Be aware of the rules on others' blogs. Stay original and limit self-serving Inbound Links.
For the past several months, I have been making the odd posting to a forum on one of the many business websites out there. In the past, every time I made a posting to that site, I added one simple link back to my own website. From that perspective, every posting was certainly self-serving – I wanted the inbound link to my website – but I always made sure I gave good value to anyone who might read any given blog posting. Well, yesterday, the article I posted was a heavily edited version of a posting I had made to my own site several weeks earlier – redacted to fit the specific audience of this online business community.
This morning, I thought I would check to see if there were any comments on my posting of yesterday. When I went to log in to their site, I discovered that my account was gone. My login and the entire handful of postings and comments I had made to that forum since I created my account had been deleted. I had been fired from the forum!
I inquired as to why – and I have no reply yet – but looking back on it, I can guess that I broke at least one of their rules. I might have had several links back to my site in a single posting. Furthermore, an automatic copy-check might have detected sufficient similarities between the posting and the original article on my own website. That might have triggered a flag for lack of originality, even though any original would have been from my very own site.
When you blog to (especially) others’ blogs, forums or other online communities, your contribution must be original and unique. That means that the posting does not exist anywhere else on the web, even on your own website. Well-managed websites – those from which Inbound Links are more consequently more valuable – may check the originality of your posting and might delete your entire account if they find a problem.
When you make a post to a blog owned by someone else, don’t lace it with links back to your website. A blog posting with too many links, especially to your own website, will draw the attention and possible wrath of the website owners, and may result in your account and all of the postings – and with them your hard-earned Inbound Links – being deleted.