The Truth about linking -- Dirk Johnson

[compar]

I just read this very interesting exchange on the LED Digest. The author is Dirk Johnson a well known expert in the filed of links and linking. He dispells many of the myths that exist around this subject.

From: Dirk Johnson
Subject: Outbound links


>> After doing linking campaigns for a couple of clients, I noticed
>> that pagerank seemed to increase as soon as I put outbound
>> links on the site, long before any number of links could be
>> reciprocated... I reported this in several forums, and was
>> heartily poo-pooed by the experts...

- Dave Roberts, LED 1808

Dave,

It's no surprise that you got "heartily poo-pooed by the experts".
As someone who does link management work full-time, and has done it
for years, I stay out of those forums. The "advice" presented in
them is notoriously misguided.

Your analysis was correct. The "experts" have never seen the
phenomenon of outbound links helping a site because they are too
concerned about gaming Google with their linking efforts, and
creating complex theories. They'd never put a non-reciprocating link
on their sites, because that would run counter to their coveted
theories. They flamed you out because you challenged their beliefs.
They are not really interested in facts and analysis and what
actually works.

Here are a few of the myths that are widely-circulated on those
boards as "fact", when, in fact, I see case after case that refutes
all of it:

- Myth 1: Non-reciprocating, outbound links are "bad".

As you observed correctly, they can actually help. Google seems to
reward sites for being genuine resources to their visitors. And to
do so implies a lot of non-reciprocating links. The only thing that
"leaks" about the whole concept of "leaking" PageRank to
non-reciprocating outbound links is the theory of "leaking PR"
itself. Maybe it holds up mathematically in the famous PageRank
equation, but real world examples of index results refute the effect
of it on actual index results, very consistently. As you've
observed, it actually helps.

- Myth 2: Low PR links bring down your own PR.

The fact is, every link earned adds to your overall standing. Even
the original PageRank equation (which is very likely not a big
factor in the actual Google index results anyhow) is an summation,
with the PR of each link evaluated separately, and then totaled. It
is not an average. Whoever thinks otherwise simply does not
understand advanced algebra. It is true that some links count more
than others. But, mathematically, they all count, cumulatively.

There is emerging and very strong evidence that the sum total of
links from unique domains, while also tossing out the influence of
multiple links from the same domain, is a very strong factor in
Google's index results. The PageRank formula does not account for
this at all because it does not distinguish for unique domains, so I
suspect that this evaluation is a separate, and very significant
factor inside the Google indexing algorithm.

My guess is that it's probably Google's way of devaluing the
following situations:

- Multiple instances on a site of affiliate links that point
directly back to the merchant domain.

- Internal links within a site.

- Outright gamesmanship and "sister" site link structuring.

- Paid advertising text links that show up on every page of a
advertiser's site.

The "first" link coming back from a domain is the one matters. The
rest seem to be discounted heavily inside Google. I see a lot of
examples of sites with thousands of links that come from a handful
of domains that do not index as well as a site that has only a few
hundred of links, but they all come back from unique domains. And
those links are not necessarily high PR links. The site with more
unique domain links generally gets indexed higher for specific
keywords.

I have never seen this tidbit described on any discussion board or
put forward by any SEO specialist, because arriving at this
conclusion is not readily apparent, except to those of us who do
advanced analysis of competitive link back situation reports on a
daily basis. You read it here, first. Forget about PR. Unique
domains matter. Big time.

- Myth 3: "One-way" backward links count more than reciprocal
links.

This is a myth being perpetrated and perpetuated by the "PR links
for sale" industry, and by the SEO gurus who rely on that industry
to get their index results. Sites with large numbers of reciprocal
links and limited numbers of one-way links continue to index
extremely well. Again, all it takes is a look at some actual, real
world index results, and then analyze the link-back profiles, in
depth.

- Myth 4: Google counts only the links from pages with PR4 and
higher.

This one is famous, and even the SEO crowd knows that it is a flawed
theory. Yet it is perpetuated and recycled by the amateurs on the
discussion boards, probably because Google only shows high PR links
in their standard link back report. There are a lot of sites that
have very few PR4 links coming back, but a large number of lower PR
links, and they index extremely well. Again, think "unique domains"
here.

- Myth 5: Links outside of your "theme" will hurt you.

Total bunk. The real reason for not pursuing links outside of your
"theme" is because it is not appropriate to do it, and it is mostly
a waste of time and money. Themeing takes place on the page level,
not the domain level. And links coming from "non-themed" sites can
reside on pages that are quite well-themed. A link from the "travel
links" page of a gambling site may be very helpful to a travel
agent, if only from a keyword density analysis perspective. The
direct traffic from that link would be non-existent. Please realize
that I am not a fan of this practice at all, but the results that I
have seen prove that it works. Take it for what it's worth.

If you want a link strategy that works well, then forget all of
gobbledygook on the discussion boards. Success is much more simple
than that. Just set out to link as if your site traffic depended on
it, and that Google did not exist.

Request links from as many sites as you can find in your realm of
interest that publicly offer to reciprocate. Link to them first, and
request links from them using their preferred method of submission.
Be sure to use their online submission form, if one is provided.

Be gracious and patient. Don't ever threaten to remove links if you
don't get a reciprocal. And no gamesmanship with respect to PR,
networks, page coding, etc.

Keep doing this work indefinitely, with as much vigor as you can
muster. You'll likely be amazed at the outcome, and you'll soon
leave the "game players" in the dust. I see this happen all the time.

Dave, you'll rarely see that kind of straightforward advice on a
linking discussion board, where gamesmanship is celebrated. Yes,
it's more interesting to over-analyze something, but it is all quite
misguided.

Thanks!

Dirk Johnson, Owner

LinkStrategy.com
http://www.linkstrategy.com

[dazzlindonna]

Very interesting article. I'm not sure anyone can conclusively proclaim the "truth" about any aspect of Google's algo (except Google), however, my own "beliefs" match Dirk's. And my beliefs are based on my own experiences with my own sites, which of course is limited (twenty-some-odd sites). Nevertheless, it's nice to see such a good summation of my own thought process by someone who is respected in his field.

[SENewbie]

Thats a great article, thanks for posting. The one quote that really stood out to me was this:

"If you want a link strategy that works well, then forget all of
gobbledygook on the discussion boards. Success is much more simple
than that. Just set out to link as if your site traffic depended on
it, and that Google did not exist."

