When people talk about search engine optimisation, they usually conclude that the only way to get good placement is to get lots of back links.

The likes of Warrior Forum and various of the so-called Internet Marketing gurus promote a number of back linking services that almost always involve buying a membership that entitles the account holder to place links onto closed networks, usually blogs.

It’s long been my view that the only way to get consistently good search engine rankings is to play things dead straight.

I’ve looked at a number of link networks and various back-linking methods and have yet to stick with any beyond the initial trial period. (There’s always a trial period).

Not one has lived up to the hype and some are downright dangerous if you happen to run anything other than an Adsense trap.

That’s because Google is constantly looking at ways of reducing link Spam from it’s organic listings.

Many backlink networks claim that their methods are safe from the prying eyes of Google and that their blogs are somehow immune from being penalised.

One such “reputable” network, BuildMyRank.com was penalised last month and that resulted in ALL of the participating sites being dropped by Google. (I’d love to include a link, but why risk my blog?)

The cost to BuildMyRank.com was that they now have a lot of refunds to process. At least they were quick off the mark to own up. Less reputable companies might have simply disappeared with their subscribers money.

But imagine the cost to you if your business web site was suddenly dropped.

It’s simply not worth the risk in the majority of cases, certainly if you run a real business from your web site. The odd Adsense site probably doesn’t matter, since they are often hosted on throw-away domains in any event.

Last month, I took at something called SEO Link Monster. I took a subscription and cancelled within a couple of days, simply because the quality of sites in the link network looked so poor. Actually, poor wasn’t the word – more like dire.

It appears from a number of forum posts I’ve seen, that SEOLinkMonster.com has suffered the same fate with a number of members complaining that their sites have been dropped unceremoniously from Google’s listings.

Do the people who set these systems up not realise that google has enough money to buy memberships and examine exactly what’s going on “behind the curtain”?

As I keep explaining to my customers and my business partners – the only way to get good placement is through good content.

I do very little back-linking and yet my sites are consistently amongst the top search results for my chosen key phrases.

That’s simply because I stick to doing the basic things very well and I don’t cheat.

You would be right to ask why I try out the various systems that come along in that case.

Quite simply it’s because you just never know. Part of staying ahead online is to keep an open mind and at least have a look. If I see something that I don’t agree with, it’s dropped very quickly. That’s been the case with 99% of the stuff I’ve tried from these so-called Guru’s.

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I’ve used this software for more than 5 years. It’s not cheating!