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Related tags: Building [+], tips [+], SEO [+]
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around which tools you should consider using to make the link building process easier in 2012.
With Yahoo Site Explorer dying int 2011, what other options do we have.
Here are the tools I pulled out of the WebmasterWorld thread:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has a bunch of long time link builders sharing some of their new link generation ideas and concepts in the open thread.
I love these threads, cause sharing these ideas, lead to others to share and then new ideas can come out of it that isn't communicated in the thread.
Here are a few select ideas from the thread, but make sure to go to the thread and participate.
There are dozens of ideas being shared and I don't want to copy them all down here.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Image credit to ShutterStock for link image.
Earlier this month, we polled our readers asking how worried are you about link spammers.
The response was pretty across the board, some are worries, some are not - isn't that just how people are?
When I asked "Do You Worry About People Link Spamming You?" the responses we received include:
Personally, I am a worrier but I am not worried about link spammers hurting my sites.
Forum discussion continued at Google Webmaster Help.
Note: This story was written earlier this week and scheduled to be published today.
A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster upset about someone trying to link spam their site in order to downgrade their rankings.
Even though Google has been back and forth saying bad links can't hurt you and then saying it is possible links can hurt you, SEOs are not sure what to make of them.
We ran a poll and most SEOs believe competitors can hurt you with links but still, many do not believe it. And that is the overall opinion in the thread. Most are saying, the links won't hurt, the links will just be devalued by Google.
What do you think? Not do you think they can hurt but rather, do you worry about it?
Do You Worry About People Link Spamming You?
In fact, I had a case where Square Peg Web Design was so upset with me that they tried to do all sorts of things to hurt my company, including building nasty links to my site. I wasn't too worried about it, although it encouraged me to keep my post up about what they did to my company and clients.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
A WebmasterWorld thread has a post from a member I trust. The post is about TripAdvisor's listing policies requiring those who want a listing to link back to TripAdvisor's web site.
He wrote:
I run a website for a small hotel that has just been fully refurbished and they applied to TripAdvisor UK today to be listed/linked etc.
That's fine, they said, however they would need a reciprocal link from the hotel.
It's a non-issue and has already been done however I was wondering whether this is their new way of building backlinks as a defense against current and future Panda updates.
It would make sense, has anyone else heard of such requests/demands?
TripAdvisor has a linking information page with detailed instructions on how they want you to link to them. Clearly, there is no nofollow attribute in there.
Tnooz ran a story showing that most of the listings on TripAvisor do not have links from TripAdvisor back to the hotel.
In any event, requiring a reciprocal link, if true, is a bit risky for TripAdvisor.
We know TripAdvisor and Google have had their fights in the past - will this lead to one more?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread talks about a link building tactic that more often than not is very successful. The tactic is conducting surveys.
Not only do you get valuable industry data from surveys, you also get "two waves," as the SEO wrote, of links. The first wave are industry people asking their readership to go to the survey and take it. The second wave are industry people sharing the results and linking to the results.
As you know, we run polls here often enough and although I rarely think of it as a link building tactic, I can definitely vouch for it in terms of linkbait, on some level.
More people are likely to link to the results than link to the request for people to take the survey, but either way, you are getting links and helping the industry.
Have you used this method pretty much just for link building?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has interesting discussion around a link building strategy of looking for sites that link to old GeoCities web pages.
As you know, GeoCities was shutdown by Yahoo in October 2009. There are still many sites that link to old GeoCities sites and one tactic link buildings love to use is to inform webmasters of broken links and suggest they link to their site.
That being said, do you think it is worth going through the process of discovering who is linking to old GeoCities sites and then reaching out to those webmasters to link to your site?
You have to understand that is is almost two years since GeoCities was killed and maybe the sites linking to those pages are also pretty much dead? Or maybe not?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A HighRankings Forum thread has one SEO saying he was asked by another SEO company to sell them a link, a text link. But the weird part is the SEO company specifically asked for the link to be nofollowed.
Typically when you get a request to buy a link, the person requesting specifically wants the link to be clean of nofollows but not in this case.
We have sold several nofollowed links on this site, based on request. Most of the time it has to do with testing Google and sometimes it has to with fear of being caught for buying links and even some people just don't want the link value.
But in most cases it is SEOs trying to test things.
I'd be careful when selling links and even if they do not want it to be followed, they might come back to you later and ask you to remove the nofollow. So be careful and make sure the deal is in writing and includes the nofollow portion of the deal.
That being said, Google says there is nothing wrong with selling links with nofollow - so enjoy.
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
Michael Martinez, a frequent commenter here, posted a $1,000 reward for someone in the SEO industry to provide a clear 100% positive proof with evidence that links work to rank sites in Google.
His rules are clear:
But are the rules achievable? Michael thinks not and many SEOs think not as well. And Michael is so confident, he is willing to put $1,000 of his own cash on the line to prove it (or disprove it).
You have until June 30, 2011 to prove it.
There is one forum thread discussing this contest, it is at Cre8asite Forums and I wanted to highlight one comment from administrator Ron Carnell:
Life. It's not always science, it's rarely clean or pretty, and it's never ever ever precise. But you know what else it's not? It's not always arbitrary and it's rarely as simple as pure luck. It's one choice leading to another choice leading to the next. To think otherwise is to ignore the fact there are invariably some people who do it better than others. Not just once in a while, but usually. Not every single time, but still more than most. Not scientifically, not precisely, but nonetheless ... reliably.
Up for the challenge? Details over here.
Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.
A few months ago I ran a poll asking if you believe in penalty proof paid links?
We had over 200 responses and I am a bit surprised to see that most SEOs believe in penalty proof paid links.
53% of those who replied said there are penalty proof paid links, whereas only 26% said there is no such thing. Another 20% answered that they do not know.
I honestly felt that more SEOs would either say there is no such thing as a penalty proof paid link or say they did not know. I am a bit shocked to see so many SEOs saying they are confident that they can pay for links and not get caught.
Are you surprised?
Image credit: Jim Sher on Flickr.
This post was written earlier and scheduled to be posted today.
A WebmasterWorld thread asks other link builders if they would ever do a link exchange with a competitor.
Typically, you would think you'd never want to link over to a competitor. In fact, we ran a poll on this type of topic back in 2009 and most SEOs said they would not link to a competitor. But one person said it depends, the WebmasterWorld response so far read:
If it benefits your end user, why not? Unless its a fierce competitor selling your widget for half the price you sell it for always get the link anytime its relevant and benefits your end user.
Try not to make linking decisions based on how you think its going to affect your site's search rankings.
Please take my anonymous poll and let me know if you would exchange links with competitors. I am not simply asking if you would link to competitors, I asked that already. I am not asking if you would exchange links with a competitor.
Do You Do Link Exchanges With Competitors?customer surveys
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Image credit, Stephen on Flickr.
The graph below is from the SEOptimise blog showing what happened to a new site after building 10,000 spammy links to it in a single day. What happened was the site tanked in rankings just after a few weeks.
He said:
I took a new domain that I wasnât too worried about destroying, picked a reasonably competitive keyword, and built about 10,000 really nasty-looking low quality links in to the home page with a mixture of phrase and exact match anchor text.
The site ended up ranking #1 on Google.com for this keyword for about three weeks, which as you can see had a significant impact on increasing the siteâs traffic.
Is it about the bad links? Is it about the site being new and ranking due to QDF temporarily?
New data shows the site is now back in the top 10, after taking a dive in rankings.
This case study is continually building upon itself in the comments. There are just so many factors, it is hard to isolate the issue or issues. The site is new. It has 10,000 horrible links. The links are all spammy, 99% of them. The site is now ranking well again. The site may be based in the UK.
Here are some good comments from the post:
After reading your latest comment, my opinion is that the penalty was triggered by the fact that the spammy links accounted for 100% of the external inbound links of the target website (which had none beforehand). If you repeated this test on an established website with non-zero link popularity, I believe you would not get the same results. Hurting a competitor may be possible, but itâs certainly not that easy.
This is likely a failure of Googleâs QDF algorithm. They want fresh, viral news to appear in the SERPs as it comes, but itâs also perhaps very possible that they canât efficiently determine what to trust and what not to trust at certain points because of the push/pull effect trying to display âfreshâ news creates in their search results.
Anyway, if anything, it is always fun to watch people destroy things.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
In light of Forbes being penalized for selling links and Google sending out link warnings to link sellers and buyers - a new topic arose at WebmasterWorld where one SEO asks if there is such a thing as a "penalty-proof paid link."
Can you buy certain links and not run any risk in being penalized for that link?
Of course, many SEOs know there are some links - paid - that won't get you banned. Links like the Yahoo Directory or Open Directory Project. Links from non-profit organizations that you are a member of. There are many cases where you can "buy" a link and not get penalized for it.
But are there ways to buy mass links and not get caught. Or better yet, are there ways to buy links specifically for Google ranking purposes and never ever run the risk of getting caught?
Take my poll below:
Are There Penalty Proof Paid Links?Market Research
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has conversation around the topic of link building. The question in the thread is, is there anything new to be learned on the topic? Are there any new techniques to get quality links that have no been uncovered? Is the innovation behind link building dead?
A senior member, wheel, said:
Quite frankly, there isn't anything unique or new. It's simply learning the techniques of finding places to get links and then methods to get links from those places. And those procedures are detailed in this forum repeatedly, with variations. Outside of that, if you say 'no link exchange request and no buying links', I don't believe there IS anything else.
In reply to that, moderator, martinibuster, said:
I agree that there isn't anything new being published, I agree with that. But there are new techniques being worked out. I see them in action. I hear them in confidence. And when I need one I invent a way of building links that no one else, as far as I can tell, has thought of.
I am sure those who live and breath link building have strokes of genius when coming up with new ways to get links. I mean, article building, guest posts, widget creation, social media sharing and so on are old techniques - but who knows what will come out in the future that link builders can utilize?