I've let the link exchanging slide lately since I usually get a couple requests a week from newer sites. But I think its time to resume some efforts in this direction with the above quote in mind.

[Such Great Heights]

I like his point of view. Sounds like good advice to me.

Especially the line ... "Just set out to link as if your site traffic depended on
it, and that Google did not exist."

Makes sense.

Google is definitely a big player, but if there was no Google/big search engines what would we depend on?
Inbound links. From anywhere and everywhere.

There are probably little things you can do to help your site out, with Google's SERPs, but the bottom line is traffic, well targeted traffic.

This reminds me ... I need to put more effort into link building. :)
----
SENewbie beat me to it. :)

[ferret77]

I like that fact that he reconginizes that mant seo 'experts' if there is such a thing use forums to spread bad advice

[Help Desk]

It is very difficult to find straight answers. I have seen numerous postings in other forums that indicate outbound links reduce your PageRank(PR).

Great article.

[ferret77]

I have site drop in pagerank when i added outbound links but they did not drop in rankings

I aslo think i have gotten ranked for a term that i didn't optimize for by my outgoing links

[mxlabs]

good article for sure. I like how he thinks "out of the box" and tries to counter the PR madness... for everybody else it is too hard to resist the magic of the green bar obviously.

[GuyFromChicago]

It is very difficult to find straight answers. I have seen numerous postings in other forums that indicate outbound links reduce your PageRank(PR).

Great article.

PR aside, outbound link are of value to your visitors if they present information that may be of use or interest to your visitors.

I have a page on one of my newer sites that I give people links on for posting in my forum. They get an anchortext link with a paragraph of text describing their site. I only accept sites that are well themed with my site. PR is not even a consideration for me in this case, providing links to sites my visitors may enjoy is.

[compar]

It is very difficult to find straight answers. I have seen numerous postings in other forums that indicate outbound links reduce your PageRank(PR).

Great article.
Yes and they are from paraniod people who don't really understand what they are talking about. That's the point of the article and why I posted it.

[steve sardell]

I too enjoyed his article. I especially enjoyed the dig at certain fora that have been spreading some of these myths for years. What impressed me was the fact he did not need to name them as most already know which he was referring.

[Help Desk]

It is amazing how much "mis-information" is out there. Google for one likes to keep their solutions/results simple. They have "solve things with an algorithm" and "affect the entire world" mantras. When I see posts that worry me, from other sites, I just think if it fits with the way Google see's things.

Here's an excellent little article about Google's company that I have hanging on the wall of my cube. It would be great if more companies where like this.

The Google Way (http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/02/20/08OPconnection_1.html)

[Arnica]

I have site drop in pagerank when i added outbound links but they did not drop in rankings

I aslo think i have gotten ranked for a term that i didn't optimize for by my outgoing links
There's a lot to be said for your outbound links giving you relevance. I also have several sites that I use to link to my main business site ranking higher than I would have expected for the phrase that only appears in the outbound link anchor text on those sites. The moral is don't worry about PR - build good links (both inbound and outbound) that will keep visitors interested in your site.

These days many visitors seem to be too well aware of sites that are playing SEO games to achieve rank and are wary of doing business with them.

Mick

[schlottke]

Mick, I agree with you. I feel it is more necessary to gain good linking structure than worrying about a leak in PR. I think if you run a site correctly you'll find yourself on the top of the engines with little effort.

[Help Desk]

How did forums.DigitalPoint.com do it? This site is at the top of ALOT of searches.

[digitalpoint]

www.digitalpoint.com is what some would consider an authority site.

[Arnica]

www.digitalpoint.com (http://www.digitalpoint.com/) is what some would consider an authority site.
Undoubtedly!

[steve sardell]

Originally Posted by ferret77
I have site drop in pagerank when i added outbound links but they did not drop in rankings
Hi ferret77,

There are a number of other reasons you may have lost page rank other than adding outbound links and I would never consider it a cause and effect relation. As an example some of the pages linking to you may have lost rank thus causing your rank to drop. Having out bound links to the best of my knowledge will not cause a dilution in your PR. The key is your rankings did not drop.

[schlottke]

www.digitalpoint.com is what some would consider an authority site.

Is the phrase used loosely or how does google decide this?

[compar]

Is the phrase used loosely or how does google decide this?

The term authority sites first showed up in either the Local Rank patent application or in the hilltop paper. I'm not sure which and it may be both. I'll give you the links to these below.

The question is, is Google actually using this technology and declaring sites as authority sites. I'm not sure.

Here are the links:

Hilltop paper: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Egeorgem/hilltop/

Loacl Rank Patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=6,526,440&OS=6,526,440&RS=6,526,440

[steve sardell]

HI schlottke.
Is the phrase used loosely or how does google decide this?
If your question is not rhetorical it has to do with the 900+ PR 4 or better on topic ibls. If it were in jest pardon moi.

[Will.Spencer]

I don't have enough data to make a firm stand on either side of the "PR leak" issue, but I do know this:

I converted *thousands* of outbound non-reciprocal links on several of my web sites from HTML to JavaScript.

This change has had no noticable effect on any search engine. I've been running this way for several months. It seems like it's time for me to switch back to HTML links.

[Ergobob]

Great linking strategy concepts Compar. Thank you very much.

I was wondering what your thoughts were on Anchor text from inbound links? Page specific keywords?

I was also wondering what your thoughts were on title content. Few relevant words that are page specific?

Thanks Again,

Bob

[compar]

I was wondering what your thoughts were on Anchor text from inbound links? Page specific keywords?
In my opinion the anchor text from a IBL is the single most important part of an IBL. A lot of people worry about the PR, but the PR of the page doesn't tell Google what the link is about or relevant to. So if you want a link to have any chance of advancing your page in the SERPs it has to have good anchor text. You should always use you prime keyword phrase or phrases as anchor text.

I'm not sure what "page specific" keywords are. Do you mean specific to the page the link is pointing at? If that is the case then they are anchor text aren't they?

If you mean specific to the page the link is on I don't think it really matters today. Eventually Google may start to give extra relevancy value to a link from a thematically related page, but I don't think they have this prefected yet.

Links are about anchor text today.

