Why Exchanging Links Isn't Worth It. And Why Page Rank.....

[perry321]

...isn't that big of a deal either. Well, for the most part, that is.

Well, in my opinion, anyway. :-)~

I'm sorry, but I have to get this off my chest.

I run a website for my book on dating for men. It's carried in bookstores, but I thought I would try the Internet also. I started the site a few years ago. I let it die, and I am just now getting it back on its feet.

I have been told, and I have read that exchanging links will give my site a higher ranking, and that having a high page rank is such a good idea.

Maybe, maybe not, but after using my common sense, and a few searches on keywords on different products and subjects, I quickly came to the conclusion that for the most part it is a waste of time, and, that page rank is overrated.

Go look at a similiar product such as yours. Are they on the same page as you? Do they have links from other sites? If so, how many are there, and what KIND of liks are they? Do they have a high page rank?

I am always seeing sites that have NO page rank and NO links from other sites, and they still show up on the first two pages, right along with the sites that do have a lot of links, and that do have a high page rank.

There is no sense to it, but that's just the way the search engines work. It has no rhyme or reason.


And how 'bout those keywords?

Many say to jack your site with keywords to get you on the first or second page of a search engine.

Yes, I agree, but...how long do many of those sites stay up there? Some stay up quite awhile. Most don't. They are knocked down the rankings by thousands of other sites.

And have you ever noticed some sites having very few keywords, and they STILL show up on the first or second pages?

I will always put keywords in my pages, but I know it isn't that big of a deal to do so. I'll do it just to do it.

I think many website owners get off on this because of their egos. "Hey, look at my site. It's on page one."

(I have a friend who is like this. I rib him every now and then about it.)

Yeah, but is he making money? And, how long will it stay up there?


I'm not a guru on this subject. I don't work for Google, and I know nothing about their inner workings. I just use common sense.


I know I am stepping on a lot of toes here, but for you all who have common sense, and you don't know either way...think about it.

I'll stick with cheap pay per click ads, writing for sites and other forms of advertising, rather than spending hours and hours and hours and hours and hours TRYING to find sites to exchange links with.

Am I wrong??? What am I missing???

*Rant off*

:-)

[martty]

PageRank has only ever been one of the 100 or so factors that go into the ranking of a page. Where did you get the impression it was that important.

Originally Posted by perry321

I am always seeing sites that have NO page rank and NO links from other sites, and they still show up on the first two pages, right along with the sites that do have a lot of links, and that do have a high page rank.

Its impossible to be indexed in Google without links from other sites.

[fresht]

Originally Posted by martty

Its impossible to be indexed in Google without links from other sites.

My site just got indexed by google after 2 weeks of existence, and it most definitely doesn't have any links from other sites. It's still in beta, and there are only 5 or so people who know it even exists. All it took was submitting it manually.

[martty]

Originally Posted by fresht

My site just got indexed by google after 2 weeks of existence, and it most definitely doesn't have any links from other sites. It's still in beta, and there are only 5 or so people who know it even exists. All it took was submitting it manually.

What is the URL?

[fresht]

Originally Posted by martty

What is the URL?

http://www.harrijahkola.com

edit: only the splash page got indexed, but I understand googlebot usually doesn't go deeper than the first page on new sites. Nevertheless, it got indexed, and I was pretty surprised about it.

I wasn't even expecting it to get it listed this fast and wasn't aware until yesterday it's on google: I got an email from a childhood friend I haven't seen in 10+ years after he googled my name. What luck it was, as the site's been on google for 3 or so days!

[perry321]

From other people out there. You read it all the time in message boards, and articles.

Yeah, Me too. A couple of years back I didn't have any links from other sites and I got in the search engines just fine. On top of that, I had NO ranking, and I was on the first page of Google for a few days.

Go figure.

[incrediblehelp]

Many issues here to cover:

1. Google toolbar PR is un-important in my opinion

2. I don't actively use link exchanges anymore and don't for my clients as well. If my client wants to do it, as long as it is relevant to their website, I give my blessing.

3. Pages with no PR rank all of the time, because the toolbar PR # is exported only 3-4 times a year. So the page actual has PR from Google...internally. Like I said above the toolbar PR means nothing.

4. Keyword stuffing/spamming is terrible and no one should do it that is serious about online marketing. You don't "PUT" keywords on your website. It happens naturally by writing good relevant, content.