Future thinking is never dead.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around how some sites that rank well in Google but only have links from sites they actually own.
The disturbed SEO said:
Last week, a competitor that is normally on page 3 to 4 on Google has started to rank number one or 2 for a highly competitive term. When i was evaluating their backlinks, 85% of the 20 links they have are all from blog / low content sites they own. When I say low content I mean one post on a blog with a unique url over 6 months ago. The other 15% are from low quality directories. I thought Google was trying to get rid of this type of spam links, not reward them... Anyone else seeing anything like this?
Guess what? It works. It doesn't necessarily matter if the sites that link to you are sites you technically own. If you have good quality content and the links are somewhat quality, then it will count. If you abuse it, then Google may take action, but otherwise, it is fine.
Let me quote Wheel, a Senior Member at the forums, who said I "use it myself thank you very much. Works great. And remember, that doesn't invalidate the content or usefullness of the site that is ranking."
He added other methods he uses:
I personally prefer to have a stable of high quality sites to give myself backlinks from but there's a variety of things you can do:
- lots of crap sites as you've described. I haven't personally seen this in a long time, but I'm not surprised.
- build out related but different sites in the niche and drive backlinks to them, get them hosted etc distinctly. Makes for valid backlinks and as long as Google can't connect the dots they should look good. I've got a widget site in my niche and a forum in my niche. Both are great sites on their own. I give myself links from them.
- buy dropped domains in your niche, rebuild them somewhere else. Maybe even let sit somewhere with content on them for six months or a year. I've actually got a whole bunch of pr4-6 websites with content on them that were dropped a couple of years ago. Today they're not dropped sites, they're pr4-6 2 year old sites.
- buy existing dormant websites. Go looking for dormant websites in your niche, offer them some small amount, see if they bite. If they do, leave the site as about untouched as you can and then drop yourself a link.
What do you think?
Let me be clear, this does not mean you should go out and build thousands of blogpost blogs and link them all to you. If it looks unnatural, Google will eventually get you.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
There is an interesting conversation going on about the use of your anchor text on your internal links at WebmasterWorld forums. The topic here is that this SEO wants a specific page of his to rank for a term, so he optimizes the page for the term and links to it with the phrase in his internal anchor text. But he also links from that page to another internal page using the same anchor text he wants the current page to rank for. Got that?
For example, I want to rank a page for big blue pineapple chair, so when I link to the page, I use the anchor text big blue pineapple chair. But I also decide to link to a different page on my site, via the big blue pineapple chair page using the anchor text "big blue pineapple chair" to this other page.
The question is, will this confuse Google in thinking the page that is all about big blue pineapple chairs is actually linking off to another page about big blue pineapple chair and they should rank that page instead.
Nothing like a good deep linking topic to make link builders salavate. :)
Tedster replied to the thread saying, "Theoretically, it does sound like this might become an issue in some cases. In reality, I've never run into it. I think I'd still avoid using the exact same phrase I was targeting in the outbound anchor text."
Personally, I have no clue. Logically, you would think it might cause confusion. But I do not have practical examples of either, so I have no clue. Tedster said he has never seen it, have you?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has nice discussion on the topic of how to train a link building team or link builder. The thread doesn't get good until the content after the 2011, so skip down to that portion.
Professional link builders obviously have different ideas on how to train and sculpt the supreme link builder. So the thread has some of those thoughts in there. Let me pull out a few quotes:
Is it necessary to train the link builders? All you really need to train is the point person, the manager, for the overall strategy. Everyone else below them can use scripted actions, much like Google support employees do.
Link Development vs. Traffic Development and Staying with the Times Popularity Has a Whole New Meaning
[www.webmasterworld.com]Link Cliques - Rethinking Link Acquisition Tactics for 2009 How to Assert Your Relevance Among Established Sites
Membership required...
[www.webmasterworld.com]Have you read any Good Link Development Blogs/Articles?
[www.webmasterworld.com]
Why not hire a person who already have an experienced? It's a time consuming if you will need to train the person instead of looking for more experienced staff.
If it was me and these link builders had no knowledge at all, I'd start with the basic of SEO. Then show examples of why links are important. Train them on good links versus bad links. Then show them some pointers on how to find good links with various tactical tools. Make sure they do it within a system that tracks the links, requests, successes, and so on. Then do weekly reviews of their techniques and keep adding pointers.
I am not a link builder. I never request links. I don't do SEO. But this is how I would approach it.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
There are few high quality directories out there, one of them being Business.com. Well, there will be one less soon. The owners of Business.com announced they are closing it down.
Dex One Corporation today announced it is realigning its interactive operations and will fully integrate Business.com into Dex One. As a result, the company plans to phase out the standalone, national business-to-business sales and marketing operation and focus exclusively on the Dex One business.
Of course, some link builders are upset.
But many know the future of good ranking doesn't rely on a link from Business.com. It doesn't hurt but how much can it truly help?
Yahoo has been closing directories as well. So what is the future for web directories?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and HighRankings Forums.
Update: @RossHudgens received an email from Business.com saying the directory will remain open. They told him, "Both the Business.com Directory inclusion and Pay Per Click Program will be continuing to run as normal on the Business.com website."
A WebmasterWorld thread has a short discussion around a basic but solid link building tip. Basically the strategy is to find third-party web sites that link out to sites, but those links are simply linking to pages that no longer exist. Then politely email the site owner informing them of the broken link and suggest that you know of a resource that can replace the broken link.
The tip here is credited to Martinibuster, posted by wheel. I should note, Martinibuster has given this tip for almost as long as I have known him. But let me quote Wheel's interpretation of it:
Here's what I'm doing over the next month.
1) I'm going looking in the really old 2000 era directories specific to my niche.
2) I'm going to run Xenu link sleuth on the directories to find broken links (again, these will be links to sites in my niche). i.e. I'll build a list of defunct sites in my niche.
3) I'm going to find sites that link TOO those defunct sites, i.e. busted links on other sites.
4) I'm going link begging. Basically saying "hey, you got a busted link. And while you're fixing your web page, howzabout hookin' me up?'.
Worth a shot and you are doing the web a favor. :)
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
There is a debate in the SEO industry on can links hurt you. We know many SEOs believe links to their site can hurt them, even if competitors send you those links. So the next poll I ran is what if you linked to banned sites, can that hurt you?
Most SEOs said, yes it can hurt you. The 120 plus responses, 82% felt there is danger in linking to banned web sites.
Here is the break down:
Are you surprised 16% said it can't hurt you? I am.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
Note: This post was written September 21st and scheduled to go live today.
A few months ago we shared the poll results showing 50% nofollow their internal links for PageRank flow. So a month ago, I posted a poll asking how many people nofollow external links.
Nofollowing external links is thought to be a way of "hoarding" your PageRank or just being very careful with who you link to. So we asked in our poll the percentage of links nofollowed on your sites, on average.
We had 208 responses and 40% said they don't nofollow any of their external links. Here is the break down:
There were some "other answers."
Are you surprised by any of these results?
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
Note: This post was written September 21st and scheduled to go live today.
People often argue if Google can really automate the process of detecting if a site has paid links or not. Now, some are easy to detect, and most link builders now go after encouraging people to link to their site because the site deserves it. But when is it too much and should you worry about Google catching on to gray area tactics?
I wanted to share a thread I spotted in the Google Webmaster Help forum where Googler JohnMu answered a question on why one site saw his rankings drop "over night" after years of success ranking very well.
John said:
Looking at your site and how it's connected on the web, it might be that the links to your site are not counting the way they might have in the past. In general, it is important to us that links are not just exchanged, bought/sold or otherwise used in an attempt to manipulate rankings, as we have detailed in our help center article at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356If you find that your site has issues with regards to our Webmaster Guidelines that can be resolved, I would recommend doing that and then submitting a reconsideration request, detailing the changes that you have made.
Now, I often see this being said by John and fellow Googlers.
I do often find it amazing how webmasters and SEOs would go into a Google Webmaster help discussion, link to their site and complain their rankings drop. It is like asking Google to look at your site, when they know they have paid links.
But it is done all the time.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Tim Grice published a summary of a study he completed named Anchor Text Has Lost Its Edge. Let me summarize in bullet format:
After summarizing the study, I don't think most link building experts would find these concepts new. But the thing here is, as he said:
I have the privilege of working with some of the biggest brands and best in house teams in the UK, that provides insight into multiple industries and the above trend is being played out in multiple markets, carry on doing the same thing you have been doing for years but trust me you’ll end up back at square one.
So he has a lot of data to back this, he said.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
About a month ago, I asked if link exchanges are dead. I covered a WebmasterWorld thread that had discussion about how valuable these link exchange emails are.
To my surprise, 60% of the SEOs out there (at least the ones who read here) actually read link exchange email requests. 40% don't and I am part of those 40%.
Of the 284 responses, here is the breakdown:
I am really a bit surprised by these results, but in hindsight, I shouldn't be. I asked a bunch of SEOs if they exchange links.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
Note: This post was scheduled to be automatically posted today.
Time after time, Google has said spam links can't hurt you. Google said it a bunch of times, competitors can't hurt you, but most SEOs do not believe that. So I decided to run a new poll asking Can Spam Links By Competitors Hurt You In Google?
I wanted to share those results with you.
We had a nice number of responses, 284 to be exact and most said - spam links from competitors can hurt you.
There were seven "other" open end responses, nothing really all that interesting to share.
Forum discussion continued at Google Webmaster Help.
Note: This post was scheduled to be automatically posted today.
Imagine you go slap happy with the internal linking on your site. You try to make sure you effectively link all important keywords on your pages to the appropriate internal pages but you go overboard. Can it hurt you?
We asked this question less than a month ago, after reading a WebmasterWorld thread. And most SEOs believe you can indeed hurt your SEO efforts by over linking to internal pages.