I was also wondering what your thoughts were on title content. Few relevant words that are page specific?

I assume you are talking about a page title that is found in the head section of the code. Aside from the value of IBL this is probably the single most important element of a web site from the SE's point of view. This is the headline. This tells the SEs what the page is about. So it should contain your prime keyword phrase. Don't waste a title with things like "Welcome to mydomain.com". That doesn't tell anyone what the site is about.

Hope those are the answers you were looking for.

[ferret77]

Actually I have my pr drop on numerous sites when i added outbound links

enough so that it doesn't seem like a coincidence, I havn't cared because my rankings have just gottem better

I also had some sites that had link directorys on and the main link directory index pages I label "links.php" like a dumb ass

Google didn't follow the links to the links pages , so none of my link partners was receiving pr ,(the link pages where not even in the index) the main pages all where pr5

So in order to make up for my error I linked all the linkpages directly from the front page , next update all my linkpages went pr3-4 and the main index/front paes went to pr4

[ferret77]

The key is your rankings did not drop.

Rankings are not really directly related to the green toolbar

I have many sites that ranked very well and only have a pr5 where as much of the compettion has much higher pr

[Catfish]

Adding outbound links which are not reciprocated does decrease your page rank mathematically. Arguing that is pointless because Page Rank is a mathematical formula and anyone who can read and has graduated from pre calc can see the relationship. Having said that, there is more than one way to get to Rome.

Many of the different parts of Google's algo conflict with one another so as to make it more difficult to reverse engineer. Digital Point has so much page rank that it gets ranked for a lot of stuff just based on pure page rank. Of coarse the thousands of links and forum posts make it a page rank power house. So realistically, Shawn could rank for a lot of things without content and outbound links. But obviously, those things help your rankings to a degree. What degree depends on your implementation. At what point do extra out links to relevant documents out weigh the advantages of conserving page rank and vice versa...that's where the art of SEO comes into play. But to say that Outlinks don't negatively affect your page rank is wrong. However, the amount of PR bleed may be nothing compared to the boost you get from linking to theme related sites that Google, Yahoo and MSN consider relavant and important. BUt they are two different calculations.

I am often suprised how people make assumptions about the algo based on unrelated behaviors. And how many people have never actually READ the Page Rank, Hilltop and Topic Sensitive White Papers. There is A LOT of good information about SEO in those.

[livinginitaly]

Adding outbound links which are not reciprocated does decrease your page rank mathematically. Arguing that is pointless because Page Rank is a mathematical formula and anyone who can read and has graduated from pre calc can see the relationship.

I don't get it .......... if it's basic math, maybe a link out to a 'rated site' results in a score of '+1' and a reciprocal link from / to a 'rated site' scores as '+2'.

One thing i have seen very often is that a site with an 'unexpectedly' high PR (based on content and my own 'personal' opinion) will often have a couple of links out to 'Google', 'Yahoo' or maybe a related 'high profile', 'high PR' site. I can't see that the two things aren't connected in someway.

[I, Brian]

The math may hold true for PR loss, but Google appears to count anchor text links at least as highlighted parts of the body copy. Aaron Wall at www.SEObook.com uses this method frequently, and as there are plenty of pages ranking well with outbound links.

[Catfish]

I agree that many pages with outbound links rank better than those without. As I said they are two competing algo characteristics. For example (TOTALLY HYPOTHETICAL):

If each point of page rank were 10 points and each outbound link to a releated webpage was 1 point what would make the most sense to do for any given webpage. Add 100 out bound links right? Unless each outbound link caused the page rank to drop by 2 points. But because no one knows the actual point structure of Google or Yahoo it becomes a guessing game, which is exactly what the search engines want.

I am not trying to discourage outbound linking. Only stating that it does decrease page rank and that page rank still factors in the google algo.

[pcarlow]

outbound linking. Only stating that it does decrease page rank
Wrong, outbound links only dilute the amount of PR being passed to each link on the page. It does NOT decrease the PR of the page.

In my opinion, the apparent increase of PR when adding outbound links is a coincidence.

That is close to the best article on linking I've ever read. Thank you for sharing it compar.

[Catfish]

Wrong, outbound links only dilute the amount of PR being passed to each link on the page. It does NOT decrease the PR of the page.

In my opinion, the apparent increase of PR when adding outbound links is a coincidence.

That is close to the best article on linking I've ever read. Thank you for sharing it compar.

No, you are wrong. Because, as you have said, outbound links dilute the amount of PR being passed to each link, the amount of PR available to that page for each subsequent iteration of the page rank formula after the initial calculation will be lower. This isn't a debatable issue man. Read the Page Rank white paper. It's in the formula. The math has not changed.

Page Rank is an iterative process. It takes a few cycles until you get convergence. But as I say, it's somewhat of a mute point because the benefit you get from the outbound links (especially in Yahoo) will most often compensate for the potential page rank that you might lose.

[Leroy James]

I hardly ever take advice from discussion forums about SEO strategies. I have 2 sites that are #1 for their keyword phrase and the keyword phrase is fairly competitive, sometimes 29,000,000 search results. The fact of the matter is reciprocal links work. I don't really care about PR. (oh my gosh, an seo guy saying he doesn't care about PR!) The only reason I even consider it is it helps me to know that the page is spidered by google. What I am more concerned about is whether the copy or links on the page itself relate to my keyword phrase. It bugs me when link partners will decline a trade based on a new page in my site that hasn't updated PR. I know it'll have a PR of 4 or above in the next update and then they'll want to be on the page.

I usually don't say much about this stuff, I mean why give away what really works to your competition, but after reading the letter I just had to vent... just a little.

Adam

[punksgupta]

even a kid knows about it huh!

[frankm]

just a quick note: thanks for sharing this with us compar!

[bigdoug]

Take any site that has a minimum of 100 back links in G and places between position 25 and 40 in SERP's, and add 1 PR7 link (clean) and 2 x PR6 links (clean) with a 1,000,000 search ratio on KW's and watch! That site will go to first page in less than 2 weeks. I do it all the time. Clean, one - way links with high PR works. The rest I agree with and that was a very well-done and very informative article.

[ashiezai]

Take any site that has a minimum of 100 back links in G and places between position 25 and 40 in SERP's, and add 1 PR7 link (clean) and 2 x PR6 links (clean) with a 1,000,000 search ratio on KW's and watch! That site will go to first page in less than 2 weeks. I do it all the time. Clean, one - way links with high PR works. The rest I agree with and that was a very well-done and very informative article.

