Paid/Sold Links

Links… aren’t we all a little tired about hearing about links? Don’t link to bad neighbourhoods, don’t link to link farms… don’t get links from bad neighbourhoods; don’t get links from link farms. Don’t buy links. Don’t sell links. Don’t have too many links on one page. Don’t let all the links pointing to your website have the same anchor text.

Actually that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But I think we should go back to the beginning of all of the fuss. PageRank (my pet hate) seems to have started this. A long time ago Google (I’ll assume the other search engines figured this out too) learned that many webmasters were sneakily modifying their websites to gain high rankings. So they reverted to the voice of the people. By counting links and more importantly the text within those links they felt they could better rank a web page. The problem with this is that for some reason they decided to release the Google Toolbar with the PageRank value in it. This surely changed SEO forever. Well done Google, take a bow. *note the sarcasm* While they won’t let us in on any of their algorithm they will happily allocate out a very random value for the uneducated to obsess over.

So armed with a few green pixels, usually a few more than another website, webmasters suddenly had a tangible commodity to offer other webmasters. After all, everybody wants to rank highly on Google, don’t they? So if I have a website that is ranked 7/10 by Google surely that is worth selling a piece of? So that’s exactly what webmasters did. It’s a standard marketing tactic. If I have a publication that’s seen to have some worth, be it number of subscribers or area of distribution, then the space on my publication is seen to be valuable. Eventually that’s exactly what webmasters were doing. Selling a piece of Google worth became a thriving business. It was more than just SEO which is something you sell someone based on an idea and projected results. This was something you could actually see.

This was suddenly a major headache for Google who realised that yet again their system was being gamed by sharp webmasters/brokers and other advertising agents. So then we had the announcement that paid links were bad. But how would Google know that links were paid? Well they seemed to think that the algorithm could recognise that external links near the word sponsor or paid or even ads were paid links and discounted those links. Again, great announcement to webmasters everywhere as they removed these statements off of their websites.

I have to point out that at this point I don’t see what the problem is. If someone has a high valued website then surely selling advertising on these pages should be standard practice. More often than not these links were marked as being sponsors. This added prestige to these links as well as clearly informing visitors that these were sponsored links. The fact that the search engines didn’t like this practice… oh well, so be it.

So right about now Google came out with their own standard, breaking every W3C law out there by adding the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link tag. As the search engine could no longer tell the difference between paid and legitimate links Google insisted that the webmasters flag these links. Great going Google! Was this a public admission that the googlebot just wasn’t able to tell the difference? So now webmasters had to either mark their links so that the algorithm would recognise it as a link to discount (because it wasn’t valid – despite being a genuine sponsor) or they would have to hide the link in a script of some kind (usually Java Script).

But as not all webmasters are honest this wasn’t going to be a foolproof plan. So Google did the next thing they could think of, as webmasters to report paid links. This turned any webmaster into a possible snitch. Great for the very ethical Google, right? After all, why would you let someone get away with cheating you? Then again if it’s not hurting traffic/rankings then why not just copy what the offending webmaster is doing?

Google started visibly lowering the Toolbar PageRank that was visible to the masses on the websites that were identified as link sellers, threatening many others with a similar penalty. However it is worth while noting that rankings haven’t been affected by these toolbar changes. I guess the ranking algorithm doesn’t work off of the same algorithm as the PageRank one does. Who really knows? Matt Cutts? Right now, I wouldn’t bet on that.

So it comes back down to a simple decision, do you buy/sell links or not. If you buy links for the sole purpose of increasing PageRank then expect a penalty. If you sell links watch out for a penalty.

However it surely is very difficult to truly monitor this one. Some would argue that relevant links would carry more weight and that non related links won’t be counted as they would be seen as possible paid links. But then it would be unfair for someone who is usually an SEO blogger to not be able to pass on any link strength to a website that sells a gadget that the blogger finds useful – even if it’s not SEO related?

What this all boils down to is one simple thing. Google created a PageRank monster which fed off of all of these links. Yet again we see a perfectly normal tactic used the past become branded black hat simply because the big boy(s) doesn’t like it. While we watch the success of paid links and other shady SEO techniques you can’t help but wonder what Google (and let’s not forget the other search engines) will try next to keep the internet a free and fair space.