Of the 182 responses, 60% said Yes, you can hurt yourself by over linking internal links. 37% said no you can't.
The other responses mostly say, "it depends."
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
Note: This post was scheduled to be automatically posted today.
I am a bit shocked to learn that most link builders and SEOs don't find traffic to be all that important in buying or acquiring links from sites. I ran a poll a few months ago asking How Important Is Traffic Metrics In Link Buying?
The 106 results, yea - not many responses, were broken down as follows:
Only 20% said "very important" but overall most SEOs find it to be important on some level.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
Note: This post was scheduled to be automatically posted today.
The top of asking for links, is nothing new. We wrote about link exchanges dozens of times here, heck we know that Tuesday mornings is the best time to send them out to convince people to link to you.
But in 2010, are link exchanges emails still worth it? When you get a link exchange request, do you delete the email without looking? Do you bother reading link exchange emails? Do you bother replying? Do you send them out yourself?
Take our poll:
Do You Respond To Link Exchange Emails?survey software
A WebmasterWorld thread is having a debate on this topic now. Moderator, martinibuster, said:
Virtually ever link request I have received for at least the last six years has been useless trash. If I put a rule on my inbox to permanently delete any email with typical link request subject lines, I am confident I will not miss reading them.
Is it possible that we have reached the end of blind reciprocal link requests and it's time the industry stopped sending them?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld has discussion around a topic I don't think I ever covered... How does one sell links on their web site without getting penalized? Of course, you can nofollow the links but what about not nofollowing them?
First bet is to not do what we do here, because we are penalized. :)
But what can you do to sell links to sites, make some cash on the side and not be impacted by Google's almightily PageRank penalties? The thread has a few suggestions including:
(1) Make sure to always control the link text and URL manually
(2) Only link to relevant sites
(3) Link to sites that don't seem banned or sketchy
(4) Do long term link sales, so it is less of a rotating ad network
(5) Site wide foot links or side bar links are a red flag
(6) Don't advertise the links are for sale
I think I can go on and on, so feel free to add your own or discussion.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
When doing a form on unnatural link building, you try to make it look more natural. One way is to make sure to mix up your anchor text. Another way is to make sure the sites your links are on are not linking to you in an unnatural way. Maybe that means sitewide links on some sites, maybe it means the placement of the link and maybe it means the words used in the link.
A WebmasterWorld thread has one link builder asking how important it is to go long with your anchor text. Instead of using the prime keyword in your anchor text, why not extend it?
Rather than using "green widgets" as the anchor I prefer using something like "consumer guide to green widgets" embedded within a sentence. The preference is to gain SERP positions of green widgets.
The link builder asks:
Does the added text dilute the effect on the desired phrase green widgets?
Does it? Even if it does, it might be a good strategy to mix that up a bit? What would you do?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Tedster started a thread at WebmasterWorld about aged links. He said that there is a debate about if search engines, such as Google, "age" links. If they do, is aging a link a good thing or a bad thing? He came up with four possibilities of what an aged link can mean and it includes:
(1) One is that as months go by and a backlink stays in place, then it potentially gets a bit of a boost - because it's more trusted as it proves that it's stable.
(2) Another possibility is that as a linking page ages and show no further life, no change, and gathering no further backlinks of its own, then the links it offers to target pages have less and less value.
(3) And yet another is that a new fresh backlink is at its most powerful when first found - part of the "freshness" obsession.
(4) And then there's still another point of view - that the patents don't mean very much and that a backlink's value will only change as the linking page's own value goes up or down, or the number of links on the page changes.
Do you agree that links age over time and if so, which route do they age in?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has two moderators offering some basic tips on how to garner more links for your web site.
The easiest method is to find links you already have but might not be counting.
Buckworks from the forum suggested using Google Webmaster Tools, going to the "Not Found" report in crawl errors and making sure to 301 redirect those URLs to the relevant URLs that currently exist on your site.
Yes, this is a basic SEO tip, not just for link building but for overall good SEO practice. We know it only takes a couple weeks for a 301 to pass the link juice from the old URL to the new. But we also know there is a minor dampening factor for 301ed link juice.
The moderator of the WebmasterWorld link building forum, martinibuster, also suggested that you look for links to pages that don't really link anywhere. Pages such like PDF files, Word documents, and other non-HTML pages and suggest the linker link to the HTML page instead.
There are tons of tips like this, so make sure to join the thread and chime in.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has one link builder asking other link builders how they go about verifying sites are actually linking to their sites.
Link builders get others to link to their site. They do this by writing excellent content, providing linkable stuff, begging, asking and even paying for links. Once you get the link, you want to make sure it sticks - especially if you are paying.
I am pretty sure the more advanced link building companies build software to check sites on a routine schedule. They build spiders that sniff out pages where the link should reside. They aren't 100% foolproof but they help.
Other companies use other tools to aid in ensuring links are where they should be. Some use Yahoo Site Explorer, some use Google Webmaster Tools, some use advanced search queries.
While others simply do hand checks from a list of sites they check manually.
What do you do?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Tedster at WebmasterWorld asks an excellent question. In short, he wants to know if links ever truly disappear from Google's link graph. Let me quote him:
We've all seen URLs "fall out" of the index at times. But does Google still use those URLs as part of their web graph when they iterate link juice? Or is their web graph confined only to those URLs that can be retrieved as search results?
I'm sure that once a URL is crawled, the data is not just gone if the URL is no longer in the visible index - Google wouldn't throw away data, right So I wonder if the publicly visible pages that can be shown in the SERPs at any one moment are only a subset of the full web graph that Google uses for PageRank calculations - and others, too.
This idea came to him after midnight, on Sunday morning. I suspect many SEOs have thought of this in passing but never really put the concept down on paper.
Yea, I am sure they never go away in terms of Google storing them somewhere. But do you think they continue to pass on link juice after they are long gone?
Moderator, lammert, replied:
One of my sites has about 50% of the pages with the "noindex,follow" robots attribute. They are not visible in the SERPs, but experience is that link juice just happily flows. That may not be fully representative for links which "fall out" of the index, but the juice graph of Google consists of definitely more than just visible URLs.
What do you think? Take our poll:
Do "Fall Out" Links Ever Lose All It's Link Juice?customer surveys
Ever is a strong word, so let's say non-penalized links that simply just end up going away. Do they pass even a tiny bit of link juice? If so, answer "No."
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Two weeks ago, we ran a poll asking if you would buy a text link from Text Link Ads or another link broker.
We have well over 300 responses and I wanted to share the results.
The bottom line is that SEOs can't agree on if you should or shouldn't.
This was a pretty popular poll.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.
A paid member only thread at WebmasterWorld has outstanding discussion around the topic of competitors stealing your links.
You have sites that you work on, continuously over the past several years. You build high quality content, attract relevant and top quality links and then your competitors just take it all away from you.
The thread discusses methods used by competitors to easily take away those links through manual means. These are not hacking attempts but rather scare tactics. The thread discusses specific tactics that work at really high rates. I won't discuss those tactics here, since it is a private thread but I will discuss the advice given.
It is always a good idea to keep track of your current links and then be aware when a link you acquired over time is lost. If it is lost, you should be aware of why? Was the page removed? Did they drop all the links? Did the link swap out to a competitor? So keep tabs on your links and, in this case, be reactive to changes with your links.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld (paid subscription required).
A WebmasterWorld thread asks the question on the most important factors when pricing out a link buy.
The moderator of the forum, martinibuster, makes a clear point to say this is not about the ethics of buying links to influence your rankings but rather, if you did buy links, what factors are most important.
Martinibuster, Roger Montti, brings up traffic metrics when determining the value of a link. He said he isn't a fan of using PageRank as a metric and asks people, how valuable in terms of pricing a link is the traffic metric? I know some link builders who would prefer a high trafficked link versus a link with high PageRank, but some don't always agree.
I have a poll below, please take it and tell your friends to take it.
How Important Is Traffic Metrics In Link Buying?online surveys
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Rae at Outspoken Media compiled one of the best sets of link building interviews I have seen, possibly, ever. She had ten or so link building experts submit one question each and then answer all the submitted questions. The other twist was that no one was able to see each other's answers until it was published, which was now.
I won't share the long and excellent answers now, but I will share the questions. Read the full interview (or print it and read it later) at Outspoken Media.
The questions:
(1) What are a few emerging link tactics that you've seen in the past 12 months providing tremendous value to sites/pages? Can you give a specific example or two?
(2) The SEO industry has become so stingy with linking to quality content to the point that many people who used to share a lot of it simply don't bother, as it is not worth the cost of doing so. Is this a trend which spreads? Are we canaries in the coal mine, or is this just an issue impacting the SEO niche because it is far too saturated? What can Google do to encourage organic linking on the WWW (outside of nepotism, hype, spin, misinformation & ego-baiting)?
(3) What are the criteria for the "perfect link"?
(4) How do you go about creating a link marketing plan that will A:) Get tangible search results in a 6 to 12 month period and B:) Create sustainability for the website you are creating the plan for (i.e. keeping the links clean and adding links with long term value)
(5) If you could choose a link on a lower authority page that would provide a moderate amount of targeted traffic or a link on a higher authority page that would provide absolutely no traffic – all other attributes being equal – for ranking benefits on the site you’re developing links for, which would you choose and why?
(6) Do you feel that you can conserve pagerank or that it's still worth the effort to sculpt your links, by limiting the number of links on a page, creating them with JavaScript, passing them through a blocked page or using nofollow?
(7) Please discuss what link deprecation is and what impact it may have on a link building campaign.
(8) Do you think search engines are trying to find a way to depend less on link popularity and more on other algorithmic/social media factors?
(9) How much do you stress internal linking on your own or clients' sites? Do you have a quick rule of thumb or strategy to maximize the effectiveness of internal links?
(10) What's a successful link development strategy many overlook or dismiss?
(11) What have you been most WRONG about over the course of your link building/SEO career?