What is a 1,000,000 search ration on KW ? :confused:

[canute1]

this is a well written article I agree, its simple common sense surely the bust thing for bew users is to have usefull links on your site and they will vote with their feet

[Homer]

Indeed the author of this letter seems to know what he is talking about from experience, day in and day out. I question this though
Request links from as many sites as you can find in your realm of
interest that publicly offer to reciprocate.
In the Google Patent there is mention of link bursts. Is it possible you can accumulate too many links in a short period causing a flag to raise?

[GuyFromChicago]

Indeed the author of this letter seems to know what he is talking about from experience, day in and day out. I question this though

In the Google Patent there is mention of link bursts. Is it possible you can accumulate too many links in a short period causing a flag to raise?

I doubt it. It goes back to statement that if you could hurt you competition by linking to them we would all link the crap out of our competition until they vanished from the serps. I would at least ;)

[Homer]

I doubt it. It goes back to statement that if you could hurt you competition by linking to them we would all link the crap out of our competition until they vanished from the serps. I would at least ;)
Well I guess. I personally don't have that kind of weight to through around. The link burst article I read talks about link bursts relative to your website's previous trends.

[GuyFromChicago]

Well I guess. I personally don't have that kind of weight to through around.

If you're talking about coop weight, you wouldn't even need it. Instead of buying links to help your sites you could just buy a boat load of links to penalize your competition. I just haven't seen anything yet that leads me to believe that links (regardless of how many) pointing to your site can hurt your site.

[Homer]

If you're talking about coop weight, you wouldn't even need it. Instead of buying links to help your sites you could just buy a boat load of links to penalize your competition. I just haven't seen anything yet that leads me to believe that links (regardless of how many) pointing to your site can hurt your site.
Nor have I. Apparantly there is a line in the sand somewhere. I guess we'll have to find it. I will admit that I am being careful with my links because of this. Are you suggesting that I should just unleash the beast, no holes barred, let it rip?

You see what I mean? If I had the ability to create 1 million+ links overnight then another 1 million+ the next night and so on, the SEs (Google mainly) wouldn't look suspiciously at this?

[GuyFromChicago]

You see what I mean? If I had the ability to create 1 million+ links overnight then another 1 million+ the next night and so on, the SEs (Google mainly) wouldn't look suspiciously at this?

Please start tomorrow, and please point them all to one of my sites :)

I don't think the site receiving the links would be hurt/penalized at all. Not that it's any comparison to "millions", but I've pointed tens of thousands of links at sites in very short periods of time and have never seen the recipient site penalized in any way.

Do you think if everyone at DP threw up a couple links like this Dell (http://www.dell.com/) on their sites that www.dell.com would lose position for the term "Dell" in Google or the other SE's? I think the Charity Test that's running right now shows that linking to a site won't hurt it. If it turns out that the recipient site of the Charity links loses serp placement - below what it was before the test started - that will be something to talk about.

[ferret77]

hey guys I just found out that links don't really do that much

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=19058

[Homer]

Very nice find ferret. I read the thread, so we are talking about opinions here:
Is Link Building the real reason behind SEO?

Originally posted by nate_king1

According to Google

I saw one site with only 79 incoming links while the next one up had over 740? And the next one down had over 200?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Google will never show you anything even close to the real number of incoming links - that's their new policy. Disregard what their "link:" command is giving you.

Yes, you read it right. Ignore it.

Google knows all about real number and authority of ALL incoming links, but just won't show it.

Only bad SEOs worry about nothing but links Good SEOs worry about many, many different factors.

In the past, it was possible to achieve top rankings for very competitive terms in Google through aggressive link building. Not anymore. SEOs who specialized in such campaigns, are now totally lost, as the latest changes in Google algo made their techniques far less effective.

Chasing highly competitive terms is now becoming an obsolete strategy. Looks like such terms are now reserved for authority sites (I could speculate a lot on how they probably define an authority, but that would be pure speculation. But looks like the time factor is one of important variables in their new formula - and that factor can't be manipulated). What is going to help is thorough keyword research for less competitive terms - and then targeting as many of such combinations as possible. Which brings the old "Content Is King" rule forward again.

FWIW

I found this opinion very interesting as it contradicts what most think (myself included) about link building.

[MobileP]

This was a good read, thanks

[boohlick]

I just read this very interesting exchange on the LED Digest. The author is Dirk Johnson a well known expert in the filed of links and linking. He dispells many of the myths that exist around this subject.


Thanks... its a relief to me... i thought im doing wrong in my SEO plan..

Cheers!! ;)

[boohlick]

www.digitalpoint.com is what some would consider an authority site.

I agree to that.. :) :) :)

[GuyFromChicago]

I found this opinion very interesting as it contradicts what most think (myself included) about link building.

I've always thought content was important, but links are still equally if not more important.

2 sites on the same topic with roughly the same number of pages that are about the same age - who places better in the serps? The one with the best set of backlinks. Content + links beat content alone any day of the week.

[ferret77]

Homer nothing in that thread makes any sense to me at all, I just posted it to show the type of information thats out there.

The thread contains a bunch of people who sell seo services basically telling newbies don't try for competitive terms, you will fail.

[Homer]

Homer nothing in that thread makes any sense to me at all, I just posted it to show the type of information thats out there.

The thread contains a bunch of people who sell seo services basically telling newbies don't try for competitive terms, you will fail.

Yes, I agree ferret. The only post that seemed sensible was the one I posted. The reason why I beleive it to make sense is the major games some play with linking. Many people buy links from high PR sites for the purpose of artificially inflating PR and serps. Google is well aware of this, which pokes holes in the 'casting vote' theory. So I think the mighty Google may have to find other ways to validate the importance of a website :confused:.

I suspect Eval.google.com (http://www.threadwatch.org/node/2709) has something to do with this.
I've always thought content was important, but links are still equally if not more important.

2 sites on the same topic with roughly the same number of pages that are about the same age - who places better in the serps? The one with the best set of backlinks. Content + links beat content alone any day of the week.GuyFromChicago, this may be changing now? Your theory is correct as far as I'm concerned.