I would say, Keep watching this space. I think things are due for a big shake-up in the near future. When this does happen the paid links hysteria may seem like a storm in a teacup.

Linking Practices Part 4 of 3: The Unconfirmed

Here in part four of “Linking Practices” we will cover how to maximise the benefits of those links we discussed previously (check out part 1: “Links Defined”, part 2: “Links Applied” and part 3: “Link Tricks”).

Okay, so you’ve already noticed that this is part 3 of 4 (you did notice, didn’t you?). After all it is commonly known that the best trilogies come in fours. These are unconfirmed ideas. I don’t think anything can really be classed as a myth or truth in SEO simply because what holds true today may not hold true tomorrow or vice versa. That’s why I refer to these as ideas and not myths. I guess that’s what makes it all so very exciting.

Link Juice:
Ah, link juice. What exactly is it? How much does a page have? How is it lost? It is suggested that the total link juice that each page has is a result of the number of links going into a page. Of course if you wanted to be able to measure that one accurately you would need a base page to work from. So for now we will simply say that a page with many links has a lot more link juice than a page with few links (assuming all links are equal). I don’t believe that link juice can be lost. It simply becomes more diluted at more links are added. Sometimes some of this juice can be given up by having too many links. Imagine a page with 1000 links; do you think that Google will actually follow each of those? I doubt it. I would venture to guess that when encountering a page with an excessive number of links our friend the Google Bot would simply ignore the whole page.

PageRank Shaping:
“Nofollowing your internals can affect your ranking in Google” – Matt Cutts. Okay so purposefully nofollowing your own pages is a confirmed way of promoting some pages of your website a little more than others. After all, who would want to rank for the phrase “contact me” when you are trying to sell kites? This brings us back to the first topic, Link Juice. Each page has X amount of juice or link love to spend. This is relative to many different factors, but we’ll just say that it’s due to just inbound links at this point. Each link from that page shares some of that X. If you only have 2 links from a page, each link is worth ½ of X. If you have 4 links then each link is worth ¼ of X and so on. Internal PageRank can be shaped by nofollowing some of the pages you don’t desire or need to rank – the privacy policy or terms and conditions come to mind here. By nofollowing these pages you don’t have to share the juice. In this case the pages that do get the juice will be getting more.

Think of it as follows, you and 5 friends (that’s 6 of you) share a six pack and you each get a beer. But if three of your friends are teetotallers, then those of you that do indulge in alcohol each get 2 beers, getting you just that little bit drunker in the process. By nofollowing you can do exactly the same thing to each of your pages. Although I would suggest that you don’t drink while writing your copy.

Buying/Selling Links:
While Google have come right out and said “do not buy text links” (for PageRank purposes that is). However it can be very difficult at times to spot a paid link. While many publishers mark their “sponsored” links accordingly there are no doubt a few that won’t. While the PageRank craze does seem to be dying down a little many still believe that any page’s worth is proportional to the toolbar PageRank – something that we know is inaccurate at best. I would bet that if you had a site or page with a high PageRank you wouldn’t have to look too long or hard to find a willing buyer for a link to two. Will Google ever find out? Who knows just how good they are at detecting bought links? And regardless of how good they are there will always be a few that manage to get away with it. So far it would seem that the only real penalty for buying or selling links is a decrease in toolbar PageRank – is that really so bad?

While there are many ways to try and cheat the system by weighting some links, negating others and even blatant cheating (by buying links) sooner or later you will get caught or worse you may end up nofollowing your more important pages by accident. It is vital to remember that the darker the hat you are wearing the shorter your success periods tend to be.

After all the changes in algorithm, the war on paid links… the list really does go on. There will never be a substitute for a well designed site with unique content as this will gain links naturally.

Linking Practices Part 3 of 3: Link Tricks

Here in part three of “Linking Practices” we will cover how to maximise the benefits of those links we discussed previously (check out part 1: “Links Defined” and part 2: “Links Applied”).