There are some additional questions, plus all the great answers, so check it out.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
Over the course of five plus years, the topic of link brokerage houses have been a popular topic in the forums. I often try to stay away from the topic, due to it being a very controversial and heated debate. But I have seen many threads over the years and two recent ones that encouraged me to post a poll asking for your feedback.
I have some people who swear by buying links from link brokers. I have others who would never go next to a broker, not even with a ten-foot pole.
One of the largest, if not the largest, brokers out there is Text Link Ads. I was wondering, as a show of hands, who would buy a link from them and why? Please take my anonymous poll below and have all your SEO buddies take it:
Would/Do You Buy Links From Text Link Ads?customer surveys
Forum discussion specifically about this at Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.
Affiliates and SEOs don't always get along, but at the same time, some of the best affiliates are the best SEOs and some of the best SEOs are the best affiliates. They often go hand in hand, but there is often a disconnect between the two.
Many SEO affiliates look to maximize their links by making sure those that link to them via affiliate URLs also pass link weight along with it.
An excellent "supporters" thread (meaning, you need to pay to see it) at WebmasterWorld talks about strategies to get the best of both worlds. To get people to use your affiliate program, pay them and track them, but at the same time, keep link weight passed by those links.
In short, ZydoSEO, a preferred member talks about three strategies. I will mention them shortly here but feel free to check out the thread after becoming a supporter. (Note, I am not making an affiliate commission by saying this :))
(1) Use normal tracking URLs, cookie the click and commissions and then 301 redirect them back to the main URL. Once the information is passed to the cookie, it should be fine to 301 redirect those links.
(2) Use search engine friendly based tracking URLs, still you want to cookie the click and then 301 redirect them to the proper place.
(3) Or you can try the rel=canonical element, instead of a physical redirect, you redirect search engines that way.
The canonical method is probably the easiest route, but not all search engines fully support it yet. Google does.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A Google Webmaster Help thread started by SEOmofo is clearly out to try to get a Googler riled up. He posted on the topic of hiding links from Google in order to get "an official answer" from Google and that is what he got.
In fact, he even wrote a blog post Hey, Matt Cutts, I’m using JavaScript to hide links from Google, cool? Matt never replied, but JohnMu from Google replied in the Google Webmaster Help.
It is actually a fun response to read, so let me quote it:
I think you're mixing two unrelated topics:
1. You're hiding links from Googlebot. Personally, I wouldn't recommend doing that as it makes it harder to properly understand the relevance of your website. I also doubt that you'd see any kind of visible change with regards to PageRank. Ultimately, that's your choice, just as it would be our choice to review those practices as potential attempts to hide content & links. What's the advantage for the user?
2. You're using late loading of content in an attempt to improve the perceived page loading time. To be honest, given your high level of technical expertise, I'm certain that you could have the full content load within a much lower time without doing that. Personally, I'd go for c) showing the user the full content within less than 2 seconds. It's not impossible -- and not only will Googlebot like it, your users will as well. I find slow loading affiliate sites (regardless of whether or not it's showing some of the content alread) a big pain and a frequent sign of low-quality content. Make your site run like lightning all the time.
Have you seen the stats by Yahoo & Amazon on slow sites? There's some great stuff at http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/ and http://code.google.com/speed/ . Also, did you see http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/04/05/firefox-page-load-speed-–-part-ii/ ? They estimate 60 million more clicks by making a single late-loading image show up 2.2 seconds earlier. In comparison, you're considering delaying the loading of your affiliate content for users by up to 12 seconds (ok, looking at the waterfall diagram you included, it's not quite that long, but you get the idea)...
So personally, instead of doing these tricks, I'd work on creating a long-term infrastructure that would allow you to serve your content at a blazing speed, all the time, without an attempt to do a short-term optimization for Googlebot.
Seems fairly clear to me that Google doesn't think it is "cool" to use either of these tactics. The "worlds greatest SEO" posted this for what reason? Did he really not know what Google would say to his question or is he trying to cause some controversy? Either way, it worked, a Googler replied, we covered it and maybe everyone is happy.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and a hat tip to Colin for pointing me to this thread.
We have talked about reciprocal links dozens, maybe hundreds, of times here already. However, a new thread at WebmasterWorld tries to understand the issue, if any with them.
The overall understanding from the thread is that reciprocal links still work and work well. The issue comes up when you do it "excessively" where your links are coming from unrelated web sites and you are linking back to unrelated pages.
Senior member, Whitey is asking if there is a way to automate the reciprocal link request emails to see if they don't appear to be automated and excessive to Google.
Martinibuster, the moderator of the forum goes into the issue:
What has changed in the last five or six years is that excessive recips became a reason for scrutiny. Prior to 2005, there was a misconception that reciprocal linking was white hat- even though Google's webmaster guidelines did not state any such thing. The thinking was that as long as your linking is relevant then Google is going to love it, even if you recip with thousands of sites.
But let's be clear about recent history. There have been bannings of specific reciprocal link networks that crossed the line of "excessiveness." In general, I think it's a good policy to cycle through various link strategies so the backlink profile isn't heavy in any one kind of link.
As one member said, reciprocal links are unavoidable, in a sense.
What is your take?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Twitter announced they will be wrapping all links through their own URL shortener. So if you post a URL, it will automatically be shortened and passed through http://t.co/ as a URL.
I tested the URLs and they are 301 redirected, which is a good thing. But many SEOs already use a URL shortener and yes, those URLs are 301ed.
The thing is, most SEOs prefer not to chain redirect URLs. By that I mean, you do not want to 301 redirect a bit.ly URL to a t.co URL and then 301 that to a final destination URL. The more 301 redirects, the slower search engines pick up and pass through.
Plus, we do know that some PageRank is lost during 301 redirecting a URL to another URL. So having it go through two redirects adds to that. Plus, it takes Googler a longer time to realize chain redirects. Finally, a recent SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday with Matt Cutts said chain redirects are a bad idea.
So if SEOs continue to use their own shorteners and if Twitter passes short URLs through their own shorteners, then SEOs may have a problem with the chain redirects.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
There is a nice basic link building thread at WebmasterWorld on the topic of reciprocal links.
In this thread, SEOs are talking about the right of SEO companies to require their clients to link back to them. Many believe this is not a professional practice, while others don't think it is a big deal. Either way, that topic of debate is not my point for covering the thread.
My point for covering the thread is to say that not all reciprocal links are bad. Naturally, if you link to someone, they may take notice and link back, if it makes sense. It happens all the time over here. In fact, I may link to a thread at WebmasterWorld, say something smart (on a very limited occasion) and WebmasterWorld may link back (rarely, but they may) noting my comments or additional information.
But when reciprocal linking becomes unnatural, that is when you have to worry.
So don't spend too much time worrying about if it is a reciprocal link and just build a great site.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWold thread has discussion on the strategy of buying domains, expired or soon to expire domains, to build links quickly.
A member of the forum asked if people still use this as a strategy. The SEO said:
A few years ago I developed the strategy of buying dropped domains with good backlinks and pagerank, and either 301-ed them to one of my main sites, or host them with a bit of content, and link them to my sites. Now, years later, some of those still bring in nice traffic and PR.
My question: Is anyone still using this strategy (for the traffic)? I assume PR indeed does not pass through anymore, as was announced? Any thoughts on retribution from Google?
There are many articles discussing how Google handles expired domains. Danny has a nice one with Google's Matt Cutts over here, plus we have at least two pieces on this topic.
Wheel in the forum suggested, "that there are places where you can grab a domain as it drops (i.e. before it actually drops). That's probably the way to do this." Moderator, martinibuster, agreed but added:
Whatever backlinks dropped domains had won't count toward ranking. Backlinks get reset. This has been the case for several years now. Previous to the change the backlinks would acquire whatever PageRank they formerly had prior to the drop. After the change, which happened quite a few years ago, the backlinks got reset.
This change also affected typos with pre-existing backlinks. The pre-existing backlinks get reset.
I'm not saying you can't rank a dropped domain. Just that the backlinks get reset and this has been going on for years now. I remember when it happened, it was literally like overnight the expired domain market changed. I was fairly active buying dropped domains until this change happened. If I buy an expired domain nowadays it's for whatever traffic the links may bring, not for the equity.
This is an excellent thread on the topic of expired domains and link building.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWold.
A few weeks ago, we asked the question Do Links That Open In New Windows Pass Equal Google PageRank? Honestly, I felt the question was a bit out there and that there is no difference between links that open in new windows and just stay in the same window, but I figured I'd poll our readers anyway.
Most of those that answered the poll said that a link that opens in a new window passes the same amount of link juice and PageRank compared to a link that opens in a the same window. I am a bit surprised that 10% of the 210 respondents said that links that open in a new window pass less PageRank than links that open in the same window.
Here is the break down of the results:
I did ask Google for a statement on this topic, but I forgot to follow up. The person I asked said he doubted there was a difference, but he would ask. Again, I forgot to follow up - maybe that Googler can comment below after they get the answers they need?
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
This was scheduled to be posted today. I am offline today and scheduled several polls for the days I am offline. I am back Friday, May 21st.
About a month ago, we ran a poll asking you how risky are paid links? We all know how much Google hates sites that buy or sell links. But many SEOs are convinced the risk is worth the potential reward. So we ran a poll so that I can gauge how concerned our readers are about paid links and after about 250 responses, I thought I share the numbers with you.
Overall, we have a wide range of responses that show me that SEOs can't agree on this topic. I asked to rate how risky link buying is on a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being the very risky and 5 being not risky. Most SEOs voted on 3, yes, 93 votes or 31.42% were saying its risky, but not too risky. Then 24.66% or 73 people said it is closer to not being risky, voting on 4. Then the next most popular vote was 20.95% or 62 people voting 2, for just behind being very risky. 11.82% said it is not risky at all and 11.15% said it is very risky.