My experience suggests...
On-page= content
Off-page= bls

are most important.

[thesaddleryshop]

Wow! Talk about turning everything I thought was true about links upside down!!! It has made me feel better about the outgoing links I feel are important and keep just for customers!

[www.sydbolig.dk]

nice article - put some myths to rest. Keep them coming :-)

[northpointaiki]

Dirk Johnson's article is one I return to quite a bit. The only thing which sticks in my craw is:

- Myth 5: Links outside of your "theme" will hurt you.

Total bunk. The real reason for not pursuing links outside of your
"theme" is because it is not appropriate to do it, and it is mostly
a waste of time and money. Themeing takes place on the page level,
not the domain level. And links coming from "non-themed" sites can
reside on pages that are quite well-themed. A link from the "travel
links" page of a gambling site may be very helpful to a travel
agent, if only from a keyword density analysis perspective. The
direct traffic from that link would be non-existent. Please realize
that I am not a fan of this practice at all, but the results that I
have seen prove that it works. Take it for what it's worth.
.

As it stands now, google looks at pages and not sites. But google is a proselyte for returning useful results to the user, or so everything I've read is telling me. If one can create an optimized page which returns links relevant to that page, then I don't believe any harm would come of this. But I believe google, and probably the other SE's, is waging a relentless campaign towards usability, and I would think that any site which contains pages with links relevant to the optimized page, but irrelevant to the site's "theme" or "neighborhood" risks censure.

Excerpt by Jim Boyston, on linking within one's neighborhood:

Moral: Rankings change, and they always will. Stop chasing a moving target, and just settle down in your neighborhood and start making connections there. Buy, beg, borrow, or barter your way in, or get in with great content. He who is most connected in his neighborhood will have the most and the best rankings across time and engines.

- from Link Neighborhoods (http://www.jimboykin.com/picture-of-link-neighborhoods/).

If what google is after (and will be pushing more and more towards) is what it has purported to be after all along - useful user information, relevant results - then it seems that "neighborhood" or "theme" is important; or will become increasingly so. Again, just an intuition and have no data to support or detract the idea.

What everything is boiling down to, for me, is that if google and other SE's haven't caught on to a particullar scheme designed solely to build SERPs (forget PR), they are working on it, and will likely succeed. Any technique or method designed to float SERPs, and not provide a useful experience to the site user, I would guess, is a doomed path.

[Jim_Westergren]

It is a nice article and I agree with most of the data.

But this:

>> After doing linking campaigns for a couple of clients, I noticed
>> that pagerank seemed to increase as soon as I put outbound
>> links on the site, long before any number of links could be
>> reciprocated... I reported this in several forums, and was
>> heartily poo-pooed by the experts...

- Dave Roberts, LED 1808

Dave,

It's no surprise that you got "heartily poo-pooed by the experts".
As someone who does link management work full-time, and has done it
for years, I stay out of those forums. The "advice" presented in
them is notoriously misguided.

Your analysis was correct. The "experts" have never seen the
phenomenon of outbound links helping a site because they are too
concerned about gaming Google with their linking efforts, and
creating complex theories.

I cannot agree with. Outbound links on a page will not increase the PR, sorry. It might help the SERPs, but I have not tested that yet. Just think for a moment. Do you think by putting a new page and by adding outbound links but no backlinks will higher the PR? A site will hardly even be found with no backlinks.

The SEs uses backlinks to measure popularity and it is important but yes, there are many other off-page factors as well. Trust etc. The article didn't mention trust and so I have a slight feeling it could be outdated. OMG the post is from May 27th 2004! I didn't see that, omg ...

[tesla]

I agree with the list. Most of those things listed are indeed myths. I've never even heard about the one where Google only counts links from PR 4 sites or higher.

[Homer]

I just haven't seen anything yet that leads me to believe that links (regardless of how many) pointing to your site can hurt your site.
Hey Guy, you still there? I just wonder if your opinion has changed around this? :)

[ferret77]

I've never even heard about the one where Google only counts links from PR 4 sites or higher.

At one point the google link command was believed to only show links pr3 or 4 or more, that is where that came from

[nutkeis]

So has anyone changed their opinion on this recently?

[Homer]

So has anyone changed their opinion on this recently?Actually if you look at the date this thread was started, I was suspect of it then, NOW==> Really don't want to comment till I hear what GuyFromChicago has to say ;).

[nutkeis]

Yeah, I was wondering why it got resurrected.

[Homer]

thesaddleryshop
Peon Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Dover, UK
Posts: 23



Wow! Talk about turning everything I thought was true about links upside down!!! It has made me feel better about the outgoing links I feel are important and keep just for customers! The guilty party is right here. It doesn't bother me because this subject is always changing and opened for debate :).

[Juan G]

- Myth 1: Non-reciprocating, outbound links are "bad".

As you observed correctly, they can actually help. Google seems to reward sites for being genuine resources to their visitors.
Yes, I think this is right. For example, human edited, quality directories (hubs) with carefully selected links can do well in Google, long term. This can be seen in practice, not only in the hub-authority model.

SEO theories based on the old PageRank equation and not on real case data seem to forget that Google search engineers' job is to permanently modify and try to improve their algorithms to get the most useful search results.

So better we follow #1 Google's advice (http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html):

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

[Jamie Lister]

From what I gather, this thread is now close to 2 years old.
Has anything changed?
We get quite a lot of link exchange requests and I need to decide whether to recommend that we give it more attention - link-exchange requests, that is.

We are currently a low-ranked site coz we're new but we have a huge amount of content and it grows by the day, that's why I think many are interested in exchanging links.

Another problem is the time to manage : who really does link back to us, etc.
From the article, it seems its not really important. Or did I misunderstand?

[LaCabra]

More and More People should be reading this thread - *bump*

[nlgordaz]

Is Dirk saying recip links are just as good, if not better than one-way links? Is there anyone else that agrees with this?

[Homer]

Is Dirk saying recip links are just as good, if not better than one-way links? Is there anyone else that agrees with this? Well that's pretty funny, I just went to google and thought I'd dig up more info on this so I type search query 'the truth about linking (http://66.102.9.104/search?hl=en&q=the+truth+about+linking)' and this thread came up #1 :eek:...so it must be true ;).