This section could also be classified as: Tips, Hints and Cheats. While I recommend and try at all times to adhere to ethical and honest practices there are many webmasters out there that do not. While PageRank still remains a prize in eyes of many webmasters there will always be a handful that will do anything to try and game the system. These are some of the usual ways in which they do this:

Robots.txt
The robots file is a little plain text file that resides in the root directory of a website. The purpose of this file is to notify the search engine spider of which pages should be indexed and which should not. After all you wouldn’t want the backend to your website indexed in the search results. This file stands alone and you cannot know its contents by looking at a standard webpage on that site. I know many webmasters have now started using the robots.txt file to exclude their link pages from the search engine spiders. By doing this they are effectively preventing the search engine from seeing the link to your page. This in turn makes your link back to them seem like a valuable one way link.

An easy way to search for this would be to type the link to the robots file directly into the address bar: “http://www.dodgywebmaster.com/robots.txt”

This will return the contents of the robots file. Check that the directory or page that your link is listed on isn’t listed in this file. If it is, then you may indeed be dealing with a dodgy webmaster.

Meta Tags
By simply adding the robots Meta tag to the page that has your link on it, webmasters can still have the page indexed but none of the links followed.

<meta name=”robots” content=”index,nofollow” />

While it may seem like the page has been indexed the search engines will ignore your link. This will once again make it appear that their link on your website is one of those much coveted one way links.

An easy way to determine if the webmaster in question is using these tactics would be to visit the page that has your link and view the source code. This is easily done by going to “view” on the menu bar and selecting “view source” (Firefox) or “source” (Internet Explorer) - this may vary slightly from browser to browser. You will find the robots tag somewhere between the <head> and </head> tags.

Again, if you find that the robots tag has the nofollow attribute, you know that the webmaster is not letting the search engines find their way to your website.

NoFollow
The no follow attribute is one that Google has pushed for and it would seem that the other major search engines are now starting to accept. This attribute is added into the anchor tag to prevent the search engine from following that link.

<a href=”www.yourwebsite.com” rel=”nofollow”>

This was an answer to paid text links. Google insisted that all paid links should not pass on PageRank and that webmasters selling links should mark them appropriately. This has been applied to most blogs in an attempt to combat spam. After all, spammers leave pointless comments on your website with the hope of gaining a link back to their site. The Google bot no longer follows these links rendering them useless when it comes to influencing the search engine results.

However once again this can be used for the wrong reasons. Some webmasters “no follow” all links from their site so as to hold as much PageRank as possible. There is even a school of thought that believe that if you used this attribute you actually give the other site a “bad vote” however I have yet to find any evidence to support this.

In order to find out if a webmaster is using this technique, search the source code of the page with your link for this tag. The easiest way to do this is to run a search on the source code of this page for the link text or website URL. The anchor tag will be near these.

Java Script
Search engines still have trouble reading java script if at all. By embedding your link in a short script the search engines will not be able follow your link or even recognise it as a link for that matter.

Normally the easiest way to spot this is by running your mouse over the link. If the destination URL in the status bar doesn’t match your URL but when you click on the link it takes you to your website it might be a script running. The only real way to know is by checking the source code. In this case you need to know what you are looking for.

By checking for these simple tricks you can ensure that your link is indeed pointing to your website and that the search engines will be able to find your site. Often paid links will have a script or a no follow attribute, this is good practice from the webmasters side as the search engines could penalise them for not marking paid links. Always remember that each circumstance has its own set of rules.

Also I would urge you not to try and use these methods to game other webmasters and cheat them out of potential link-love. If you are linking to and from good reliable, related websites then you would want the search engines to pick up and follow each and every link.

Linking Practices Part 2 of 3: Links Applied

Here in part two of “Linking Practices” we will cover the application of those links we discussed previously (check out part 1: “Links Defined”).

As with all marketing practices the best place to start is always with a plan. In this case we will need to establish what the purpose is of building these links. With links being a major factor when ranking a website many webmasters use links to try and gain higher rankings in search engine results. Sometimes links are valuable simply as they drive traffic to your website. As we all know traffic is very blood that powers your online business. Consider links the veins.

Reciprocal Links:
These links often offer very little aid when it comes to ranking highly in the search engines. While these links usually reside on a page that is no more than a long list of URL’s occasionally these can be of great benefit. A reciprocal link simply means a link exchanged. Usually you can request the anchor text and description you wish the link to display as well as the URL this points to. This makes sense as this is supposed to be a beneficial exchange for both parties.

