Content driven backlinks with free hosting

[bruce bates]

When it comes to SEO the advice is pretty much always the same. Examine the competition, see what they are doing, find out where their backlinks are coming from, and try to replicate their search placement success. On top of that you will also hear things like always buy your own domain name and hosting, setup your own sites, and don't use cookie cutter templates.

I have never been one who follows the crowd. While others go out writing articles, doing guest posts, and send out emails to try to get high quality backlinks I have ignored the advice and sought to be the authority others are reaching out to instead. Despite all the advice against it, I have always found free web hosting to be an amazing resource that saves me tons of time and builds me incredibly high quality backlinks.

This has worked for me since the early days of the internet when wordpress was still considered a joke and live journal was "the platform" for blogging. Over the years, the method I have used has continued to work and in fact has gotten better and better as the quality of hosting has increased and search engines have become more fine tuned.

I do use free website hosting and I find not only does it work, it works better than most any other method I have tried - BUT I don't just go on a spamming rampage, I follow the best practices rule 100% of the time.

So what is it exactly I am doing? I am using free website to target the keywords I need, to build the backlinks I need and to generate the leads I am seeking. Its a very simple practice. I pick a free website host. I use whatever lame ugly template builder they offer to set up a website in a few minutes, and I start using that website to post articles specific to my keywords.

Instead of going out and find where to place backlinks, I am building backlinks on free websites. Every website I create is different but every single one has the same goal - to become an authority of a topic. To create an entire site around the keywords I want, and then place backlinks to the sites or products I want. Usually I link to my main business websites of course.

Some of the sites I create are to host a couple dozen splash pages for my products but each splash page will target the same set of keywords. Some of the sites I create are more of the corporate design with a few dozen pages and a couple backlinks. Some I just use to blog. The blogs will target specific keywords. I make these blogs in such a way it takes me seconds to make a post. I just add a sentence or two, an image or video, add my tags and thats it - save it up.

The idea of the sites are not to come across as spam. Make each site become an authority so if a visitor lands on the page, they learn, they like, they share and they comment. It literally takes a few minutes. Some are set and forget sites and some I update once every week or two.

The real question is does is work? The answer of course is yes. I have just started doing SEO for a new project and so far here are what my backlinks are looking like from a few of the free hosting sites I am doing this with.

Does anyone else out their use free websites for content driven backlinks? Whats your experience with it if so? If you advise people against this, tell me your logic and reasoning please.

 

[azgold]

Wow, I'm pleasantly surprised at how well this is working for you, congrats on thinking outside the box!

If you advise people against this, tell me your logic and reasoning please.

Yes, I do advice people not to use free hosting. Things have improved over the years but often the domain is obvious and sometimes ugly and the "set up your free website" ad on the site has always struck me as appearing unprofessional.

Mostly though, they typically have unreliable uptimes. Of course, it depends on the host, I think. I used Webs (formerly Freewebs) to hold my writing portfolio about 12 years ago but somehow, they forgot to turn ads on so mine was ad-free (yay!). I didn't need anything else at the time. There wasn't much downtime with them but some. I doubt if a WP site would go down.

There are lots of lesser-known hosts that have lousy reviews because of their sites going black.

Is it safe to assume that all of your sites are WP hosted? That host, I would trust.

 

[bruce bates]

Is it safe to assume that all of your sites are WP hosted?

No that actually wouldn't be safe to assume at all, some are wordpress, some are not. I am however very selective of the sites I use. Obviously github isnt going anywhere anytime soon or a lot more than just my website would be in trouble, but most people have no idea how to make a github pages website anyways - its not like creating any other website.

The other 3 from my screenshot are very similar to the apps weebly and wix use. They are drag and drop templates that can be setup in seconds.

Some of the ones I didn't show are wordpress sites, but I find most free wordpress hosting is subpar honestly. Wordpress's own free hosting adds nofollow to all links last I knew so I don't use that. I also use sites like blogger.

Overall though, my recommendation if anyone else is going to attempt what i am doing is.... Do a domain whois on the webhost domain name. Ensure it has existed a couple years at least - and if not make sure the domain name has been registered for at least 3 years up front.

The ones I was bold enough to list are fairly well known and trusted hosting services. However this isn't an end all game. The fact is no matter where one is building backlinks from, there is always a risk the site will cease to exist. Myspace was a major social network that was here one day and gone the next and as such most any site runs a risk of vanishing or being replaced - whether that be medium, steemit, random blog one does a guest post on or anything else.

As well as this works it isn't an end all game plan. Just like in business, with backlinking one should never put all their eggs in one basket. This is just a starting place to get some initial rankings. If a site were to go down, my hope is by that time I would have enough backlinks from other sources that it wouldn't really cry about it.

 

[bruce bates]

Freewebs

I think I stole every single one of their customers 404 traffic and redirected it to sugardvd around that time.

 

[azgold]

Overall though, my recommendation if anyone else is going to attempt what i am doing is.... Do a domain whois on the webhost domain name. Ensure it has existed a couple years at least - and if not make sure the domain name has been registered for at least 3 years up front.

Awesome advice!

Sorry, I missed the other sites in your image, was paying more attention to the numbers. That fact that you're starting a new project, I thought they were impressive.

 

[tylerhouchin]

Are some sites better than others for backlinking?