12 replies to this topic

[rob1]

I have a photography site primarily in Wedding and Landscape and in an effort to increase my google rank I've been increasing my ibls. Asside from submitting to any directory I could find, I've mostly exchanged links with only sites that provided related services, ie wedding dresses, DJs, coordinators etc. For some reason I've been under the impression that linking with non-related sites was somehow bad. Is this correct?

I get many link requests in my link market site from car, poker, shopping, software and all kinds of other sites that up until now I've been rejecting. Should I just create a more global link page and link with everyone provided they are a quality site.

I was thinking of having a top level link page that had the categories, art, business, games, etc along with my specialized categories, that linked to the specific category page which would contain links to my partners.

This would let me get a lot more links faster. Any thoughts on this?

[qwerty]

The complementary sites you listed are very sensible link partners, Rob. It's not just about rankings: people looking at those sites may well be interested in your services, and you might get new clients that way. That makes those links potentially far more valuable than any response the search engines might have to them.

As far as other categories of sites are concerned, it would increase your sheer numbers, but it may not be worth the effort (no matter how little effort is involved), for a few reasons:

It hasn't been proven, but many people are theorizing that reciprocal links are ignored by Google, or will be soon. If that's the case, there's really no point in trading links with those other sites, because it's highly unlikely they'll ever send you any targeted traffic.

The more sites you trade links with, the more you'll need to keep track of. If you're trading links with some site that has nothing to do with yours, you're doing it just for the link, right? Well, what if they remove the link to your site, hide the page containing that link, use a script that search engines won't follow, or put a nofollow on them? What if they do that a month after you do the exchange? Or a year? How much time are you going to have to put into checking up on all of these links to make sure you aren't being ripped off?

Then there's the bad neighborhood issue. You have to be very careful what sites you link to, or you can get into some trouble. And if you link to a lot of sites, you'll need to check up on them to make sure they don't become bad neighborhoods in the future.

It's debatable whether a search engine is able to tell whether a given link is relevant or not. Does the algo know that a wedding planner site is relevant to yours? Does it know that a casino isn't? So I'd say that until we know for sure whether they're truly capable of such judgment calls, we ignore that question. But that still leaves us with the questions I listed above.

In other words, I don't think it's worth it. You're much better off thinking about your site's audience first. If you have reason to believe they'd be interested in what's on the other site, and you're willing to say that you recommend that site, that's a reason to link to them.

[rob1]

Bob, thanks for your very detailed response.

My purpose for link partners is stricly to achieve serps. I really doubt link partners help much with traffic anyone when you get the amount that you need to help you with serps. At that point most people would be overwhelmed. Quite frankly I think that's what the se is for.

All of the concerns that point out are not specific to partnering with non-theme sites. The can be problems with theme sites as well. Also, I think they can be addressed by good software, or at least made easier to deal with.

I think you answered my questions though and that is that google's algo really can't tell the difference between a theme or non-theme link

[qwerty]

As I said, that part is debatable. Lots of people will tell you they can definitely tell, and that they'll definitely ignore any links that are off-topic. I'm just not one of those people.

And yes, the things I warned about are as true of related sites as they are of any others, but the point is that the more links you gather, the more stuff you need to keep track of. If you honestly believe that none of these links are going to send you traffic, then I think you're wasting your time with the whole project, because you can't count on the links helping much, if at all, with the search engines.

[rob1]

. If you honestly believe that none of these links are going to send you traffic, then I think you're wasting your time with the whole project, because you can't count on the links helping much, if at all, with the search engines.

WOW, I can't believe you would say this. IBL is *ALL* that matter for google search engine serps. Don't believe me. Try it for yourself. Go to google and do a search for "click here". Out of over 2 billion results the number 1 result is adobe's site. Now go there, do a view source, and search for the keyword "click here". It doesn't even appear once. Now go to yahoo and enter links:http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Over 195000 inbound links, and I'm sure you know what the anchor text is.

It's all about links man!

[chrishirst]

It's all about links man!

absolutely wrong even your own example should tell you that if you could see through the link gathering haze.

It's all about ANCHOR TEXT with Google

Far too many blinkered people absolutely waste that potential by just grabbing any number of link with whatever text they can.

Give me 1 link with the right text over 50 with "Click Here", "Read More" or url only links any day.

[rob1]

Chris, of course. Please read the last line of my post. I think you missed the entire point of my post. Of course anchor text is important. My point was that the anchor text "click here" on an inbound link is all that google cared about for ranking adobe high and not any on page optimatation. My point is that inbound links with the correct anchor text ARE important while Bob is telling me I'm wasting my time.

[qwerty]

My point is that inbound links with the correct anchor text ARE important while Bob is telling me I'm wasting my time.

No, I'm telling you you're wasting your time if you believe that a link from any old site is as valuable as a link that could send you traffic, and that if you don't think any of your backlinks will send you any targeted traffic, you're wasting your efforts on links that will not, as I said, help much if at all.

I'm just saying it's not worth it if you don't get all you can out of your link building efforts. Don't settle for crap links because there's going to be more work down the road involving them.

[chrishirst]

Nope what Bob is saying is that Google in the recent updates has targeted some linking schemes and appears to have devalued them.

ROS (Run Of Site) links were apparently hit earlier in 2005 and there is a lot of feeling, given some of the apparent site drops in the "jagger" update that some types of reciprocal links have been hit.
The one thing that computers are good at is detecting and identifying patterns.
Reciprocal linking even by independent webmasters is likely to have a pattern, by accepting and requesting links from anyone and everyone that will have them is joining and assisting to create that pattern and each time links are swapped is increasing the opportunity for detection to occur and bring the whole house of cards around everyones heads.
BTW three way links are even easier to identify.

[chrishirst]

well I was nearly right

but if you put all these factors together you'll begin to see why we all keep saying that grabbing links for links sake is a futile task or will be something that will have a negative effect at some time.

[amabaie]

My point was that the anchor text "click here" on an inbound link is all that google cared about for ranking adobe high and not any on page optimatation.

Gee that's a no-brainer. Anchor text is all that counts for a search like "click here", because those words appear almost exclusively in anchor text. I mean, how many sites have heavily optimized their home page to get to the top of the "click here" SERPs?

[Jill]

What a crazy mixed up thread we have here.

For the record, rankings are most definitely not ALL about links. Nor are rankings ALL about anchor text. Nor are rankings not about links.

Links and anchor text are both important parts of the search engines' algos, and so are numerous other things such as the words on the page, the Title tags and the general crawlability of a site.

Hope this helps clear up any confusion here!

[Randy]

And just to further clarify or confuse the issue...

Links should not be pursued solely for Search Engine value. There should be at least some hope that a real person might use the links. Otherwise you're wasting your time.

My proof?

Yesterday alone my sites made over 70 sales from traffic that originated from links pointing to my site from other sites, not from search engine searches.

I guess it's a good thing I get links that are there for real people and not solely for the search engines, hunh?