Interlinking Circle of Sites

[jawn_tech]

In this thread, evidence is being seen that SE's are looking at reciprocal linking as purely for SE purposes. More often than not, that is the case.

In this article a while back, it was proposed that some sidestep reciprocal linking by creating a 'network' of sites. For example, Site A links to Site B, and B to Site C, and C to Site A. Or perhaps, the circle could/should be larger. (A,B,C,D,E,F, etc.)

Has anyone seen any new evidence where SE's acknowledged such a structure with negative consequences, or is this a legitimate linking strategy for human benefit?

[bhartzer]

Has anyone seen any new evidence

Yes, I'm seeing new evidence every day.

There are actually some new papers that have surfaced lately that talk about link exchanges and how search engines can identify them.

I recently wrote about these new papers a few days ago in My Blog. The first one, Ranking the Web Frontier (2004) talks about the dangling link problem and link spamming. The second paper, Improved Link-Based Algorithms for Ranking Web Pages (2003) deals with hostrank and dampening the weight of link exchanges.

Link exchanges (aka reciprocal linking) can be detected very easily and I believe that the search engines are taking the point of view that they don't like anything like this that is done just to manipulate their results. I wouldn't be surprised if they can even detect the "sidestep reciprocal linking" that is suggested, so I wouldn't even dream of implementing that.

If Google or any other search engine decides to implement a huge penalty for reciprocal linking one day we'll see another huge "Florida Update" type of d-day when all of a sudden a lot of websites won't rank for anything. If and when that day comes, those who don't do reciprocal linking will continue to rank well and those who don't won't be found anywhere.

[crankydave]

The "circle linking" idea would most certainly be done strictly for PR purpases and in a way to try and fool SE's. Certainly nothing good can come from this.

I can't see reciprocal linking ever being "punished" or "penalized". There will always be good, logical, and ethical reasons to exchange links. Diminishing or eliminating it's value...yes.

Dave

[bhartzer]

I can't see reciprocal linking ever being "punished" or "penalized".

What makes you think it's not being done right now as we speak?

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by bhartzer

What makes you think it's not being done right now as we speak?

SERP's would be blown up across the board for every single search term. It's importance in ranking being diminshed? Yes, perhaps. But a penalty for "Hey, I like your site so I linked to it. I think your visitors would like mine too." Nope, I just don't see the logic in that at all.

Dave

[bhartzer]

Hey, I like your site so I linked to it. I think your visitors would like mine too." Nope, I just don't see the logic in that at all.

If it's just once or twice, then that doesn't seem to draw much of a penalty if both sites have a lot of links from other authority sites.

Personally, though, I'm not doing any reciprocal linking anymore. And I am not recommending that anyone else do it.

[jawn_tech]

I can see the logic in an algorithmic equation looking at the percentages of recips in IBLs. A couple incidental reciprocals out of many backlinks might be considered, well, incidental. But a backlink spree hitting up all the directories that require reciprocals would tend to be a bit more obvious to the algo.

(now I think about it, I think I just said the same thing bhartzer said...)

[bhartzer]

...a backlink spree...

Right-on, jawn_tech!

Too much of one thing is not good. If you have a lot of links from other sites and you have a Yahoo! Directory Listing, and DMOZ Listing, and a lot of links from other sites that are non-reciprocal, then the engines tend to overlook "a few" reciprocal links.

[crankydave]

I think the question that really needs answered is whether or not they're "penalized" or simply given little to no weight as far as SERP's are concerned. This is a very important distinction.

Dave

[Mike Sands]

Google Junky pointed me to this thread and I think was suggesting that I post my experience.
I have built several very similar looking sites for very good reasons - they are for similar products delivered to the audiences in a similar fashion but the audiences are very different (hence the logic of separate websites). For convenience sake the aspects of the products that are similar - eg the mode of delivery, the university behind the course, and our own 'about us' details are all almost identical pages. Google Junky thinks the SEs might not like this - and it's certainly true that until about 6-8 months ago we were right up there and now we are unfindable. It was at about this time that I started adding more of the similar sites (up to that time there were just 2). Also worse than that, On these and another 7 or 8 sites I have used an identical 'links' page that simply lists all the sites we own and operate. Again this seemed a logical and convenient thing to do, and it did go through my mind that it would help with link popularity .... perhaps it's done the opposite and Google see it as spamming (yahoo don't seem to mind)
Mike

[crankydave]

Also worse than that, On these and another 7 or 8 sites I have used an identical 'links' page that simply lists all the sites we own and operate. Again this seemed a logical and convenient thing to do, and it did go through my mind that it would help with link popularity .... perhaps it's done the opposite and Google see it as spamming (yahoo don't seem to mind)

At the very least, duplicate content. Why would Google want to index the same pages repeatedly?
Keep the pages and content unique. Several thoughts, ideas, and links throughout this thread concerning this "practice".