While finding your link on a page with a thousand other links won’t be worth much at all, exchanging exclusive links can make the world of difference. For instance if I was a small independent car dealership, it would make sense to team up with a local insurance provider. In this case I could offer a direct link exchange straight from even my homepage to theirs and vice versa. If either I or they were running a special, why not point that link directly to that special.

With this kind of link you could drive direct, targeted traffic to your website from a related site.

One Way Links:
These are usually generated by previous visitors to your website with little coercion from your side. The best way to gain these links is by offering good solid content on your website. This is always a lot easier said than done. But by offering content people would want to share with others or be able to easily revisit themselves, visitors would add links elsewhere on the net and usually with good keyword rich phrases. It makes sense to title a link to another webpage with a relevant phrase. This is why your content is so important.

The second benefit of this type of link is that it is usually linked to an individual page. Couple this with a keyword rich anchor text and suddenly your website has a lot more credibility.

These are very difficult to come by. So many webmasters seem to be afraid of spreading a little link-love in the fear that they may lose some precious PageRank.

Three Way Links:
This practice is still practiced by many, in exactly the same fashion as reciprocal links. More often than not with poor or no results at all. Again the reason is that so many webmasters while trying to dupe the search engines simply add the link onto a link heavy page. As we all know by now, the more links on a page, the less valuable each one becomes.

This can however be a good way to have a new website indexed. By offering another website a link from an already establish website if they link out to a new website you can help speed the indexing and ranking of the new website.

siteA –> siteB –> SiteC

In this case the goal was to have site C indexed without using site A to do so (what ever that reason may have been) so there may be no need for Site C to link back to Site A.

This will only work if you can get a valuable link from that website (Site B in this case), being added to that dreaded “links” page just won’t cut it.

Deep Links:
These are the best (in my opinion) as they are usually far more specific and aid with the deep indexing of your website. These can be a result of any of the link building techniques. As mentioned above, these link to an individual page.

By gaining a link directly to an internal page of the website you have the potential of driving traffic to a specific page and usually with a specific reason in mind. If you are selling goods many people might link to your specials page, if you are a blogger this may be a link to a popular post, or if you offer a service of some kind this could be a link to a bio page.

Again, if I owned a small car dealership I would want to offer my visitors an insurance option. But if the site I was linking to offered various forms of insurance I would want to link directly to their motor insurance page.

Apart from driving traffic to a specific point on your website, these links will also aid rankings. In this case it makes sense that a link from a car dealership to a page on an insurance website would in some way be related to motor insurance. Especially if the anchor text said motor insurance. I am sure you can see the real benefit here.

Paid Links:
Paid links have a very bad name at the moment. This has been used mostly to game the search engines of late. But it looks as though the major search engines may be getting on top of this one. While it is seriously frowned upon to buy text links for search engine purposes, there are still valid forms of paid links.

Visitors to your website are valuable, but targeted visitors are even more valuable as they are your business’s lifeblood. It is often feasible to buy links (or traffic) to your website. Possibly the most popular way of doing so is the Google AdWords program, where a link to your website is displayed for specified search terms. Here you only pay once someone clicks on your link.

But sometimes you have to pay a fixed fee for a permanent link from a website to yours. This could be a simple text link to a flashy flash banner. The aim here is to drive targeted traffic to your website. If my business offered motor insurance then it would be viable to buy a link on a car dealer’s website – provided they had the traffic to justify it. A paid link becomes more valuable as the traffic to a website increases. After all there is no point in running a billboard ad in Antarctica where only a handful may see it; you would want to run it on the main highway (where all the traffic is).

This can be a very valuable but always make sure that you are able to keep records as to how many times your ad has been seen, the number of visitors that have clicked on the ad and so on. After all, you want your ad to be profitable, if the ad costs you $20 a month you want to be able to at least cover your costs if nothing else.

Internal Links:
This is the simplest form of linking. Simply link from one page of your website to another. That said there are a few simple rules that you should adhere to, these apply to the search engines and human visitors alike.

Make sure that all your important pages can be found within two clicks of your home page. This makes it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for. We are all in agreement that nothing is more frustrating than finding a website and going round in circles trying to find something. The same holds true for the search engines, unless your website is an authority website there is little need for the search engines to go deep into your website.

