I am thinking about joining a webring to help with SEO for my site. How safe are they? I have a competitor who is ranking above me on Google. My PR is higher and I have 50 times more links. We both have established sites. The only difference I can see at first glance is my competitor is in 3 webrings!
Links FROM sites are safe enough as the worst that can happen is that the links are not counted. (Or else you could just go out an get links to your competitors from shonky sites to shut them down) Links TO bad neighbourhoods can be the problem.
How about starting a webring specializing in your niche that requires everyone in the ring to approve before someone can be added? Does this exist? Can anyone recommend a good resource?
I don't think webrings are bad for SEO and I don't think they help you that much... Google is gettign better at detecting 3 way linking and I'm sure webrings are going to be devalued in the future.
As I mentioned before, I have a competitor who is ranking higher than me consistently for a keyword. I used to be higher. When analyzing their site (on page and links), the only thing they have SEO-wise that I don't is membership in 3 webrings. So in this case, it's got to be the reason. Whether it's temporary or not is really the question. And what do you all think are the long-term benefits/problems for SEO with a well moderated web-ring?