When I mention link spam in the Store Coach e-commerce training I am referring to posting links on websites in an unsolicited and unwanted manner. For example, going into someone's unrelated blog and posting a link to your website is link spam. It would also be considered link spam to go into a random, unrelated forum and post a link to your website. There are correct ways to build backlinks, but these techniques would not qualify as one of those. Certain SEOs and website owners spam websites to get backlinks to their own website in hopes of manipulating Google's algorithm to improve their search engine rankings. Google works very hard to filter out these types of backlinks, and not give them credit. In Store Coach's opinion, even if these types of links will help your rankings today, they will be filtered out and worthless at some point in the near future. So don't waste your time and/or money building spam links.

There is popular software available out on the Internet for spamming blogs, forums, and social marketing websites. This type of software is frowned upon by Google, and for good reason too. Google wants websites to link to other websites naturally. This happens when a website owner feels the content of another related website will be valuable to their users. Link spamming is the absolute opposite of this. It is used by lazy individuals or SEO firms that want quick & easy results. The links are usually posted on unrelated websites & add no value to the websites they are posted on.

Here at Store Coach we encourage website owners to build backlinks the right way. This guarantees that your backlinks will always count, and you wont need to change techniques (and softwares) constantly in hopes of "tricking" Google. See Chapter 6 for Store Coach's link building techniques.