12 replies to this topic

[PatrickGer]

I just took a look at google's guidelines and read that links that are intended to manipulate pagerank are considered bad links. I'm not sure what to make of their guidelines..dont all links manipulate pagerank (for example)?

Here are the things on my mind:

1)Does sticking to their guidelines matter a whole lot? Ive heard of cases where people were flushed down the toilet despite sticking to google's guidelines for an eternity.

2)Is link bartering (Ill give your community my product for free as a prize of your contest if I get a link for it ..or.. Ill write reviews for related businesses but only those willing to give me a link in exchange - kind of stuff) a violation of their guidelines -e.g. a form of paid linking?

3)If you have useful content that gains links naturally on your website, but that content isnt overly related to your business's purpose...is this natural linking to Google? Think a cartoon making fun of all the big name folks in the SEO industry on my website with a focus on "local SEO". Is this way of generating buzz "alright" with google? (If I read their guidelines I'd say yes..). As in links clearly aimed not to get traffic but to boost overall site authority..

thanks for any replies..

PS: Actually, Im wondering about Google & BING, too.

[bobmeetin]

I don't have the background to answer your questions, but with #2, even if it is a sort of paid link, who is going to "rat" on you? How will they know, find out? Are you going to fess up when the linking police show up at your doorstep on Sunday morning?

In a different perspective, you pay to join an article or press release distribution. You do your due diligence, submit some great articles that get accepted and picked up. You paid money to join, does that make it manipulation?

[PatrickGer]

I don't have the background to answer your questions, but with #2, even if it is a sort of paid link, who is going to "rat" on you? How will they know, find out? Are you going to fess up when the linking police show up at your doorstep on Sunday morning?

You could say the same thing about paid links. Who is going to "rat" on you? How will they know, find out? Are you.....

They might be able to detect paid links algorithmically...maybe they arent great at it, now but maybe they will.

same could happen with obvious bartering

In a different perspective, you pay to join an article or press release distribution. You do your due diligence, submit some great articles that get accepted and picked up. You paid money to join, does that make it manipulation?

It reads like youre against the whole search engines controlling what webmasters "have to" do on the web. if I read into that correctly, Im with you..... However my opinion doesnt matter, only ROI and risk do

Edited by PatrickGer, 20 July 2010 - 06:57 PM.

[qwerty]

If Google could have anything they wanted, there would be no advertising on the web (well, except their advertising platform, of course). All links would represent editorial decisions that some piece of content was so good that the owner of another site wanted to recommend it to their readers.

Since that's not going to happen, Google will settle for having everyone who publishes a link tell them whether or not there was any reason other than that editorial decision about wonderful content behind the decision to link. The problem with that is that it indicates an assumption that any time one fails to tell Google about the nature of a link, it's an attempt to deceive Google, and of course that's not always the case. Sometimes people fail to put nofollow on a link because they're not SEOs and they've never heard of nofollow. It's Google's job to figure out which links ought to count. It's up to you, as someone who knows something about how links work and how they may be treated by a search engine, to decide how much you want to comply with Google's wishes and how much of a risk (either that they'll catch you trying to deceive them or that they'll make the mistake of thinking you're deceiving them when you're not) you're willing to take.

[qwerty]

Let me add a little example to that statement. I have a little niche directory on a site I run for a friend. On one section of the directory, every page has a banner linking to the site of a photographer. Above the banner is the text, "This section of the directory is sponsored by". So it certainly looks like a paid link, but it's not a paid link. The photographer we're linking to is a friend of my friend, so I'm helping him out for free, and I'm not using nofollow on the link. His site is all Flash, so he needs all the help he can get

If someone else came to me and said they wanted to sponsor another section of the site, that would be another matter. I'd be accepting money in exchange for that sponsorship, and then I'd have to decide whether or not I was willing to put nofollow on the link (and whether I was going to charge extra to refrain from putting nofollow on the link). It would be up to me to decide whether or not I wanted to help Google in their effort to determine whether or not that link should be treated as an advertisement.

Now, for all I know, Google is already treating those free banners as ads. They certainly look like ads. For all I know, both my friend's site and her friend's site are being penalized because of these deceptive links (I kind of doubt it, though).

I asked Matt Cutts about it once, in a comment on his blog. He didn't reply.

[PatrickGer]

thanks for the thorough explanation. This no-follow topic remains a weird one in my mind :-).

[bobmeetin]

Me - I'm just playing the Devil's Advocate here, posing a plausible perspective on reality and what big brother could do. Nothing more.

Speaking of no-follow, I have been tinkering with a Joomla link-exchange component. I could possibly request and get an RFE implemented to add a no-follow option (yes/no) to the admin form. As a one-liner tip to explain the option to administrator-types, what might this read? Feedback please?

[Jill]

As a one-liner tip to explain the option to administrator-types, what might this read? Feedback please?

How about this...


"If you want Google to know that you have an awareness of SEO, then use this attribute on your pages."

[Michael Martinez]

What I find ironic about many people's claims to be following Google's guidelines is that often they are in violation of those guidelines. These are like the people who haven't changed anything (important) on their Website in the last four years so why should they think about what changes to their site might have caused.

Guidelines are interpreted by different people in different ways, but where Google's guidelines are concerned they're more like secret rules since only Google's interpretation matters.

It is impossible to adhere to a search engine's guidelines 100% because they don't tell you all the little details that can make the difference between good behavior and bad behavior.

And that is one of many good reasons why the best SEO advice is to design a Website for people and not for search engines.

If you want to exchange links, why do you need to embed "rel='nofollow'" on the links? If you assume your visitors will always click on the links you put on your site, and that those visitors will judge the quality of your site (and its reliability) on the basis of where those links take them, will you still be exchanging links with the sites you want to nofollow? If so, then you don't need the nofollows.

[PatrickGer]

Guidelines are interpreted by different people in different ways, but where Google's guidelines are concerned they're more like secret rules since only Google's interpretation matters.

You just made me think of SE "guidelines" in a completely different way.

You reminded me of pirates of the caribbean...and that there's a significant difference between "rules" and mere "guidelines"

[tomshark]

If Google could have anything they wanted, there would be no advertising on the web (well, except their advertising platform, of course). All links would represent editorial decisions that some piece of content was so good that the owner of another site wanted to recommend it to their readers.

To some degree Matt Cutts role is to use his influence to persuade SEOs to follow the Google mantra (suggesting that Google will smile on them if they do). Don't get me wrong I like Matt Cutts and he has mostly great stuff to share, but he is the head of the web spam team at G, so consider that.

[RegDCP]

And that is one of many good reasons why the best SEO advice is to design a Website for people and not for search engines.

Isnt that the primary Google guideline Michael?

If you want to exchange links, why do you need to embed "rel='nofollow'" on the links? If you assume your visitors will always click on the links you put on your site, and that those visitors will judge the quality of your site (and its reliability) on the basis of where those links take them, will you still be exchanging links with the sites you want to nofollow? If so, then you don't need the nofollows.

The nofollow is not for the visitors, but to tell Google that the link is either not relevant to the topic or is a 'For Profit".
Without the personal connection to the owner, the link would never have grown organically and the big G is looking for organic.
Visitors do not know if link is nofollow or not.

Best,
Reg

[Michael Martinez]

The nofollow is not for the visitors, but to tell Google that the link is either not relevant to the topic or is a 'For Profit".

Not according to the original proposal for the attribute. Nor is there any way to distinguish between a nofollow on a paid link and a nofollow on a highly relevant link that just happens to be auto-nofollowed. The nofollow attribute provides no information whatsoever on the quality, relevance, or user-acceptability of a link.