Here is the chart:
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
This was scheduled to be posted today. I am offline today and scheduled several polls for the days I am offline. I am back Friday, May 21st.
A couple days ago we reported on a public thread asking the question, is Yell.com selling links? It is a valid question and the thread at Google Webmaster Help has seriously heated up.
In fact, a Yell representative responded to these accusations, denying that they sell links for the purpose of selling PageRank. Matthew Bottomley from Yell said:
Great debate but it's actually based on a false assumption. Yell doesn't sell links.We do link to all businesses where we hold a valid website address - whether the business is a paying advertiser or not - and we do allow Google to follow them. Take a look at the businesses listed on page 6 of www.yell.com/s/plumbers-derby.html as examples of the latter - these companies do not pay for advertising with Yell.com.
Some competitor sites only allow businesses to add their website address if they pay for advertising with them. We think this would be like paying to include a telephone number or an address. Whilst it's true that our YellDirect service doesn't currently allow business owners to add their website address, it is in our plans to do so. In the meantime, we telephone every business that registers with us to gather their website address and other additional information so that we can validate the business before publishing. Any business can also call our registration line 0800 533 433 to add their website should we not already hold it.
Our goal is to get every single local business in the UK online. So we allow Google to follow the links. We believe this helps Google maintain an up to date and comprehensive record of all local business websites.
Hope this clarifies things
Matthew Bottomley
Yell.com
After his response, most people are still not convinced. Ultimately, it is up to Google to decide here what to do with it. But I doubt Google will make any announcement about this, nor should they.
JohnMu from Google said:
I prefer not discussing third-party sites. To me, it's interesting to see the different opinions on something like this, which does show that sometime things are not just black or white (please be civil even when discussing things that you might disagree about; the discussion is interesting, let's not ruin it).
John did add:
For what it's worth, both the contents of Matt's video ("What types of directories are seen as sources of paid links?" ) and the general paid link guidelines are still very much relevant today. If you feel that this particular site is violating the guidelines, please do take the time to submit a paid links report for that -- the reports are all reviewed and if necessary, appropriate actions are taken.
Nothing like a link selling debate to get forum enthusiasts and SEOs riled up.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Yesterday we ran a poll on how risky is link buying. Well, the last thing you want is me writing about your site when it sells links. :) Unfortunately, I found an interesting *public* thread at Google Webmaster Help about a big time web site, Yell.com allegedly selling links.
The person who started the thread clearly wanted Google to take notice and he leaded to an example of a page with "sponsored listings" that are links without a nofollow. Take a look for yourself.
If you view the source code, you clearly see that Yell.com understands how the nofollow attribute works. They have it on their printer friendly links and links where they do not want to pass or dilute their PageRank (which we know doesn't work too well anyway). The links doesn't go through any redirect, as far as I can see. So it does seem to be passing PageRank.
But is this a paid link?
It seems like even the free listings are passing PageRank. It also seems like a web directory like approach that can be equated to the Yahoo Directory or Open Directory Project. Kevin in the forums said he doesn't think this is a true paid link, he explained:
When you upgrade a free standard listing by buying a paid listing in Yell you are not buying a link. Having a link to your website on your paid advert is an optional extra - it is not what you are paying for. What you are paying for is extra pominence in Yells directory. You do not pay any extra if you have a link to your site. therefore you are not buying links when you buy a listing in Yell.
If you buy a heavyweight listing at Yell and do not have a web site you don't get a discount on the fee because you don't have a link. Therefore you are not buying pagerank or paying to influence your SERP, you are doing nothing except to boost your Yell listing within Yell itself.
Is this a paid link? See, it is not that clear. How risky are paid links? :) Oh and did I just help out a web site? Nah, it is a public thread and does go within our code of ethics.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
A Cre8asite Forums thread asks a question about the potential SEO or link building impact Facebook can have on a web site. The simple question is, is there a benefit in terms of ranking to have users share and fan your Facebook pages and for you to share information and links with them on those pages?
This site has a Facebook page over here, links are automatically shared. But technically, although Google sees the page the links do not pass any weight. They all go through a middle page and then another redirect, which I think blocks all link passing capability.
That being said, it does not mean that Facebook sharing doesn't help with your SEO efforts. The thing with social media is getting people to see your content that otherwise would not have seen it. If more people see your content, then more people can discuss your content and possibly link to your content on sites that do pass link juice. So although Facebook may not have a direct impact on your rankings, there may be a very strong indirect impact on your rankings.
Let's also not forget how much traffic a site like Facebook or Twitter can send. So keep that in mind also.
I admit it, I do a horrible job of manning the this Facebook page to answer comments and questions. I am not a huge Facebook guy, but I am trying to check in daily now and maybe I will get the hang of it. I am very active on Twitter so feel free to follow me there also.
Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.
A few weeks ago we ran a poll asking SEOs if you use search operators to find link opportunities? Well, the results are in, and with a bit over 80 responses (not that many, which is out of the norm) we have the results. Honestly, the results are all over the place.
Here they are:
As you can see, 61% said they use it 50% of the time or more. 39% said they use it rarely or never. 22% said they use it all the time and 16% said they never use it.
This is a very interesting break down showing really that link builders are very diverse on how they handle discovering and acquiring links.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
For all you out there that deal with clients every day, I figured I share with you a fun thread at WebmasterWorld. Let me just quote the post:
I was doing some link building for my local sites where people need to copy a paste a link which is on our site in a textarea.
I'm really shocked how many people don't know how to do this. Most of them don't even know the difference between an email address and a web address.
Can anyone reading this post tell me they didn't run into a client that didn't know the difference between an email address and web address? You all have, be honest.
I just hope those reading this all know the difference between an email and web address.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread started by forum administrator, engine, wrote:
A webmaster I spoke to today was after a simple way to find new link opportunities. I mentioned something to him, which was to try using Google's related: feature
It worked for him, does it work for you?
The single response so far said that they do not use search operators anyone. They have other strategies to get links. This one, in particular, said he creates "a list of the biggest, baddest websites in my niche and find a way to get a link from them." Can't you use advanced search operators to discover those sites? I guess you don't need to.
My question to you, do you use search operators, such as related and so on, to find linking opportunities?
Do You Use Search Operators to Discover Link Opportunities?poll
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
There is an excellent thread at WebmasterWorld that is basically a webmaster's journal of his link building efforts for a specific site. Wheel, a senior member, started the thread about a week ago, saying:
I've just launched a new website and am going to back it up with a link building campaign. I'm going to document my link building here, and welcome any comments.Notes:
- link building pros will find this boring. Perhaps small indie business owners will find this useful (which is what I am).
- I'm starting out with great content. I'm in a competitive niche and a regular old website won't cut it.
- I'm looking for 'people' to give me links, not 'sites'.
- I expect folks will find I don't have a lot of surprises.
- current stats, Google hasSince then, the thread is now 30 or so messages deep. The thread takes you through Wheel's link building journey for one of his sites. I am sure some of us can learn a thing or two from just reading through this thread.
Let me just quote one of the responses from another senior member at the forum:
Nice :) this thread should be printed and pinned on many many walls ..how to get links with style and intelligence :)
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has a new conversation on an old topic. The topic is to link to your home page, off your home page, using keyword rich anchor text that you want to rank for. The example given by one member is:
So I put up a paragraph on the homepage talking about say 'red widgets in oklahoma'. Then I link those words (red widgets in oklahoma) right back to the homepage. In other words, my homepage links to itself, with some nice juicy text.
And guess what? Despite no other backlinks with text to do with oklahoma, my site ranks #1 or 2 for red widgets in oklahoma.
I actually see this fairly often on the web. Clearly done for SEO purposes. I am surprised it works so well. Of course, the topic of the first anchor text counting or not. But Matt Cutts of Google published a video just the other day on this topic, watch it below:
Anyway, the SEO discussion is interesting.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
There is an excellent thread at HighRankings Forum on the topic of how you should or could track one's link building efforts. The topic in this thread started off about how to track links accrued due to a link building contest. However, the topic moved into how to track link building efforts for a site in general.
Many are of the opinion that no tool can accurately measure the links acquired over time. Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and the various other tools, to many, are not that accurate. As Rosemary said in the thread, "one month Yahoo would show 10,000 inbound links and the next month only 300." It is hard to rely on tools that you don't know how it works and when there is a bug, you cannot fix it yourself.
Others say that when they build links, they store the information in a spreadsheet to report back to the client. I have seen this done. I am a firm believer that if you are hiring a link building company, they should provide you with an organized means of knowing what links they acquired for you, from where and when they acquired them. I have said this before, so I say it again.
Others in the thread said they just gave up on collecting and monitoring this data.
How do you track your back links?
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
A Google Webmaster Help thread asks a common question in link building. The question is, are "web site designed by X," where "X" is a link to your company, against Google's guidelines?
Both a "level 4" and "top contributor" replied to the thread. One said:
I would think this is a matter of personal preference, and it is quite common in the industry.
The other said:
As far as we know - there is no harm from them. (Hope not - I use them on all my sites ;))
What do you think? Like they said, this is done very often. My company no longer does this, we haven't in years. But we did it a lot before "link building" was so important - go figure.
This is not a new question, we asked in in 2006 with
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
A WebmasterWorld thread has an interesting conversation about linking to competitors. In this case, the webmaster is considering giving his competitor a banner ad direct link (not through a redirect or nofollow) but without an alt text, in exchange for links from the competitor.
The main issue is that his site and the competitor's site are neck and neck in the Google search results for similar keywords. He does not want to do anything that might give his competitor the edge in the search results, nor does he want to give his competitor a second (indented) listing in Google.
Senior member, Wheel, said in response to the question a short but insightful comment:
Swapping links with your competitor, when the entire point seems to be to gain an advantage over each other, is going to leave one party unhappy. Expect this to be short term.