5. Letting your website die a long time ago, is the real issue here. I am glad your brining it back to life now. By adding some great content and syndicating /promoting popularity you are sure to have success. I you started this process 2 years ago smiles would be had by all!

6. I have been posting this thread to my blog on many WPW threads because I think it is relevant:

Link Baiting and Social Media Optimization , Huh?

Consider link baiting and SMO instead of using link exchanges.

7. You will probably never know if your new website has links to it or not, unless you work at Google. I could misspell or link to a domain that doesn't exist for any number of reasons on my blog and Google will spider a link that doesn't work. 2 years later someone buys the domain and now it has a 2 year old link on my blog.

You realize by linking to it from this thread you have effectively got the website spidered?

Just so you know Google commonly gives a "freshness" boost to new websites and web documents. I have seen this happen over and over on new websites/websites producing fresh content. When Google realizes that the document doesn't have enough links to support its current position it gradually falls. Of course if you have some solid links being built or created you will stay ranked.

[sofakingdabest1]

Alotta links makes your site look it's a hap'nin place to be. The more the eyes are movin around the page, the more chance to view the cool Flash ads...

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by sofakingdabest1

Alotta links makes your site look it's a hap'nin place to be. The more the eyes are movin around the page, the more chance to view the cool Flash ads...

huh?

[jackit_chick]

I did at one time actively look for links, now I get an e-mail at LEAST twice a week requesting them. But after I did a lot of seo on keywords, linking, and other things I've read about, we were showing up as number 4 instead of 50, and we know longer had to pay for that word.

Now personally, not as a web designer but as a consumer, I see that those listings are sponsored and I RARELY click on those just because a lot of fake websites use these to trick people.

Need an example? My husband looked up FAFSA to fill one out for college last year because he couldn't remember the website. People with paid listings for this let you fill one out for their website then want to charge like 80 bucks for you to submit it, when it's really free! Luckily I said that it doesn't look right anyway, and we found the real one in the normal listings.

Just from scams like this as a consumer, I'm wary unless the sponsored listing is from a company I've heard of.

[DrK]

It's not as black and white as it may seem.
As a rule of thumb: yes, stay within the sites cluster; however, there a lots of sites that do not necessarily fit into a cluster - such as news sites, certain blogs and forums. In these cases it's more about PR and actual traffic.

[jxw]

incrediblehelp said it best -- "content." Content trumps all. But be aware of all the tools available to you, as everything helps, expecially when your site suffers an unexplained drop to page 3 or worse.

(Actually, incrediblehelp said it best a second time, too, with "huh?")

[garris]

I am not as optomistic about links. For a while, it worked, but it's just like the ol' story about Russian hubcaps --
Thieves would steal them, so they sold locks, which the theives then figured how to get around. So they sold locks for the locks, which the thieves figured how to get around, so they sold other locks,.... you get the idea. So it goes with the tricks of the SEO trade.
Watching the rules change every 6 months or so for the last few years, I wonder when Google will just forget the whole link thing and move on to some other way of determining rank.
It can't be far away.

[Kate Lennon]

I own five websites (all online since the mid 1990s), and only one of them makes money (real money, ie). And it is the site I was least interested in, and did virtually nothing to promote. All I did - back in 1995 - was submit it to the search engines. I knew nothing about SEO, reciprocal linking, etc. As far as I know, there are no inbound links to this site (a site search on Google gives zero results, and it actually doesn't even appear to be listed in Google (I've just checked, and it doesn't show up for any relevant search terms).
I have never advertised this site; never paid for clicks; never requested reciprocal links - in fact I have never done anything at all to advertise or promote this site, or make it "search-engine friendly (and it evidently isn't!). Yet, as I said, this is the only one of my websites that has made serious money for me.

It is a different story altogether with my other websites. I spent years trying to promote them, using every method available - carefully optimizating the site, paying for clicks on Google, paying to be listed in Yahoo, seeking (and getting) thousands of link exchanges with other *relevant* websites. There is very little that I haven't tried (and spent money, energy and endless hours in front of my PC) in my efforts to get traffic, search-engine positioning etc., for these sites.

