Google’s Stefanie Ulrike Dürr has laid down the defining lines in the battle of link building and the value of link popularity. In summary, the old motto, an earned link is the best link, still outranks almost any form of link building imaginable.
Essentially, if a link is earned due to quality, ideas, originality, or via establishing a site, persona, or business as a resource; chances are, that link is going to be of high value in the Google ranking algorithm:
Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity:
* Classically this involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice.
* A more recent method is link baiting, which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites.
* One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as http://digg.com.
* Another example is to earn a reputation in a certain field by building an authority through services such as http://answers.yahoo.com.
Our general advice is: Always focus on the users and not on search engines when developing your optimization strategy. Ask yourself what creates value for your users. Investing in the quality of your content and thereby earning natural backlinks benefits both the users and drives more qualified traffic to your site.
Sounds good to me, as I’ve always viewed link building as also an advertising and ROI driven service with the goals to:
* Build targeted traffic
* Attract valuable and positive user intent driven links
* Attract users who will essentially follow a call to action
* Establish the site as a resource amongst other resources in its field
* Engagement of thoughtful discussion or debate
So, what is bad linking?
Short-term option of non-earned backlinks via link spamming tactics such as buying links.
More from Google :
We’ve always taken a clear stance with respect to manipulating the PageRank algorithm in our Quality Guidelines.
Despite these policies, the strategy of participating in link schemes might have previously paid off.
But more recently, Google has tremendously refined its link-weighting algorithms. We have more people working on Google’s link-weighting for quality control and to correct issues we find.
So nowadays, undermining the PageRank algorithm is likely to result in the loss of the ability of link-selling sites to pass on reputation via links to other sites.
There you have it, bad linking vs. good linking from Google.
I’m still struggling to figure out how they can identify purchased links. In addition, what is purchased in a directory for instance.? Many times you are required to pay for an editorial fee, not to actually purchase a back link.
Also, other than having your site listed under ‘sponsors’ how can the algorithm tell when a link is purchased. Especially with the uprise of content link purchasing.
pfft, more google fear mongering. I take what they say with a grain of salt, especially whe spammers can still make it to the top. ;)
It is always in the end that it boils down to common sense.
I like to think of successful linking like building buzz for a restaurant on the local level.
1) Word of Mouth : Natural Linking (social networks, blogs, site links… etc.) – people are telling their friends, family and neighbors about the restaurant and its food.
2) T-shirts : Paid linking… just as good as real people are wearing the shirts which communicate the message, with less heartfelt info, but details such as address and phone number.
3) Commercials : Display Ads – smells like advertising, looks like advertising, and has the same positive or negative effects of advertising, depending on the details of the campaign.
4) Flyers : Spam – Menus in mailboxes, wiper blades and door knobs are going to piss off 99% of the public… but that 1% is going to make a purchase.
That’s interesting. Amusingly enough, I haven’t been able to get Google to link to my homepage for a week or two despite my best efforts.
:>
Earing a link is getting harder and harder, but when you actually get the link it pays of very well.
But until you get that first link, it sure is hard to get noticed by Google.
It is always going to be the same game with link building practices, people trying to game the search engines and search engines making new rules and inserting them into their algorithim to try to make it harder for people to take a part of their earnings, specially Google’s huge earnings with their “adwords spam program”.
its all bs, as any website owner will do all of these to bring in traffic. Theres no way in the world “link building” is bad in any shape or form. Think for yourself, and [bad word] these monopolistic companies mind effing you to think on their terms. This is america, YOU do wtf ever you want!
“So basically, what google is saying is that linkbacks that result from an article being promoted on 1/many social networking sites are or could be bad links.”
However any site that gets on the frontpage is always given a good result in Google, at least for the time being.
“Short-term option of non-earned backlinks via link spamming tactics such as buying links.”
I think people need to be aware of this, as a lot of people add their links to some free link exchange to get a better PR. But what they are doing is the opposite.
lol, look at the “V7N Directory” ad up the top of this page!
Loren – good post but here’s my question for you to put back to google. If google is “best practices” in “good linking,” then why have all my google alerts been reduced to spam? Ever since google added blogs to google alerts, they have become worthless as a resource for keeping up on the issues you care about due to an over abundance of links that turn out to be spam .
Loren,
I am amazed that there was nothing said about a standard technique, namely directory listings. They are links and if you use common sense, they are from trusted sites. I have always looked for niche directories, on topic, and other well-known directories to build value with the engines, not just Google.