Dave

[Maximilian]

Originally Posted by bhartzer

Personally, though, I'm not doing any reciprocal linking anymore. And I am not recommending that anyone else do it.

Greetings - bhartzer!

Wow! The implications of this would certainly place the current SEO market on its head - I shudder at the thought.

I, myself, have always avoided reciprical linking, 'cept to sell books & magazines, just because I wanted no other distractions on the way to my virtual cash register & for no other reason.

Cheers!
Max

[globalhostinggroup]

Well
This is a loaded topic
If the sights are similar in coding (too similar penalized*)(different enough ether ignored or gain status)
* if they are too close and on a shared server with same reg info look to this as being seen as spam sooner or later.

Now one methods I have used (shhh it is a secret) is a enthusiast site on your promoted topic with total unique content and sponsor links to the client site. I have hade these related info sites achieve some great rankings and pass through great traffic. But do not use these to blanket spam your client or it will be looked at as a spam site.

Onw I have seen a Canadian network that registered like 300+ domains .ca and each name is a directory but different directories all interlinked and linking to the people who pay to be on the network. Right now I see many top rankings for this network even though the layout is identical listed info is different and links are the same. Only time will tell with this conglomerate of domains if they get penalized.

Now as we all know running mirror sites can be frowned upon so unless you want to cut out the SE’s then avoid this.

In summation I have seen positive results using these methods but it is a fine line between positive and negative and it can take months to recoup from a bad dissection.

[Mike Sands]

I'm going to remove the identical 'links' page from all the sites but leave the similar content on the sites and see what happens. Hopefully Google will see that I'm not trying to spam - just create a logical family of similar sites offering similar (but different) products.
Mike

[Nick W]

Personally, though, I'm not doing any reciprocal linking anymore. And I am not recommending that anyone else do it.


Greetings - bhartzer!

Wow! The implications of this would certainly place the current SEO market on its head - I shudder at the thought.

I think you'll find that a great many professional seo's stopped reciprocal linking a year or more ago...

It's just rubbish, and amateur to boot. Circular linking is pretty easy to spot as well im thinking. Just take a look using Touch Graph at any network you know does this. It stands out like a sore thumb!

One approach that can work is the spoke and hub method but the engines get better and better at spotting unnatural linking patterns so the best advice is really to go out and get non-recip links from lots of different sources i think.

Hard work, but then so is anything worthwhile for the most part...

[sfowler]

This is one of those real hot topics. I do my best to avoid reciprocal linking, but I freely admit to weakening occasionally! I would hope that the status and purpose of the other site, together with relevancy. I have also sometimes linked back to someone after finding their link and being nosy. If I like it, I link back, unless I forget. Directories also sometimes ask for a return link, and a relevant directory link can be useful for visitors. the next problem with the directory links is that many seem to use js links or similar that never show up.

I have posted in a number of threads my opinion that the relevancy of linking is questionable for a SE algorithm. It is even easier to spam than content, which is exactly what has happened.

[kidmercury]

creating a network of sites is definitely a way to improve search engine ranking, and i think it always will be. what is and will continue to become harder to do is finding a way to easily automate the creation of this network. if you want to be really safe, i think it would be advantageous to

1. give each site a unique design/html/css code structure

2. unique content for each site is an absolute must

3. if not now then definitely in the future you will need to have your sites hosted on IP addresses with different C blocks.

4. domain names should be registered privately.

