Google getting away from links?

I have been told by some link partners that they are no longer exchanging links because Google is going to start punishing those who do. Is this true?

 

Yes it is true to some extent.

 

I believe that that would be absurd.

I mean as long as the links are related to the content I do not see why a punishment would be in place.

Maybe if the link exchange has nothing to do with traffic or relation to the website then yes, but if it is a relevant link then I think they would be wrong in doing so.

 

I hope it depends on the quality, relevancy and amount all together.
Some people will just create tons of link pages. Those should be punished not the ones with a few links.

 

Then what does Google want you to do? You can't buy links, that's bad, you can't trade links now? Is there some other magic way to get acceptance buy big G? You can make all the quality content in the world, but if nobody sees it it is worth nothing to anyone besides it's author.

 

I have a few pages of non related links on my site. Would it be better to remove those and only have related sites?

 

Google realizes there are 2 types of evils:

on page optimization
off page optimization

The lesser of the 2 evils is off page optimization. WM's have far less control over offpage, than they do on page - even if they buy millions of links. So you have to go with the lesser of 2 evils.

The florida update was probably the best update google ever did. Most the ones after it have been shaky, at best.

 

I don't think G could rightfully ever punish an incoming link to a site even if off topic. If that were the case, then people could harm their competition....

They could, however punish off topic outward bound links, and I think they do...

Vin

 

This was answer by Matt Cutts blog.He told there in order to get away from Google penalty for your site you must add rel nofollow

Read this
for further information about this question.

 

That has nothing to do with link exchanges, he's talking about purchasing links. Totally separate topic.

Google does not penalize for reciprocal linking. It's a myth and a panic that has been going on for ages now. I'm not saying they won't eventually do that, but they would be stupid to do so for a number of reasons. There is no evidence to support the theory now and plenty of evidence against it.

Linking to sites without editorial review is not a good idea. Linking with sites that you like is. So what if my blog is about toothbrushes? If I get a decent mortgage from a broker down the street, yeah, I'll link to him. Now, if he happens to be linking to a dozen viagra sites, then I might not. Probably not a very wise move. But will I refuse to link with him just because he's in a different industry? Hell no.

The whole entire concept of the common user voting with links stems from way back when, in the early days, when damn near everybody had a web site (usually school, or Geocities, or at work, or some such), and on their site they all had a page called "My Favorite Links". They all looked pretty much like this:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/3504/links.htm
or
http://www.chucksmoot.net/links.html

Along come a couple of guys who notice this pattern, and they say:

And thus, link popularity was born. It had nothing to do with mortgage sites linking to other mortgage sites, because seriously, before the whole concept of "relevant linking" was born (about 2 years ago iirc) it was considered blasphemous to link to a competitor.

And yeah, people would link to each other with reciprocation, and nobody got hurt by it. Nobody lost an eye, broke their arm, skinned their knees, or suffered ranking penalties. It just didn't happen like that.

-Michael

<edit>I just noticed I mixed in my relevancy soapbox with my reciprocal one, my bad.</edit>

 

All you have to do is click the little yellow on the google spybar when on your own site and click the little blue when on your competitors. That's how they rank them now.

j.k.

 

Why are people still going after link exchange, when it is so easy to get one-ways. It seems to me that it would be more effort to exchange. You can write an article that get sydicated, blog and forums post are simple and there are alot of good cheap directories and some let you have multiple links so you can get deep links to your sub-pages.

 

Here's one part of the blog.Matt Cutts dont recommend link exchange though.

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.” Those people can probably guess that Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines.



Here is one line from the blog again that he recommend.

"The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails–the best links are earned and given by choice"

 

Link exchanges always had a lower value than links without a reciprocal. Best is to get incoming links in a natural way.

 

3 way linking can be an alternative, but directory submission and article submission will be more beneficial in the present scenario.

 

yes i agree.

 

Search Matt Cutts blog for his information on "bad neighborhoods". If you understand the concept of bad neighborhoods, you will know how not to link your websites.

Reciprocal linking is not completely bad. It simply depends on the neighborhood with whom you are exchanging links.

Paid linking schemes are often bad news too. Google simply does not want anyone to be able to skew their results using purchased links.

Now, there are schemes you can use that you pay for, but these don't always fall under the concept of "purchased links".

"Purchased links" are often viewed as paid advertising.

When you utilize linking systems that give the linking webmaster a choice in what links they provide, then the chances of not being penalized for that link are nearly eliminated.

Just as Bondat mentioned in his post:

Here is one line from the blog again that he recommend.

"The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails–the best links are earned and given by choice"

"Given by choice" is the key element that makes the difference.

A link that is given by the webmaster, for which the webmaster was not paid (or did not receive a trackable return value), is the best kind of link to acquire.


Bill Platt