[compar]

I found this article and posted it to this thread two years ago come March. At the time there were many people saying that reciprocal links had no value and I thought they were wrong and that they had no proof. However since then I have had reason to believe that reciprocal links may not have the value they once had. I beleive that Google is probably devaluing them to a certain extent.

Despite this I am still actively building reciprocal links to many of my sites. It seem to me that what we thought was the proper optimization for Google two or three years ago now works very well for MSN. In the meantime I don't think that reciprocal links necessarily hurt you with Google. They just might not do you a lot of good.

So I know this email has really said nothing definitive, but I challenge anyone to make a definitive statement with proof about this subject.

[qwestcommunications]

I have always had the feeling that providing outbound links are good because it makes the site seem more trustworthy to vsitors. If a site complements information on your page and you feel it will help visitors by providing a link to a useful page then why should that be bad? The only reason why I resist putting too many outband links is because people may click on one of those instead of google ad.

[Homer]

It seem to me that what we thought was the proper optimization for Google two or three years ago now works very well for MSN. In the meantime I don't think that reciprocal links necessarily hurt you with Google. They just might not do you a lot of good.

So I know this email has really said nothing definitive, but I challenge anyone to make a definitive statement with proof about this subject.
Hi Bob- I can't really disagree with you on this one. My view on your observation about MSN is that they seem to be the last to follow more complexed algos to sort out what link really means. I think Bill could really care less about MSN search. In fact has has admitted defeat to Google for searching.

I am a strong believer that Google will always be first to do what is neccesary to stop false manipulation of Se's. The others eventually follow in order of search market share, so Y, M will follow in that order. I can see that Y is also wiser that MSN about linking strategies but not near Google. As much as I hate to admit it Google is getting harder and harder to find logic in algos :confused:. I am sure that's not a mistake ;) .

[compar]

As much as I hate to admit it Google is getting harder and harder to find logic in algos :confused:. I am sure that's not a mistake ;) .
The only question is are they throwing the baby out with the bath water? In other words while they may be successfully fending off all attempts to optimize are they also failing to present the most relevant pages?

I certainly have seen some search results from Google lately that did not provide what I would expect as the most relevant sites for the given search term.

I have always maintained that the objective of good optimization was simply to prove/illustrate the relevance of a web site. If I have a site selling widgets I don't want to be found for a search on "free sex". That may drive traffic to my site, but the traffic will never convert to sales. So my objective as a webmaster is to build the most releveant site possible for people who want to buy widgets, and my objective as an SEO practitioner is to help the search engines -- Google in this case -- understand that my site is relevant.

[LaCabra]

Compar,

I share your thoughts and sentiments, believe me. The problem is that G is too hungry for $. For example, if G were to can any site, and I mean any site, exclusively made for Adsense with less than 80% original content then we would get good searches. They have PR at least start a new metric BF (bottom feeder) and show all other content sites before these BFs.

The other thing is PR, its useless, totally useless. If they want to come up with something like this, then do so but don't make it public. Screw it. If you need to rely on PR to figure out whether or not you want a link from/to a site then there is something seriously wrong with humanity. I bet you $100 bucks that if they were to hide PR and let individual folks make an individual decision to link or not link then the results would get better.

I get totally frustrated when I spend days looking for a specific partner to link to and all I get is garbage/black hat crap. You know, I'm starting to use other engines now and am findings tons and tons of little sites that have a PR0 but are great informational and content peices. Thats how we should be doing links, not using some automated software that searches out all high PR sites. The best thing google could do is get rid of visible PR.

Look at the feeding frenzy going on in the PR update thread..firstly it'll take you a few hours to get through the nonsense, (you can write lots of good content in that time) and then they sit there and watch it like the stock market -- oooh oohh its a 5 now, oohhhh back to 2 -- its madness. All that time they could be writing some decent content or finding some great content sites to link to/from ...

cheers
Frank

[linkster]

- Myth 3: "One-way" backward links count more than reciprocal links.

The author is wrong on this point. One-way links are more valuable than reciprocals. Every search engine is cracking down on people easily gaming their algo. Where do you think most of the "Lemmings" are getting backlinks? You guessed it, they are using unrelated crap link exchanges.

Think like a search engine, would you want to give sites a boost for this? Of course you wouldn’t and that’s why you are starting to see Google really crackdown on this.

Sure u can rank in MSN and Yahoo with spammy link exchange backlinks...but for how long? They will very soon start popping people for this and if this guy is such and expert he should know better and mention it.

Go get real links that have real traffic and actual value. Your backlink history should show how trusted you are not that you paid someone to submit you to 1000 directories or exchanged 5000 links with others.

Go get links from sites and pages that rank in the top few hundred for you phrases. Getting quality links from your neighborhood should be your goal.

[linkster]

Ok now i see this is a year or 2 old. Well then i wont even bother with why this one is also crappy advice as well. This is old and please dont use this guys advice - it will not help you longterm and is outdated bad advice.

The real reason for not pursuing links outside of your
"theme" is because it is not appropriate to do it, and it is mostly
a waste of time and money. Themeing takes place on the page level,
not the domain level. And links coming from "non-themed" sites can
reside on pages that are quite well-themed. A link from the "travel
links" page of a gambling site may be very helpful to a travel
agent, if only from a keyword density analysis perspective. The
direct traffic from that link would be non-existent. Please realize
that I am not a fan of this practice at all, but the results that I
have seen prove that it works. Take it for what it's worth.

[ferret77]

The author is wrong on this point. One-way links are more valuable than reciprocals. Every search engine is cracking down on people easily gaming their algo. Where do you think most of the "Lemmings" are getting backlinks? You guessed it, they are using unrelated crap link exchanges.

I make a decent amount of money of crap link exchanges does that qualify me as a lemming?


Sure u can rank in MSN and Yahoo with spammy link exchange backlinks...but for how long? They will very soon start popping people for this and if this guy is such and expert he should know better and mention it.

I don't know probably long enough to re-coop the moeny I invested in building the links plus some.


Go get links from sites and pages that rank in the top few hundred for you phrases. Getting quality links from your neighborhood should be your goal.

Do have any proof of that at all?

[linkster]

I make a decent amount of money of crap link exchanges does that qualify me as a lemming?

Yes sorry it does. Look if your making money thats great and its easy to game MSN and Yahoo right now. However, by getting your admitted "crap" link exchanges you will be following the crowd right over the cliff.