StoutFiles added:
Unless you feel this would help you both move up from #2-#4 to #1-#3, this will be more trouble than its worth. Someone will likely assume they're getting the raw end of the exchange and call it off.
What would you do and do you link to competitors? Tag our anonymous poll:
Do You Link To Direct Competitors?(polling)
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Link exchanges: The poor man's SEO from CNET discusses the pros and cons of link exchanges. The article isn't bad, overall.
What I personally find funny is that CNET quoted Evan Duffield after Evan emailed CNET with a link exchange request. Evan got a lot more than a simple link exchange, he got a whole article with clean links to his sites on the News.com domain.
Anyway, the article is being discussed at WebmasterWorld now, so if you are somewhat new to the SEO space, you should read the article and see the discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld
WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, created a thread at WebmasterWorld on the topic of "stingy links." In short, he said he was watching to a presentation by a Microsoft engineer about improving the SALSA algorithm for link structure analysis - and I noticed a very casual comment that "links from authors who are very stingy outlinkers are more informative."
Yea, a "duh" moment for Tedster and possibly others. As Tedster explains, it is not just about the PageRank funneling being worth more, but this may be something a search engine looks at. A site that is less likely to link out, when it does, it must be something worth while.
Like those people stingy with their money. If they do hand over cash for a product or charity, it has to make you think - well, this might be worth the money. Same here with links, those stingy with links, who do eventually link out, must be linking out for good reason.
The idea is not new but it is always nice to discuss concepts so they don't get stale.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
I found a fun thread at HighRankings Forums that discusses what he calls "unintentional reciprocal links." What I find funny about that name is that, if you think about it, an unintentional reciprocal link, but definition, is a natural link.
I believe this person is worried that Google or a search engine might classify his site to be in a link scheme if the people who he linked to, links back to him. In many cases, the places we link to, will naturally link back.
How often do I link from here to Search Engine Land and from Search Engine Land back to here? Is that a reciprocal link? How often do I link to other search blogs, that link back to me?
It is just natural to have "unintentional reciprocal links," so don't sweat it.
In the thread, Jill Whalen, owner of High Rankings, added an other point about reciprocal links:
In that case, the original poster is under the false impression that a reciprocal links are penalized. Since they're not, there's nothing to worry about.
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forums.
The other day, Google released a redesigned Webmaster Tools area. Soon after it was released, webmasters began noticing that the linkage data found in the new Webmaster Tools was out of sync with the one found in the old Webmaster Tools version.
Google has confirmed the issue, saying:
You may notice that your backlinks data differs between the new and old versions—this is because we're still filling in data for some sites in the new version. We hope that you'll find the new data more comprehensive once it's 100% filled in.
So for these sites, the issue hopefully will be resolved shortly. No need to panic.
Forum discussion continued at Google Webmasters Help, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.
I ran a poll a couple weeks ago asking, do you use interns as link builders? The 120 plus responses are in and most of those who responded said yes, they use interns as link builders.
74 of the 120 responses, or 62%, said they do use interns for link building. While, 45 of the 120 responses, or 38%, said they do not use interns for link building. One said that he is considering it.
The main debate is if an intern can be successful in link building. Is there enough time to train and deploy an intern in the art of link building before that intern moves on to the next thing he or she may be doing? The debate is still going on, on this topic. But clearly, most of you are comfortable with using interns for link building.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
There is a pretty funny thread for anyone who is somewhat familiar with the SEO industry. A thread at Google Webmasters Help has this SEO who goes on a rant about the nofollow and what have happened to links. In fact, he says that Google should consider all links nofollow by default and require webmasters to add a rel="follow" to links that they deem respectable enough to deserve any link equity.
Here is the webmaster's post:
I'm thinking that I should just adopt a site-wide policy that all links have nofollow. Because of Google's PageRank algorithm, links have become a dirty thing that requires a lot of consideration, a cause for concerns and panic, an object of envy, conflict, fight, bitterness, etc.. Reading this forum is a good indication of the sad state of what "links" have become. And, it's all because of Google's PageRank algorithm. It would be simpler, easier, and healthier if all links had nofollow as a policy. In fact, I wish Google would do the opposite; require people to add rel="follow" only when you want to pass "link juice" to someone else. The truth of the matter is that everyone has to know what PageRank is these days and some degree of SEO, which means that everyone is perfectly aware of what value and power links have. No one is innocent. Everyone treats links like money whether we actually get paid for it or not. Links has become a currency of power. In the old days, when we used to call them "hyperllinks" they were just a mechanism for convenience.
Now how is that for a rant? I kind of agree. I mean, the nofollow link attribute was originally designed to prevent spam in blogs, forums, and any open web form. Now it is used for ads, for managing your internal PageRank and to penalize sites. I am not going to go off on a rant on the nofollow attribute, so I will stop there.
The Google Webmasters Help thread has a lot of discussion around the nofollow attribute. It makes for a fun, pre-weekend read.
Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.
A week ago, we ran a poll asking when is the best time to send out link requests. We know, we don't recommend bombarding people with link exchange or request emails, but if you had to, when would you do it?
The hundreds of responses are in and it seems like most people suggest sending it on Tuesday mornings. Here is the breakdown in pie charts.
Best day to send link request emails:
Best time to send link request emails:
Not sure if this will help you, but the results are interesting.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 15th.
A WebmasterWorld thread has interesting discussion around the topic of pages earning Google PageRank with little or no links to those pages.
The discussion was started by a webmaster who asked, how can his page have a PageRank score of four, when Google webmaster tools reports the page has zero links? The obvious answer is that Google is not reporting all the links yet and it is very possible the page has links, but just not being reported yet. But that might not be the full answer.
WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, feels that Google gives "mom and pop" sites an artificial PageRank boost, in some cases. Let me quote Tedster:
My assumption is that this unusual PR boost is one of the ways that Google helps "mom and pop" sites compete - something that Matt Cutts made a side comment about on his blog a few years ago. He never said WHAT Google does specifically, only that they do a few things.
It seems like many top names in the thread believe in this "artificial PageRank boost." The question is, what is the artificial part? Is it the score shown, how the score is made up, or how Google sees the page in terms of trust and popularity?
In any event, do you believe in the artificial PageRank boost? Take the poll below:
Is There a Google Artificial PageRank Boost?
( online polls)
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Danny Sullivan's Analysis: Which URL Shortening Service Should You Use? has an excellent overview of the various URL shortening services available. In Danny's write up, he goes over about 15 different services and rates them based on how they handle the following:
There is some very good discussion around the piece at Sphinn and in the comments area in the article.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around the topics of building links from foreign web sites, in different languages.
For example, if I run a web site that is in English, focused for US users - what happens if I get some links from sites hosted in Israel, with Hebrew anchor text, linking to my English web site?
The obvious answer is that these types of links are not considered spam or low quality, simply because of the site's origin. If a foreign site is linking to yours out of relevance, then it is fine. If you go ahead and buy thousands of links on foreign publisher web sites, then that might lead to other issues.
In fact, when you want to rank well in localized versions of Google, it is recommended to not only publish a localized version of the site using the country's TLD, but also to acquire links from sites sharing the localized view and on the localized TLD.
Would acquiring "foreign" links to your USA English based site help you rank in both Google USA and Google localized? Maybe but it might not be the optimal way to go about your country specific SEO.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
There is an excellent WebmasterWorld on the topic of getting a "second tier link," as opposed to the link you really want. Wheel, the moderator of the forum, posted that it is not always easy or possible to get the .gov, .edu or aged link that all link builders dream about. When you efforts fail, why not go after those that have links from those "golden link" pages?
Wheel explained:
What I'll do is try to get links from second tier sites. Say I want a find a page on a .gov site that has a list of links. I'd like to be on that page, but I can't get a link. What I'll do is look at all the sites that are linked to from that page and try and get a link from them. I'll still get whatever good comes from that .gov link, just diluted and flowed through another site.
They are not the cream of the crop links, but they are still very valuable. The process is pretty simple:
(1) Discover golden link pages
(2) Request links from those pages
(3) Move on
(4) Click on links from the golden link pages
(5) Request links from those new pages
(6) Rinse and Repeat
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
I am a paid supporter of WebmasterWorld and to be honest, I don't often use the paid only rooms. But for the thread I am about to discuss, I can tell you, the small fee I paid to have access to this paid area, was well worth it.
Moderator, Martinibuster shared with us a new form of link building that he is finding that is working for him. Now, I won't go through everything he said, because I need to respect the "paid" part of the forum, but I will give you some insight into what Martinibuster's thoughts are.
Relevancy has become more and more important in the area of link building. In the old days, you just wanted links from sites that ranked high. These days, it is less about getting links from pages that rank well and more about getting links from pages that are related to your pages. These relevant links form, what he says, is a link clique. Now, Martinibuster's theory and trick is to control that link clique. How does he do this? Well, I won't say, cause I need to leave some of that in the paid area.
But I can say that this single thread is well worth the money I paid for the year. It is conversations like this thread that make me love doing what I do here, report on the treasures in the forums.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld (paid member access only).
An article at E-Commerce Times talks about a recently-filed lawsuit against Boston.com, a NYTimes company, that is being sued for its linking practices. According to the article, the simple presence of a link has prompted the suit, but from CenterNetworks, the real reason might be apparent: GateHouse, the company suing the Times, is upset because Boston.com is linking to subpages of the site, thereby causing readers to bypass the significant advertising on GateHouse's home page.
(My commentary: If there were no links there at all, GateHouse still wouldn't see traffic to its homepage. Be happy that you got the link!)
In any event, there is some worry if merely linking will require permission in the future. That would be a pretty silly move.
Then again, I worry that the E-Commerce Times article that WebmasterWorld members referred to isn't accurate since every other article I read on the subject matter is about circumventing the advertising.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Link building is going to happen whether I like it or not, so I better accept the 949394 emails I get per day. A WebmasterWorld thread asks link builders how they ask for links via email. Some tactics include putting the link up first (and thereby then emailing people -- they often will give the reciprocal link) and keeping the email short and brief and personal.
