Summary: Don’t hide links, don’t try and link pixels to hide links and avoid viral content with links that are irrelevant
So you’re looking at creating viral content that people will (hopefully) spread around the web for you because it’s so good. Wouldn’t it be great if you could spread a link back to your site through that link bait? Whenever someone drops the image onto their site, boom, they drop a link to your site at the same time. How would this be achieved? Perhaps by embedding a link back to your site, using a pixel with anchored text. Is that a problem?
The answer, we think, is yes – it’s a problem. The pixel itself would be blank (there’s nothing there, it’s just a pixel) and the anchor text you’re using won’t be related to the image. In fact, the user can’t actually detect there’s a link there at all so it’s a hidden link. Hidden links are a big no-no in Google’s ‘eyes’.
Also, as your image gets dropped around the web on other people’s sites, the link itself is highly unlikely to relate to their site. You have no control over what site your link ends up on. So there’s no relevance between the link, the site and the image. With no relevance, and with hundreds of links popping up all over the web to your site, Google is sure to view this as a spam link. So we recommend you avoid this technique.
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