Creating an SEO strategy can feel like a game of risk.
While cautious play does yield some results, it seems as though it is the bold strategies that pay off the most .
However, making riskier moves is not always a great decision.
If you implement an SEO strategy that violates Google’s guidelines, your listings may actually be penalized .
If Google thinks you’re trying to circumvent their system, it will only become harder and harder to get to the top of a SERP.
It’s difficult to navigate the fine line between risky SEO practices that will catapult you to the top of a results list and those that will put you on Google’s blacklist .
When you read stories of websites using “risky” tactics to get results, you may ask yourself, “Should I try that?”
One of these riskier tactics is creating sidebar backlinks .
While sidebar backlinks may seem like a quick fix to get more backlinks to your website, they are often not as beneficial as you might think.
Let’s take a deeper look at sidebar backlinks—and whether or not they’re worth your attention.
What are sidebar backlinks?
Sidebars have been used for some time chinese overseas australia database to provide quick and easy access to popular pages.
As a website feature that appears on almost every page, the sidebar can be extremely helpful for visitors to explore a blog, find new products, or even learn a little about the site owner or company.
Here is an example of a sidebar on our blog, to the right of the main content:
On a blog like this, the sidebar helps users quickly navigate to recent or popular posts and subscribe to mailing lists.
Meanwhile, on a resource page like this one , the sidebar is used to direct people to other areas of the site that they might find valuable.
Sidebar backlinks are exactly what they appear to be—backlinks located in a website’s sidebar. Sidebar backlinks are considered a type of sitewide backlink .
This is what Google thinks about sitewide backlinks:
When a backlink is placed in the sidebar, it will appear on every web page that contains the sidebar. In many cases, this could mean dozens and dozens of links back to your website.
Are sidebar backlinks valuable?
If you think that adding backlinks to your sidebar will skyrocket your backlink count and therefore your search engine ranking, you are wrong.
Sidebar backlinks are not an efficient way to circumvent the system.
However, they are not necessarily bad for your website.
The truth about whether sidebar backlinks are valuable or not is that it depends .
Whenever a backlink is placed on a web page, Google will consider how relevant that link is to the page. This same idea also applies to backlinks within the sidebar.
While the link may fit the entire website, director of procurement craig dubberstein Google will ask if it really belongs in the sidebar.
If it doesn’t seem necessary, or if the sidebar is cluttered with dozens of other backlinks without any clear connection, then it will most likely be considered spammy .
But if the link is relevant to all visitors, such as a company’s privacy policy, then it’s natural to include it in the sidebar.
Instead, they’re simply important components of any website or blog to help users navigate your site.
When it comes down to it, including backlinks in your sidebar won’t do much for your SEO.
While some links may belong there, they are not there to improve your ranking.
3 ways to know if they’re worth the risk
Back in the days before Google’s Penguin update, the number of backlinks mattered much more than how well they fit.
To improve your search engine ranking, you simply had to have as many backlinks as possible.
This meant that adding links to multiple pages—regardless of how well they fit—could help you get to the top of a search engine results page faster.
However, since the Penguin update , Google began to prioritize the quality of links over quantity. Instead of promoting pages with many backlinks, they began to look for pages with many backlinks that truly belong there.
When assessing the quality of a backlink, Google will consider three different areas: anchor text , link placement , and link relevance .
Let’s take a closer look at why sidebar backlinks aren’t worth the risk—and what you can do instead to improve your backlink strategy.
1. Anchor text
The anchor text of a backlink is the visible, clickable part that appears in the content.
Anchor text allows website owners to seamlessly add links directly within their web content, helping both search engines and website visitors understand what information the link leads to.
When it comes to SEO, anchor text is important because it usually contains keywords that are relevant to the content of the link.
This gives search engine crawlers a better idea of when this content should appear in various searches.
However, if you actively include links in sidebars, you usually don’t have the same freedom with your anchor text.
You might get a naked link, or your anchor text could be an exact match of the keyword you’re trying to target—which can be bad for search engines.
Anchor texts that are too similar to a target keyword appear spammy or paid.
Because they don’t seem natural, Google clean email doesn’t give them the same attention. Having too many on your website can ruin your anchor text profile and your overall search engine reputation.
If you have sitewide backlinks that are keyword-rich, you could actually be doing serious damage to your SEO.