What are you going to do then? Unless you want to churn and burn start building your backlinks like I mentioned above and you will position yourself for the future.

I just hate to see people get hooked into thinking link exchanges are a long-term approach. I would only do mass link exchanges on site I didnt care to lose. And i would be smart enough to at least do 3 way exchanges and ever more elaborate setups.

The more search engines progress they will be able to say...hey this guy has 10,000 links but only 100 are actually relevant. Hmm this is spam - chop chop chop.

Ask yourself, why would an engine give you a boost for a irrelevant link? Link exchanges are going the way of FFA pages - my advice is dont got down with them.

NOTE - in some rare cases it makes perfect sense to exchange with a great site. However, if its not good for your users - its obviously not good for the site, and this should be used sparingly.

[ferret77]

And i would be smart enough to at least do 3 way exchanges and ever more elaborate setups.

It funny you mention that , I have actually tested 3 way link exchanges vs regular link exchanges and have yet to see any real differenece.

[ferret77]

when do you think this cliff is coming? I heard people say the same thing you are saying for about 4 years now.

[linkster]

Because if you read the patents that are coming out you can see how they plan to combat this. The whole point of engines using backlink analysis is that it’s a measure of the sites popularity in its community. The reason they went away from ranking on-page factors highly is because it’s easily controlled/manipulated by the webmaster.

They want an independent view of your site not your biased view...so they measure backlinks. Well with link exchanges and off topic links people can gather a ton of backlinks/votes for their sites. The engines do not like this for the same reasons they didn't like keyword stuffing. Its just 2 easy to manipulate.

So now the engines are moving towards only counting trusted categorical links. I mean why would they want to give your baby crib site credit because bob's discount tires links to it? So I am just saying position your site for the future, if you want make throw away sites to game MSN and Yahoo while it last, but on your main site I would be building long term strategies.

[dsm56]

I think google's pretty much got it right now.

And even if it came down to links on trusted sources...google is never going to be able to stop people buying links on PR7 websites...There are alway ways round perfect search results...

[compar]

.....because bob's discount tires links to it?
I don't know what you are talking about. I don't have a discount tires site :confused: :D

[linkster]

I totally agree - but if they only count relevant trusted links in the future then that narrows the pool of PR 7's you could buy a link from. In fact it could be a very narrow pool.

Also you might slip up and by those links in a link box with many other sites...this is sooo easy to find or it may say sponsored sites about your link another easy thing to find, or maybe its in the left sidebar or footer instead of the main content area...see what im saying.

Think into the future and use tactics that you think will work longterm and you will reap the rewards when another Florida hits etc.

[Homer]

They want an independent view of your site not your biased view...so they measure backlinks. Hi Linkster, you seem to know what you are talking about.
Compar says
The only question is are they throwing the baby out with the bath water? In other words while they may be successfully fending off all attempts to optimize are they also failing to present the most relevant pages? I can't really say whether I agree or not, I haven't seen enough evidence to completely support it 100% either way. One thing I can say is, linking rules have changed BIGTIME, no doubt...and I think we all agree on that.

I am not trying to manipulate anything or anyone but rather feed my children. Google makes guidelines and rules that are unchallenged and sometimes unfair. As I see it Google has developed more enemies with this whole Jagger mess than any other update. The baby AND the bathwater were gone then IMO and progressively got worte. I am still seeing some pretty spammy results. I am seeing folks completely banned from Google's index without ANY understanding as to why :eek:. THAT's CRAP. To be punished without explaination or apparent logic only breeds anger and rage, turning the business side of the internet into a war zone...that ain't good for anyone.

I understand the reasoning behind such algos but they must perform as intended once you pass beta testing, I don't see that. What I do see now is my ability to get my competitors banned with suspicious link bursts (http://www.linkburst.com/). Many have joked about this...'go ahead pile it on' it ain't gonna happen, I beg to differ.

My anger about this whole mess doesn't really effect me as much as others, some of my associates are crying the blues right now. I actually have developed other sources of income that don't envolve this volitile environment.

As long as these Se's (Google in particular) run their ship unchallenged this will only compound.

I guess the question that is important is WHY do you think Google applied for the patent? I'll give you a hint it's not entirely false manipulation attempts. Funny enough that part of it I agree with :).

[linkster]

thats because its was an example compar not directed to your site lol. Im saying why would an engine want to give you credit for a nonrelevant link.

[linkster]

Spiritwalker I hear you man - I dont engage in Google worship, they are for profit business so I am all bout doing what you have to do to rank. However, just take the time to think "where are they headed" what will work long term and then when they change the algo you will be much better positioned.

IMO - You want links in the main section of a webiste not the footer and sides - You want links from ontopic sources - and you want those sources to be valued by the engines ie ranking in the top 500 at least. You do not want to be in a link box or an an exchange page and you want many of your links to be one way. Also dont use the same text over and and over thats just obvious link spam.

If a link exchange fits those criteria then go for it...but think how many actually do. You usually get a link on a page called /link-partners4.html

[ferret77]

You know I was think today about whole lemming thing, and I realized what linkster says makes absolutly no business sense what so ever.

Why would anyone pass up something that is almost gaurenteed to make a return. Lemmings my ass, personally right now I see more return on reciprical links then almost any legal business I can think of. Even without google.

Its dumb to count any one thing, but its seems really dumb to pass on something that is almost a sure thing

So now the engines are moving towards only counting trusted categorical links.

Secondly checking thru my sites, I have something like 30 sites that still rank well in google, for lesser competitive terms because of crap link exchanges. So even if they are devalued they aren't negated. Maybe new recip links are negated but appernently some old ones arn't at all.

Im saying why would an engine want to give you credit for a nonrelevant link.

Why wouldn't it? If I link to the tire site and said this were i bought my tires, and they are freaking great tirees, why wouldn't a search engine want to count it.

Everything you are saying is the same thing every white hat seo has been saying for 5 years now , and yet still all the top moeny spots on the internet are controlled by sites that have tons of unrelated links.

I am just curious if anything you are saying is coming from actually studing the serps?

[linkster]

Lemmings my ass, personally right now I see more return on reciprocal links then almost any legal business I can think of. Even without google.

