I build out profiles is to interlink them, focusing on creating mini-nets and tiers of pathways where the juice stays dofollow until it hits my sites. But I want all of them crawled, even if nofollow.

To me, the primary goal is to increase the number of referring domains as seen by Google, whether they're dofollow or nofollow. The secondary goal is to get the dofollow juice to my site, which is seen as an endorsement. That's going to be the immediate needle mover, but the primary goal I think matters the most in terms of building trust and authority.

Quality vs. Quantity..... should I focus on building as many trust links as possible, or focus on building fewer links at a higher quality?

I'd create a cut off point, above which I'd take as many as possible. There's nearly an infinite number of social networks and profiles you can create. I'd just want a big spread and then move on to more important matters.

Back in the day profiles could rank a site alone. Nowadays I'm guessing Google has all of the platforms classified and can identify other types of profiles anyways, and discredits the dofollow ones to some degree. The reason for that is that a profile is user generated, which should have nofollow tags regardless. But at the same time I doubt they zap all the juice. I don't think they want to interfere with their link graph that much unless it's just horrid spam or PBNs.

Should I only build out the links on sites that are reasonably relevant to my site?

I built out tons of profiles when I started this site. I didn't hit every little social network out there due to time, because I focused on the highest powered social sites and then highly relevant forums. I'd still take a link on a general site if it's powerful enough (I'd take the link regardless as long as it's not spam). Every major news site on the web is essentially a general, non-relevant site. But you can always get a link on a relevant page, which is to say you can find ways to make the profile relevant.

For instance, you'll find there's no maximum word counts on some of the about sections. You'll find you can create headers and drop dofollow links in those. You'll find they don't validate the "Twitter" link and you can get a dofollow to your homepage there. There's tons of sneaky things you'll discover on these if you do it manually where you can get extra mileage out of them, including forcing them to become relevant at the page level.

 

[stackcash]

...For instance, you'll find there's no maximum word counts on some of the about sections. You'll find you can create headers and drop dofollow links in those. You'll find they don't validate the "Twitter" link and you can get a dofollow to your homepage there. There's tons of sneaky things you'll discover on these if you do it manually where you can get extra mileage out of them, including forcing them to become relevant at the page level.

You're the best dad ever.

YOu could just reverse engineer what some of the companies that order content from you do... some of them really know what they're doing!

I would imagine we would be out of business fairly fast if we started stealing ideas from clients. This is a bit too far below my ethical boundaries.

 

[Andrey]

By the way, you guys can get knowem links for much less. Remember red_virus who offered manual social bookmarks on the old forum? He now sells quality knowem links for 20 cents each. Search for Build Branded Links - Superb Foundation Links.

 

[mikeshinobi]

Remember red_virus who offered manual social bookmarks on the old forum

Damn, who would've thought I could get nostalgic over a BST service?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Damn, who would've thought I could get nostalgic over a BST service?

Those $30 Social Bookmark Bombs made me gobs of money. It was the best stuff before the ALN blog network. And then Spam Gone Wild came and went. Those were fun days until Penguin shut it all down (for the better).

 

[mackem]

Is it best practice to build these using your brand name or with a keyword in the domain/profile?

 

[Future State]

Is it best practice to build these using your brand name or with a keyword in the domain/profile?

It depends on if you want to build legit profiles any business would build or if you want to be a spammer. If I wanted to do the spammy route, I still wouldn't do keywords in the URL because I want them to last. I'd find better places on the page to sneak my keyword in.