Ask for the link. Don't demand it.
Offer people you link to something valuable in return. For example, wheel suggests that you say something along the lines of "I've got data your visitors may find interesting" or "Here's a unique coupon code."
Since these are email requests, though, can you be reported to Google for spamming someone else? There's no answer to that -- it depends on the recipient.
I should add from my experience that it's unwise to ask big blogs for links. They might have a high PageRank and is extremely relevant for your purposes, but chances are, old posts won't be updated. (And like I said in sentence #1, we get hundreds of link exchange emails a week. That said, most aren't read anymore.)
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Since there's a huge war on paid links, is it true that you should avoid link buying at all costs? That means even using sites like press-release distributor service PRWeb.
Perhaps -- but PRWeb's goals are obviously not in the link building sphere. The goal for PRWeb is promotion of a particular service or website, not for link building. It's uncertain how Google handles links that are generated through PRWeb.
Randy says an important piece of advice for how you should handle this in general:
Truth be known, all link building should be approached from a Promotions/Advertising/Marketing mindset, not an SEO one. Get links that will stand a chance of bringing you real traffic from real qualified people visiting your site.
Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.
Senior WebmasterWorld member, Wheel, posted a WebmasterWorld thread explaining how now, the holiday season, is a great time to get quality links. How should you go about it?
Well, people love to give now. It is really the season of giving. So what Wheel did was give his industry niche a tip on how to get a solid free link for their sites. The people in his industry were so happy, they wanted to give back, something in return.
So he politely suggested that they can give him a link to his site, as a thank you. And many of these folks did. So he got several quality, targeted, related, one-way links to his site, for giving advice.
It is true, giving free advice gets links. We do it here several times per day and we get tons of links. So, let's see if it works. If you are happy with what we have done over the past five years, feel free to link to our 5 year birthday post with a thank you.
Happy Holidays!
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A couple weeks ago, we ran a poll asking SEOs and link builders where they would prefer their external links show up on a page. Well, the results are in and as expected, most SEOs would like that link in the first paragraph of content on a page.
Here is a breakdown of the hundred or so responses:
:: In First Paragraph of Context said 62 respondents or 63.27%
:: Link On All Pages said 8 respondents or 8.16%
:: Menu said 8 respondents or 8.16%
:: On 5 - 10 Pages said 8 respondents or 8.16%
:: In Last Paragraph of Context said 7 respondents or 7.14%
:: On Links Page said 2 respondents or 2.04%
:: Footer said 1 respondents or 1.02%
Then we had two "other" responses, one saying "any link" at all is great and the other said "content of page."
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
Michael Gray has written a great piece at Search Engine Land on how stories promoted in a social media site have actually translated to higher rankings. He takes a bunch of unpopular domains (e.g. not Forbes, Jalopnik, or other known car sites) and shows how their rankings have improved after the particular stories have been submitted to a site like Digg. Then he looks at the keyword rankings for each of these stories. It becomes obvious that social media is an alternative to link building but that it's imperative to use your keywords that you want for ranking in the Digg submission.
Of course, there are links to be gained, but there's obviously a lot more -- direct sales, awareness, and then some.
So why is it that you haven't tried social media marketing yet?
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
A Google Webmaster Help thread asks, can Google read links in Flash files or JavaScript? The simple answer is yes, they can. But it is not that simple.
Some people want to know the answer to this question because they want to know if their content will be indexed or not. Some want the links in those files to be found, while some don't. In fact, years ago, if you did not want a search engine to crawl a link, typically a duplicate content page, you would use JavaScript. Now, you are no longer safe, you must nofollow the link or noindex those duplicate pages or take other action.
The thing is, Google won't always crawl links in JavaScript or Flash either. So if you want your links to be found, be safe and put them in standard html format. But if you don't want your links to be found, putting them in JavaScript or Flash won't guarantee that.
Top contributor, Webado said:
1) don't rely on discovery of text and links in flash or javascript - ensure proper html content and navigation are available as well.
2) don't rely on Google NOT discovering text and links in flash or javascript either if you don't want them to. Ensure robots are clearly disallowed from all such content, otherwise they can be really nosy :)
JohnMu of Google confirmed that post.
As you can see, in this case, your damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
We all know about Google's latest change to the webmaster guidelines, where they removed directories as a good source of links. Having seen that, SEOs and webmasters ask themselves, if seeking links from directories is worth it anymore.
A WebmasterWorld thread has a large discussion around the topic. Old time memeber, pageoneresults, said:
Personally? I feel it is a waste of your time to do something like this. 750 directories? Did you see that Google recently removed the suggestion of submitting to directories from their guidelines? Ya, that is how much they despise these things now. There are probably a million directories. 99.5% of them were built solely for this purpose that we are discussing and are typically of little to no value. It is the same thing as submitting to 100,000 search engines. Probably the same group of people too. ;)
But I still personally believe that some directories have value. Can I name which ones they are? Not really because I don't think it is Yahoo or ODP or so on. I think it depends on the section you are in and the quality of that section. Of course, I believe Yahoo is top-notch in the directory space, but the value is way down from what it was years ago, in my opinion.
In any event, this is going to be a hot topic for the next few months. Join the discussion.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Last night, Google update their Webmaster Guidelines to remove a single line that reads:
Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.
In fact, I was able to pull up the old version of the page in the Google cache.
As you can imagine, this has set an early spark of flames through the SEO/SEM community. We have very early discussions on this topic at Google Groups, Sphinn (thanks Beu) and Search Engine Watch Forums.
In the Google Groups thread, Google's JohnMu explains why Google removed that line. Let me quote John:
I wouldn't necessarily assume that we're devaluing Yahoo's links, I just think it's not one of the things we really need to recommend. If people think that a directory is going to bring them lots of visitors (I had a visitor from the DMOZ once), then it's obviously fine to get listed there. It's not something that people have to do though :-).
Honestly, John's remark scares me. I have seen this before - or similar statements. In my opinion, this will lead to Google taking stands against many more directories - more than they have ever done in the past. How do I know? I don't, but as Google Blogoscoped reported last night, Google dropped their own link to their own directory. We know Google has gone after directories in the past. Will they ever go after ODP (dmoz) or Yahoo? I am not sure, but will they go after some other popular ones? Maybe.
To be fair, John does ask for feedback:
What do you think - does it make sense? :-) What else should we change / add / remove?
Where will this lead? That is my concern. Should I be concerned?
Forum discussion at Google Groups, Sphinn and Search Engine Watch Forums.
Ever ask someone to add a link to your site as part of some link building strategy? Most people have encountered link building requests every so often in this sphere. Have you ever asked? Have you had success? Wiep Knol has explained why most link requests fail.
The end result? It depends on who, what, when, where, and why. For the "who," you want to be identifiable and more transparent than the person named Kelly who has a standard email address. Use your company URL, a portfolio link, etc.
The "what" comes down to whether or not you really care to provide some useful information. If you are providing the desired anchor text, you will likely be ignored. Give a summary and let the webmaster you pitched figure out what he or she wants to do with it.
Wiep also speaks about the other 3 W's -- when, where, and why. It definitely should give you some good tips on how you can request those links.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
On a Cre8asite Forums thread, a forum member is looking for the ideal link building strategy. If you had to choose one kind of quality link, which would you go for: a relevant site with a high PR but not so many indexed pages, or a site that has a low PR but many indexed pages?
That's not an easy question to answer. If you had to choose one, more people are compelled to agree that the site with more indexed pages will perform better, even though the PR is low. Of course, PR is a metric that many people still feel should be ignored, however. But perhaps you shouldn't only look at the links -- people may consider you to be a competitor if they are a high PR site. Using that logic, you may want to go with the other types of links as well.
As Ammon John points out, this is a "situational decision." You need to evaluate your goals to see which tactic and link methodology you want to take first.
Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.
A week or so ago, I wrote a piece named Are Links From Blogs As Valuable These Days? In short, some SEOs are now against buying or obtaining links from most blogs. They feel that Google may be devaluing the once golden, blog link (yes, I am generalizing). So I decided to run a poll to see how our readers perceive links from blogs.
The results are in and we have 141 responses from SEOs and webmasters. 90 or 64% of the respondents said they like links from blogs. 41 or 29% of the respondents said they do not like links from blogs. While the remainder, 10 people or 7% of the respondents said it depends on the blog.
Here is the break down:
:: Yes said 90 respondents or 64%
:: No said 41 respondents or 29%
:: Depends said 10 respondents or 7%
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
In May I ran an informal poll asking Would You Buy a Link With a NoFollow Attribute? In short, a nofollow attribute is an HTML attribute you add to a hyperlink that tells the search engines that you do not vouch for this link. Most search engines will not count that link as a vote for the site it is linking to.
I was actually surprised by the results. They were split down the middle.
Of the 177 responses, 50% or 89 people said they would buy a link with a nofollow attribute. While 45% or 80 people said they would not. 5% or 8 people said, it depends.
Here is the break down:
:: Yes said 89 respondents or 50%
:: No said 80 respondents or 45%
:: Other said 8 respondents or 5%
Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums .
There is a newish WebmasterWorld thread that is just getting started on the topic of tips on outsourcing link building to India, South America or other countries outside of your local region.
Here are the initial tips this SEO learned and wanted to share:
Do you have tips? Let's add them to the WebmasterWorld thread.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld member was desperate for improved rankings, so he bought links. As a result, his rankings tanked and he was wondering if there's a better way to buy build links.
Really, if you're trying to buy links, the recommendation is to avoid using brokers. Go directly to webmasters and ask them if they can place a link on the site where it appears naturally (not in the navigation, for example). Additionally, go for quality over quantity. As pageoneresults says, "[t]en (10) high quality links will typically trump a hundred (100) low quality links."
