SEO Link Pillowing: Types of Links You Need to Rank in 2018

Guide to SEO Link Pillowing: In a perfect SEO world which was approximately 6-7 years ago, one only needed to send plenty of anchor links to receive site rankings and this was a common practice for quite a number of people.

Anchor links stuffing has not remained useful due to the introduction of algorithms that are able to detect patterns that seem unnatural. This brought about the need to ensure your content appears less so.

Pillowing is the solution to this need. There are various different forms of SEO lnkpillowing as discussed below:

SEO Link Pillowing #1: Anchor Text Pillowing

This form of SEO link pillowing remains the most understood by both intermediary and advanced SEOs.

It is helpful in situations where the links heading to a site have the same anchor text. The anchors that are redirecting to your content should show slight differences.

This is possible through use of the other types of anchors such as target, URL, brand, topic and miscellaneous anchors. When they are used in a realistic mixture, they will rank.

The mixing process can be done by first knowing your niche-specific anchor text distribution. Use the information provided by search engines such as google to know what has been approved.

Look at the rankers placed above 5 then reverse engineer the anchor text used through use of tools such as Ahref. Take the average determined then use it on your site to recreate the anchor distribution.

Pillow anchors are generally al other anchors that aren’t target anchors. One should use the strongest links as target anchors as the slightly weak ones are used on non-target anchors.

Use of low quality links for pillow links leads to burning of the site. It is better to use class A and class B links.

Social profiles such as twitter and Facebook as well as business directory citations can be used as URL anchors to a particular homepage.

Press releases are also wonderful sources of anchors but it is important that the anchors used are quality and not spammed ones. Outreach and PBNs can be used for pillow anchors.

SEO Link Pillowing #2:  Nofollow Pillowing

There are dofollow as well as nofollow links. The dofollow link is essentially an average link that does not have modifications. They will pass on full link juice.

Nofollow links on the other hand will take advantage of the nofollow attribute and therefore pass on negligible juice.

It is encouraged by google that they be used on links that one doesn’t want to endorse with link equity such as through use of affiliate links.

It is important that the ratio of nofollow, dofollow links to the present URLs remains a natural ratio.

One has to first know what the natural ratio of nofollow and dofollow. This can be done by making notes based on the top 5 ranked URLs in your niche. Use ahrefs to determine ratios, take the average then apply it.

In the presence of numerous PBNs, they can be used for nofollow links but still link twice to a single article to avoid wastage of link juice.

The initial link will be a dofollow that will be tasked with funneling juice to one page of the money site while the second will be nofollowed and head to another page.

Using this strategy ensures the link juice remains preserved and is able to continuously flow through the dofollow link.

When PBN isn’t available, citations can be used for nofollows as this is the default of many directories.

This is however limited in good performance to only the homepage. For nofollow pillowing, guest posts can be used as well. One should negotiate for two links in such cases so that they can have one of them as nofollowed.

There may be resistance in some cases that may lead to a demand for additional costs for the second link. For affordability, one can use class C links, forum links and manual blog comments.

SEO Link Pillowing #3: Image Pillowing

Not all links are textual. Images can be used to link one website to another. Graphics tend to be liked through banner ads, a button to call actions (CTAs), infographics etc.

When one imitates the distribution of an image and textual links of the niche they are in, one will appear natural while receiving attractive rankings.

Similar to the previous forms of pillowing, reverse engineer, then imitate.  PBNs can be used when linking images just as they were used to link nofollows.

Guest posts can be used but they tend to be quite frustrating as there is often resistance from webmasters. The best way of making use of image links is through use of Pinterest.

Search engines like google will easily make an index of the image links and recognize them. The images should however, be placed on different boards lest they appear as from a single source.

Infographics are a wonderful way of getting image links. But they tend to land on pages that are not the money page.

One can therefore, have the infographic on the money page though in a minimized format or even provide infographic directories with the infographic to place on the money page.

SEO Link Pillowing #4: Inner-Page Pillowing

This form of pillowing provides the greatest advantage to a grey hat SEO such as a PBN user.

The main advantages of PBNs are that they can be used to link from homepages leading to the use of superior link juice.

When one begins receiving more links to the site, pillowing will be necessary for links originating from inner pages. PBNs are not the source of the problem as they can be used to provide links from inner pages.

This will lead to an improvement of ranking and increase in traffic as the link profile will appear more authentic.

The shortcoming of this use of PBNs is that it is highly wasteful. A second option would involve making use of a PBN for many inner-page links that will direct to money sites but this strategy eventually leads to the creation of an outbound link (OBL) when it is done in relation to scale.

Comments made on blogs or forums are an additional option but it will demand that inner pillowing is done in high quantities.

The best option for inner-page pillowing will, therefore, remain as outreach. Acquisition of links from legitimate sites will remain the best option for the following reasons. Outreach is the most affordable option when using inner page links.

PBNs are a no-go as the ones that are not toxic can prove too costly to only use as inner-page links. Outreach encourages the links to be at affordable costs while maintaining high-quality standards.

This promotes high ranking while using fewer links while fewer costs are incurred. Outreach is also the best as it encourages future proofing.

There are numerous ways one can bypass the existing algorithm currently but this will not be the case in the future when the machine becomes advanced thereby reducing the sites to simply the legitimate ones that receive honest traffic.

There is nothing better than the mixture of PBN links that can provide link juice and power with inner-page pillowing that can build on authority and trust.

Outreach can be done in-house by a group consisting of link prospectors, content writers, outreach people, as well as project managers.