I don’t think your understand what I am saying. The key thing you said was "right now". Look im a capitalist so sure game them if you can, but you are admitting you’re seeing Google devalue the tactic you’re using. So all im saying is it’s obvious that this is an easy spam tactic and it will be closed. So if your in it long term its best to take a long term approach.

I have several hundred sites that do nothing more than spam the engines and they work decently well. However, given time they work less and less or get banned. So.....if you want to use link exchanges, do it. IMO is that a long lasting approach – of course not.
I just hate

[linkster]

If I link to the tire site and said this were i bought my tires, and they are freaking great tirees, why wouldn't a search engine want to count it.

I think this is something you need to figure out, and when you do I think it will go a long way to helping you think like a search engine - When you do its much clearer what you need to be doing - again im talking long term

[Homer]

So now the engines are moving towards only counting trusted categorical links.I agree with this logic. I have recently been really checking who is linking to me. There are so many crap, spam sites pointing to me it's sickening. In all these cases they are trying to either capitalize on my domain name or keywords I promote. I simply have no control over this :mad:. These links probably should be devalued, but are we suggesting penalized :eek:?

This new Google is leaving many thinking 'what do I need to do to feed my children, nothing works anymore?' Bob started this thread 2 years ago, the truth then is NOT the truth now :). Hopefully we can gather some info here. Personally, the quote in this post is one I'm writing down...it make s sense :cool:.

[LaCabra]

I did a pretty heavy duty analysis of potential link partners the last two days and think that G has a bit of tweaking to do. Here's the issue, supposively PR is Google's measure of importance of a particular page (site). One would think that G could differentiate between an authorative domain/page and not. Well in my industry there are regional, country specifc and international bodies that are the authorative bodies (sites) for my industry. Yet ALL of these authorative sites have pr3 or less, right across the board. I personally don't care about PR but you would think that these authorative bodies would then have a better PR than my or other sites within the industry. It makes no sense!

[linkster]

PR is simply a meassure of link popularity and has very minimal effect on rankings. If they are all PR 3 then it prob. just means your area is very niche and if you go out and get some good quality links you stand a chance to rank yourself.

Check thier backlinks in yahoo to get an idea of how many backlinks they may have

[agtile]

reading those 2004 posts and laughing..

[agtile]

reading those 2004 posts and laughing at some.. so much has changed since then..

[Warkot]

Compar,

I share your thoughts and sentiments, believe me. The problem is that G is too hungry for $. For example, if G were to can any site, and I mean any site, exclusively made for Adsense with less than 80% original content then we would get good searches. They have PR at least start a new metric BF (bottom feeder) and show all other content sites before these BFs.

The other thing is PR, its useless, totally useless. If they want to come up with something like this, then do so but don't make it public. Screw it. If you need to rely on PR to figure out whether or not you want a link from/to a site then there is something seriously wrong with humanity. I bet you $100 bucks that if they were to hide PR and let individual folks make an individual decision to link or not link then the results would get better.

I get totally frustrated when I spend days looking for a specific partner to link to and all I get is garbage/black hat crap. You know, I'm starting to use other engines now and am findings tons and tons of little sites that have a PR0 but are great informational and content peices. Thats how we should be doing links, not using some automated software that searches out all high PR sites. The best thing google could do is get rid of visible PR.

Look at the feeding frenzy going on in the PR update thread..firstly it'll take you a few hours to get through the nonsense, (you can write lots of good content in that time) and then they sit there and watch it like the stock market -- oooh oohh its a 5 now, oohhhh back to 2 -- its madness. All that time they could be writing some decent content or finding some great content sites to link to/from ...

cheers
Frank

Excellent post. I second that. Toolbar PR is a total zilch. Means nothing.

The only reason for toolbar PR to exist is that it allows Google engineers to hit the magic button, update it, crack a bottle of beer open and watch the forums go crazy about it...

Warkot

[SixSigma]

reading those 2004 posts and laughing at some.. so much has changed since then..

I wonder if it has really changed that much - or perceptions have just changed. The "mainstream" methods to get good rankings are probably pretty consistent. It's the tricks used to game the system that have probably changed the most.

[usachatnow]

That was some very useful info and thank you for the great post.:D

tears

[skionxb]

Quick question to you all. So in order to get reciprocal links to your site. Should i create a page like - links.html or resources.html and place it either in the top navigation or at the bottom text footer links on each page of my site and then place the reciprocal links there? Should i place the links on 1 page? or should i sort them into the categories like a directory style? Please explain.

Thank

[GULLIVER]

I think Johnson states good points. Logically they are very understandable an acceptable.
But who knows Google? :)

[atiqi36]

really good article

[alice.erin]

No doubt that there are so many myths about link exchange.
May be this post will do some good for Link exchanger and webmasters.
Hope to get good stuff in this thread about links and their importance in near future also.

[DeepSeaLegs]

So after 2 years NO ONE has linked to the original source? Come on guys - let's do a proper citation.

Here's the link - someone else can make it "live."

Dirk Johnson: the Truth About Linking, LED-Digest.com #1811
www.led-digest.com/content/view/1220/55/

I'm a long-time lurker here - just had to sign up to do this for Adam. :-)

[alice.erin]

thanks to provide the real link to the source.
The main thing is that one should understand and follow the things Dirk wants to share.

[Bewildered]

Informative and things have changed. I know of one competitor that went out and bought a thousand links, went to the number one spot on MSN and some others for a couple of months or so, but appears to be totally ignored with 0 links according to every other major search engine now, except msn that still has him as number 1. The guy got a momentary boost and heavily penalised too I guess.

So, I guess you can buy links for your competitors and possibly drive them out of business now.

Getting links is very fiercely competitive. But if you don't jump on the bandwagon you get left behind.

The classic one way link, from my experience, is where you engage in a reciprocal link exchange only to find out they removed your link from their site or they use an underhand form technique to stop search engines from finding the link pages - I just deleted about 30 links to this other business that I'm thinking of and refused to exchange another 70+ with him. But so many link to his many sites without realising they are being taken for a link ride.

My 2 cents for dec 2006

[SEOguy101]

I've actually talked to Dirk Johnson on the phone and he is a very generous and helpful guy. He offered to add my websites to his link campaigns with his clients. I get tons of emails from him with one-way links and I usually link back so we both benefit. Anyways, just thought I'd share my experiences with Dirk.:)