The best ways to build links is slowly and methodically, he adds. You don't want to add a bunch of inbound links immediately because it can raise red flags.
On a related note, Jim Boykin suggests that you build links by focusing on the right text by having the right content on targeted pages. Don't necessarily link to your homepage; build links to the appropriate internal pages instead.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.
A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks members if they would consider buying a link that has a nofollow attribute appended to it. For those who don't know what the nofollow attribute is a snippet of code added to the html of the link, so a search engine can easily detect if they should follow the link (in terms of link popularity and even actually following the link physically). It looks something like this:
<a href="http://www.site.com/page.html" rel="nofollow">Visit My Page</a>
In any event, the thread asks if you would buy such a link. I know people do, cause some of my advertisers buy them from me. But would you buy such a link? I know it depends, depends on if the link is on a high trafficked site, or in a prime location, and so on. But let's pretend the link is on a site like this or a site like Search Engine Land, would you buy a link from those types of sites, if it was nofollowed?
Here is the poll (try not to use the "other" option):
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
Many blogs are abuzz with the news about a recent fake piece of linkbait that ended up capturing the eyes and ears of many big traditional news outlets and bringing the originating story thousands of backlinks. After the community went up in arms about the "snakeoil" tactics of this piece of bait, Nick Wilsdon and Barry at Search Engine Land talk about the ramifications of the action, especially with how Matt Cutts is responding to it from a Google perspective. In a Sphinn thread (that is REALLY long; you have been warned), Matt says:
My quick take is that Google’s webmaster guidelines allow for cases such as this:
“Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It’s not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn’t included on this page, Google approves of it.”
There’s not much more deceptive or misleading than a fake story without any disclosure that the story is hoax.
Numerous forum members at Sphinn are disappointed in the approach taken here, especially since it was fake and deceptive. Others think it's unfair for Google to assert control over web content. Yet others understand that Google wants to link to the most trusted and relevant website, so they're going to obviously take action. I'd argue that the piece of linkbait in question is the most relevant piece of the pie here and should rank #1 for the query.
The question is: what would happen if nobody admitted that the linkbait was fake and everyone assumed it was true? Even if people contest the motives of this particular piece of linkbait, it was confirmed as fake, but do you really think that every piece of linkbait out there is legitimate?
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn and Sphinn
I didn't know that being electrocuted by solar panels was even possible, but apparently it is. Solar Dave made a really cute video about how it all went down:
The idea behind the video, as Dave explains, was to illustrate that Google is starting to see that linkbait isn't all white hat and that there may be more "shades of gray" than assumed possible before (I guess anything can turn into black hat SEO if you think about it).
In the case of this piece of "linkbait," a few forum members were taken aback by hearing that Matt Cutts died :( I can hear that. What would we do without Matt's sunshine in our lives?
Is this viral marketing? It could be within the community who knows who Matt is. But most people don't, so it's mostly just linkbait among those who know Matt.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn
Matt Cutts wrote a blog post yesterday about how Google is noticing reciprocal link exchange requests and how the sender of the particular email tried to circumvent Google's "filters" by including a request for a link exchange within in image (so that Google couldn't "read" it). Since people are quick to report such infractions to Google, they know about it.
On that note, how do you compete with those who buy links in bulk? WebmasterWorld members attempt to tackle this question. Some typically avoid taking upon clients who are working in competitive industries unless there is money to be spent. Others look for relevant link exchange options (provided that the webmaster who is asked to give a link actually is receptive to providing the link).
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn and WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld member wants confirmation if getting multiple links would cause a penalty in the SERPs. He notes that very popular sites which rank on the first page of Google have a lot of links, including those from "shady" places. Why, then, can't he do the same thing on his smaller site?
Some forum members believe that the age and authority of site matter in this case. Some sites just always get inbound links. Others don't unless something is up.
A new site that gets like 20 links per day, then all of a sudden gets 2000 in one day, well then there's tom foolery going on there and the penalty gets slapped. Once that penalty is slapped, over time it will go away.
So be careful when you build your links, because you can find a dent in your rankings, but as forum members note, the rankings will generally improve.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
A Google Groups thread has a long discussion on how Google defines what a link farm is or is not. I have decided to isolate a Googler's comment, because who can best define what Google feels a link farm is, better then a Google employee?
JohnMu, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, posted twice in the thread. The second time he offered additional advice on how he would define a link farm. He said:
A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself "would I be doing this (linking there) if search engines didn't exist?"
Another way of looking at it is to think about where and how you will be linking: Do you feel fine with linking to that site with a highlighted link in your main content or would you rather have the link in 5pt gray on white in the footer? Do you want your visitors to see and use it or is it just for the search engines?
John also links to the Google link schemes page which has the official line on bad linking. Now, of course there is gray area and that is where John's post above comes into play. Even with that, people still may be confused. Well, if it feels wrong - then it might be.
John admits, even him being a Googler, it is still "hard for [him] to provide a definition of what Google sees as that."
If you need more clarification or have specific questions, you can join the Google Groups thread and hopefully be aided in the right direction.
Forum discussion at Google Groups.
As the link building strategy becomes more and more difficult (at least by some), people are seeking out alternatives to the standard two-way linking practice. In a WebmasterWorld thread, a member is looking at a triangular link strategy which wouldn't be directly reciprocal but he's hoping that he'll still benefit.
Would you do it? If you're looking for reciprocal links, three-way linking isn't much better. Furthermore, if the goal is to outwit Google, Google knows (a lot).
Ask yourself why you're even engaging in 3-way linking. Is it to help you or is it to help your audience? Again, you need to consider what your users want first.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
A newish term, named SEOicide, caught my attention via a WebmasterWorld thread. The thread discusses how an SEO has the opportunity to buy 70,000 links from a PR7 site for a great price. He asks if it he should do it.
Most everyone says, don't - you are setting yourself up for a penalty. In fact, words like SEOicide are being used to describe what you would do to yourself. But others are not convinced, they say, if the site will drive traffic to your site, then do it.
I would buy, if the direct traffic from those links brings you a profit. Otherwise it sounds very questionable a I would not sign any long term agreement/contract.
Anyway, back to the term SEOicide. I did some searching and it appears the Jane Copland of SEOmoz used the term on February 21st of this year in a comment on a blog post. So WebmasterWorld was not the first place it was used in writing.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Over at WebmasterWorld, users are discussing the potential value of a link from social bookmarking site StumbleUpon. Is it worth trying to submit to or is it completely not worth the effort?
Well, it depends on the content. Is it "worthy of being stumbled?" That's something that you must seek out. Of course, if you choose to take the plunge, the right person might come along and StumbleUpon your page and then blog about it, which can be an incredibly valuable link building experience.
Just a word of caution though: don't use social networks to be overly self-promotional. As one person mentioned in the thread, he was banned for submitting his own content. As a heavy StumbleUpon user myself, there's absolutely nothing wrong with submitting your own content but you must be sure to avoid being self-promotional. In other words, don't only submit your own stuff; mix it with other content as well.
[Note: StumbleUpon links are nofollowed, so from a search engine perspective, it doesn't help much.]
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Some link builders spend a significant time just trying to build up some sort of rapport with other webmasters. Eventually, they may feel that the pool is drying out. With so many link requests nowadays, you can't blame but feel helpless since everyone seems to be getting numerous link swap requests daily.
Where else can you go to build those valuable links? Perhaps your scope is too narrow. There are millions of sites on the internet, so look at related sites, local sites, un-related industries that still have some sort of relationship to the topic, how-to sites, blogs, history sites, and more. There really should be no shortage.
And truthfully, if you're feeling limited, perhaps you're also looking for "high authority" sites. Look into sites that may not be as authoritative but still show some promise.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Face it. Sometimes you can exchange links for free, and other times, you just have to buy a link. But is there a minimum toolbar PageRank number that you should go by before buying that link?
Obviously, this isn't a black and white question. Consider the content of the site. Two of the key questions you should ask yourself are "Is it relevant?" and "Can it deliver traffic?"
But beyond that, there's more that can be had if you consider buying that link now. A site that is PR0 can go nowhere but up. If you believe the site has potential, buy the link now and then just wait until the PageRank increases. You'll benefit from getting the early start.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Should you save wads of cash to buy link building software that contacts hundreds (or thousands) of webmasters for you to give you some links? Wiep Knol says no. In his recent blog post, he explains why link building software isn't the way to go and gives nine reasons why.
The biggest reason, at least from what I encounter on my day to day emails, is that link building requests like these are far from personal. Wiep also provides other reasons: it's bad for your image, it's easy to copy, it results in an unnatural link profile, and you'll miss the links you want, among others.
It takes considerable effort to build quality links. Buying a $200 piece of software won't do it for you. Research, commitment, and time investment are critical. Software won't give you the results of hard labor. It takes time and energy to make it to the top.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
In Search Engine Land's weekly column about link building, Eric Ward tackles a question about link building best practices. Is there such a thing?
Guess what? The answer is no.
He explains:
The problem with link building best practices is that if you ask ten link builders to agree on a set of best practices, each of them will be right, and each of them will be wrong, myself included.
What works for one link builder may not work for another link builder and vice versa. There's just no "standard" for link building. It comes down to the site's goals -- if they're looking to monetize, if they're looking for traffic, if they're looking for conversions, etc.
But since folks at Sphinn were looking for more, Eric has started a new column on his blog called Link Building Best Practices.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
Adam Audette wrote a brilliant piece on the fundamentals of link building on his blog, and he's right on the money. His core message is that links reflect value, so your linking strategy should focus on finding that valuable link and seeking out the appropriate neighborhoods for gathering such links. The higher the quality of the link, the better it is for you.
I'd summarize the entire post, but it really deserves its own read, your social media bookmarking, and your links too. Seriously. Adam did a great job. He divides his post into how link building has evolved, the components of a quality link, the importance of link neighborhoods, where to begin, and how to perform strategic link building.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
