During the last month I lost a lot of Google traffic on one of my sites. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=359480 It was heartbreaking to see all my efforts go to waste and the site almost falling off the charts. I couldn't make out any specific trend. So I last week decided to pay for a link on the Best of the Web Directory, as I suspected that my site had lost trust. Today traffic is back to the old level, but I am not sure if it was just coincidence or not.
How would I know. I suspect too many crap links vs. trusted links. I believe that if you have enough trust (links from well established trusted sites) even your crap links will count, but you can't rank well with just crap. I believe its a ratio thing, but I wouldn't really know as the algorithm is the best guarded secret. Hence my post to invite speculation. So as the site gained crap links over time, the ratio got worse, which may have gotten fixed buying a trusted link again <- my speculation If you can lose PR you can lose TR (trust rank)
I suspect that where your incoming links are placed on a site plays an important role. For example having a link at the top left of a page would carry more weight than one at the bottom right.
Makes Sense. I believe that the best placement is with the content, but those are so damn hard to get.
How would you know if a site that is linked to you is a crap site or a trust site? Or is that speculation as well?
In this respect everything is speculation, but I guess you can gauge the quality of a link pretty easily by looking at the site and the type of site and how you got the links in the first place.
My guess is that it was a coincidence. However, good backlinks are an essential element in boosting SERPS.