I would like to ask, is a purchased directory listing devalued?
Pittfall, being that Yahoo and BOTW are of great value in multiple search engines, I doubt that paying a quality directory service a fee to review, categorize and edit listings which will exist for, possibly, forever, would be devalued as such.
However, such directory services which are not niche targeted, categorized, and list almost any spammy site under the sun in an effort to make quick buck and pass a link farm as a resource, would indeed loose any value it already had, if any.
A good way to judge the value of a directory is via its usage, sites listed within it, and its own backlinks and citations.
Mindspeakr, good question about Google alerts. Google’s blog search, in itself, is quite full of non-quality blogs… ideally Google should take a page from Technorati in this respect and add authority judgement & ranking to its blog search offerings. Although, from a Google idealist standpoint, their algorithm should do so in the first place :)
it’s all relative, you need to get out of the sandbox and that makes webmasters do crazy things – so they’ll buy links. If google got rid of the sandbox, it would be much faster.
Google now dictates what rules we have to play by, so when they say jump 30 feet high with an apple in your mouth – you either do it or you get the boot to the bottom of the results.
Wow. That’s some pretty hot suggestions from Google there. If I hear that right they are suggesting that SEO is more about making the websites good for the users rather than fodder for the search engines and that link quality continues to play an increasing role in the value of a website.
“So basically, what google is saying is that linkbacks that result from an article being promoted on 1/many social networking sites are or could be bad links.”
Maybe my English is very poor but that is not at all what i conclude from the above entry.
I conclude from this entry the opposite, that this would be counted as a good link.
Chris,
Don’t underetimate what a gazillion phd’s can accomplish. Besides, it’s not to hard for Google to do a search for the right keyword phrases to find all the sites that offer to sell links. They simply add those to their algorithms.
I suppose Arnie, but think of the effect of ‘friendly fire’ that would be caught in the action.
Be smart: if all your link popularity comes entirely from a few high-PageRank newspaper sites, then it’s going to be obvious to a search
engine that you’re buying links. Instead, you should pursue a link strategy that encompasses a wide range of sites with varying PageRank. That
makes your link-structure appear more natural to a search engine and renders your pages much less likely to be penalized.
Using paid links in moderation can be quite helpful to your rankings, provided that you get them from a variety of good topicallyrelated sources while avoiding run-of-site links and all-identical anchor text.
Nice article, but google always confuse us regarding page rank & link…Some time they say PR is impotant sometime not..
Google’s approch on PR is in my opinion the wrong way of doing it, basically if your a new site and you have no backlinks where do you start? Temptation of using a link farm and getting a lower PR because of this is far too easy. Google should base rank in the same way as adwords, using CTR (Click through rate)!
I think we will never have a straight answer on the importance of Google PR as an SEO tool monitor, there are quite few controversial opinions!!!
Doudy @ http://optimizingsearchengine.blogspot.com
Great article. I’m very new to the SEO thing, and it’s good to know that as long as I do things the right way, I should be rewarded.
They have no idea. They just want to confuse you all. It is a great when all play in one hole. You don’ t have to run around and look after each one.
“I’m still struggling to figure out how they can identify purchased links. “
They have no idea. They just want to confuse you all. It is a great when all play in one hole. You don’ t have to run around and look after each one.
“I’m still struggling to figure out how they can identify purchased links. “
gr8, That’s some pretty hot suggestions from Google there. If I hear that right they are suggesting that SEO is more about making the websites good for the users rather than fodder for the search engines and that link quality continues to play an increasing role in the value of a website.
Blogged about it, linked to it, and for good measure threw in a Digg as well. Thanks for the effort.
I might be a little late for this response but I after reading the article and responses I have the same doubts as Chris…how does Google know if I have paid or not for a link (an actiual link)…do they penalise you for giving any type of money even if it’s a registration fee?
In any case, as an SEO expert for http://www.websiteredevelopment.com and http://www.analyticsseo.com I follow the rules of the big guys (aka Google)
Yahoo answers now puts a nofollow onto its links, so has no value in SEO terms, but does bring in valueable traffic to those who visite the site and does appear in the search engine itself when looking for sertain things on Google – it is deffinately worth getting some answers in there that will benifit clients + your own website.
agree, if you focus on the user and traffic you can't lose
agree, if you focus on the user and traffic you can't lose