The Truth about linking -- Dirk Johnson

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.

 

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?

 

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 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.

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

This was a good read, thanks

 

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

Cheers!!

 

I agree to that..

 

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.

 

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 .

I suspect Eval.google.com has something to do with this.
I've always thought content was important, but links are still equally if not more important.

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.

 

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!

 

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

 

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

.

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:

- from 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.

 

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

But this:

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 ...

 

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.

 

Hey Guy, you still there? I just wonder if your opinion has changed around this?

 

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

 

So has anyone changed their opinion on this recently?