5. link building strategy should be fairly unique. one exception is that all of the sites in your network should probably link to your one "master" site, which presumably is your sales site that you'll be using to generate revenue.

one way i was thinking about creating a network of sites is to look at what other networks exist out there for the industry/keyword i am looking to optimize for. once i've identified the networks within that industry/keyword, i'll create a site that i'll be able to get in with for each network, if that makes sense.

this can work remarkably well but is far from easy to execute well -- which is exactly what the search engines desire for it to be (and rightfully so, IMHO).

[jawn_tech]

Company "XYZ" has a site. They manufacture a product. They have sales rep offices around the country. On their sales/contact page, they have links to all the sales rep offices' sites, so customers can contact their local rep. Each rep office site has a link to the mother company so customers can get product information.

All the sites in question also have other IBL's, but no other out-bounds.

Any thoughts?

[Mike Sands]

That's more or less our situation. We have websites for lots of products and services some related some not, but we'd like a visitor who sees one product to perhaps consider one of our others, so I would have thought the common, owned links page is a legitimate page - same for your hypothetical sales company. A customer in location X might be travelling to location Y and wants to quickly see details of the company's operation in Y.
Mike

[Gary Golden]

Personally I have started going after page links as appposed to directory links though I still have a directory on my site. As such I have added only on secondary pages partner links on the right hand side, these are specifically for other web site admin's that operate multiple sites with higher PR ranking that wish to trade alternate sites with equal page rank.
By doing this I am able to break out of directories and get on main pages and thus get more business from link trades as opposed to being tucked away in directories.

Example: Your link goes on my "A" site with a PR4 page and I link to your "B" site with a PR0 page
You give me a link on your PR4 page and link to my B site page which I choose.

Creates a Win Win situation for everyone and you get off a PR0 page in a Link Directory. Thus getting you on a page that is actually going to send you business.

[pebblez]

What about hosting several different websites under the same domain? Say for instance i have a main retail site where i sell shoes, and then create several subsites, perhaps even on subdomains, with both relevant and non relevant topics. For instance a relevant site would be shoe history and information (history.shoedomain.com), a non relevant would be the history of radio (radio.shoedomain.com). Both sites linking back to the retail site in the form of advertising
Would this help in the search engines at all? or hurt? or neither?

[drods]

so umm, what are we saying here then? i mean, there is a forum page here advertising link exchange request! so if seo's stopped recommending recp linking a year ago, what does this say about this forum :-)

that was "tongue in cheek" he he... but guys, what are we really recommending recp linking or not! , because im now confused ...

[jawn_tech]

what are we really recommending recp linking or not

The atomic question! =) (good one) I don't yet have an answer to that. From what people have said so far in this thread, I'm more or less seeing that if recp linking is going to be done, how one goes about it is just as important as "if". For example, the SE's themselves link to sites that link back to them, so it goes without saying they're not going to penalize themselves or the sites they link to. Clearly they can see there is some legitimacy of recip linking. But again, there's evidence that others recp linking merely for SEO purposes, which the SE's somehow detect (with what accuracy, I don't know). This leaves me wanting to know, how do they (the SE's) know the difference? Is the answer in having a larger network of sites, that circle link, or is that too something they would sniff out. If so, how? After all, one might consider the possibility of a network hosted from the same server, or different servers, or the phenomenon of a link circle emerging purely by coincidence from different webmasters.

Personally I see this issue as one of the biggest gray areas that there seems to be one of the largest lack of consensus in SEO. Like Jean-Luc Picard once said, "mysteries are meant to be solved."

[I am Nick]

I was checking up my one of my competitors this weekend to see what he was doing to get his higher SERP on "seo". He has 3 domains (not in english), one doing SEO, one Webdesign, and one is a directory.

He used to hold no. 1, 2, 3, and 4 SERP with Google

I noticed that both his main domains had about the same amount of BL, i.e. about 530, so I got a little suspisious, then I found his directory. He is linking back to both his main domains from his footer of each page of directory. He is using a software creating static webpages and subfolders for each category.

Now I noticed that another competitor sneaked in on SERP 3 and 4, leaving him with SERP 1, 2, 5, and 6. The competitor has only 130 links, but all are rather unique. It looks like it's his customers linking back to him, i.e. the relevans of the links could be argued. However he squezed in between them. So, a lot of value for BL but not all! The site which is about Webdesign still holds very good SERP for "seo" which I assume is generated from his many BL.

Is this type of directory something to I should do?

BR Nick