Text links! The search engines love text. They follow text links easily with the added benefit of having had a title to that link (the anchor text). While most human visitors have the ability to read graphics, JavaScript and flash some may have had this functions disabled. For these visitors simple text navigation is a must.

This is just a brief overview of how these links can and should be applied. Always remember that a link for a page is a vote, always try to make the link as relevant as possible, this includes the source, destination and content of the link.

I will offer a few tips on how to maximise the benefits of these links in part 3.

Linking Practices Part 1 of 3: Links Defined

This is a trilogy of links... told in four parts.

Here in part one of “Linking Practices” I will run through and explain in a little detail. While each method of linking has its benefits it also often has disadvantages. More often the advantages outweigh the disadvantages – if done correctly.

Reciprocal Links:
While many believe reciprocal links to be dead, these links have the potential to be either very useful or very useless; it all depends on the source for this one. A reciprocal link is a link swapped with another website. While the search engines don’t really give these all that much weight (unless from an authority site) these can be useful in driving traffic to your website from related websites. With enough of these links each driving small amounts of traffic to your website the increase in traffic can be quite noticeable.

A reciprocal link from an industry leader or a related industry leader can often lead to good volumes of traffic to your website. The greatest benefit here is that these are visitors that are already interested in your product or service. The disadvantage of running reciprocal links is that you get the world and his brother wanting to swap links with you, usually with absolutely no relevancy at all.

One Way Links:
These are the most valuable links when considering the search engines. A direct or one way link is a link to your website that is not reciprocated. The reason that this is so much more valuable is because in this case it a website that has linked back to yours without any solicitation (or at least that is how the search engines see it). The theory behind this and the PageRank algorithm is that every link to a website counts as a vote. Obviously the more votes you have the move important you site is seen to be. However it is also believed that every vote that you have to send out weakens your importance. Kind of like if you had a group of 10 people that all gave you $10, you would be up $100, but if you also had to give out $10 to each of them, then you simply break even. In the same way, the more votes that you are able to "bank" (not handed back) in this case the better off you are.

The problem with this form of linking is that it can often be very difficult to get this kind of link. With everyone so afraid of losing out on link juice many have become paranoid about linking out without any form of reciprocation.

Three Way Links:
Three way linking was originally a practice created to try and game the search engines. Basically it was a way of trying to create perceived one way links to websites but by giving out links in return. Sound confusing? Many people were confused and many to this day fear it will harm your search engine rankings. I don’t think this has ever been the case.

Described simply this would be a set of 3 sites that each link out to the next website until the last website links back to the first, or Site A links to Site B which links to Site C which in turn links back to Site A.

siteA –> siteB –> siteC –> siteA

I think most of the search engines have caught on to this practice and now treat these links in small clusters as no more than reciprocal links.

Deep Links:
Deep linking is the practice of building links to individual pages of your website. Again this can be crucial for gaining favour with the search engines. While your website may offer a multitude of products, it will be very difficult to rank the homepage for each and every product you offer simply because it isn’t the most relevant page for that product. Sense would say that one of your website’s deeper pages is more relevant, and therefore a competitor’s optimised page will be a lot more relevant than your homepage.

This kind of link usually comes from a previous visitor that found that particular page useful for what ever reason. This is also often a one way link to your website with related anchor text. By finding these individual pages through other websites most search engine bots place more value on these pages. The downside of this kind of linking is that it can be very difficult to obtain (without simply paying for it that is).

Paid Links:
Just don’t do it! Okay, so you can do it, just don’t do it to try and increase PageRank or influence the search engine results. Or even more specifically don’t buy text links where you can specify the kind of anchor text that links back to your website.

Even if you stick to the rules and don’t buy text links to manipulate PageRank or the search engine results you can still gain great benefit for paid links. Very much like paying for an advertisement in high profile magazine, top radio station or prime time TV, you pay for the link because the site is popular (in this case it has large traffic volumes). This in turn should help drive large volumes of traffic to your website.

Internal Links:
While all of the other methods of linking mentioned here come from external sources this one is equally important and will be mentioned in greater detail in part 2.

But unless the internal linking of the website is easily crawled by the search engines many of your pages can’t be indexed and will seriously harm chances of performing well in the search engine search results.

This is a brief summary of the type of links to a website. I will explain how to put these in practice in part 2.