Yet it is the other site - the one I'm not really interested in (I set it up, initially, for a bit of fun, and to practise my html skills) that continues to get all the traffic - WITHOUT reciprocal links, WITHOUT advertising or promotion, WITHOUT even being listed on Google (I've just checked, and the site has a Google PR rank of 2).

At this stage I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that all this stuff about page rank, SERP, reciprocal links, even search engine inclusion, is complete baloney; a scam on a grand scale by Google (and others) to extract money from individuals and businesses who need (or think they need) to have "a presence" online.

A whole industry has grown up around this "need" - companies who will get your site listed in search engines for a fee; companies who will optimize your site so that you will get (in theory) thousands of visitors every day - etc. And you get forums (or fora, if you prefer) - like this one - where experts and self-styled experts argue endlessly over the minutiae of SEO, and whether this or that technique is effective, or "permitted" by Google (Google has become a dictator) - like theologians arguing about how many angels can dance on the end of a pin.

It's all rubbish! Google isn't anywhere near as "intelligent" or as important as everyone is giving it credit for being. At the end of the day, you either have a website that people want or need to visit, or you don't.

[craigmn3]

It's impossible to lay down one standard for search engine results and say this works for all

Each Keyword based search has different dynamics

Major keyword slots which are highly contested require a different mind set than a niche keyword search.

How many quality sites are there for your keyword...and are you hitting the best keywords

I could gaurantee to design anyone a number one google listed website if I could optimaze it for the key word...."nanny gopp parstel bitumin grup" nobody is competeing for that.

Try Web Design, or even my favorite Above Ground Pools and the competition gets far more intense...and suddenly unimportant things like keywords and IBL's become important.
If my competition is scoring 98.1243154 % on googles relevancy then I have to score 98.1243155 and the little things count at that point.

(no there is no actual rating called relevancy % that was merely for illustration)


And to Kate Lennon ...or perhaps google is smart enough to see a site that is trying to be optomized, instead of relevant. Relevancy scores much higher than optimization with Goodgle

[Kate Lennon]

Craig,
You're missing my point. The only one of my sites that makes money doesn't even show up on Google.
One of my other sites is right at the top of Google (it has a PR of 5) for relevant searches, but it still only gets a couple of hundreds of visitors every day, and generates very little revenue (barely enough to cover the costs involved in promoting and running it).

Every day I get email spams from companies offering to optimize my website so that it has better search-engine (ie, Google) visibility. This is widely supposed to translate into more traffic and higher earnings. It doesn't. Being at the top of Google (SERP) and having a good PR does NOT result in thousands of people visiting your website every day; nor does it translate into making more money. This is a myth that is propagated by the search engines themselves, and by companies offering SEO services.

It is possible to have a successful website attracting thousands of visitors every day and earning millions of dollars annually, without doing ANYTHING to promote it. On the otyher hand, it is possible to have a high PR website that turns up at the top of Google searches for any and all relevant key terms, and still get only a trickle of traffic and earn little or nothing from it.

[BBJ]

Can anyone tell me how come then the second site that shows up on google when you search for (flowers toronto) or (florists toronto) does not even have toronto as a key word or in the title or in the content yet it's been #1 or #2 for the last couple of years for those searches......to me it's very fishy!

[jeffposaka]

Kate,

Consider yourself lucky that you get plenty of traffic and conversions without your site coming up in search engine results pages.

In my experience, I definately get more traffic and sales the higher I am in the results for the product.

I wish I could build a site, then do nothing and tons of paying customers come.

[toolameforyou]

If you can't be found in search engines by people who are searching with words and phrases relevant to your site (aka "keywords") that is a bad thing for traffic and business. It's sort of like owning a coffee shop in the middle of the forest. Just because it's there doesn't mean people can find it.

If your traffic is not coming from search engines, then where? Links? Newsletters? Offline promotions? A hot myspace page?

As far as I know, there are no inbound links to this site (a site search on Google gives zero results, and it actually doesn't even appear to be listed in Google (I've just checked, and it doesn't show up for any relevant search terms).

If you have access to your log files or a site stats program you should immediately be able to see just where all those visits are coming from. I'd bet the farm they aren't all typing in the url. I'd bet almost none do in fact.

I must be missing something here...

As much as I like the idea of the Field Of Dreams approach (If you build it they will come!), it just hasn't worked out that way for any site I've ever hacked out! And yes, I guess you can cross the invisible line where too much work is put into links/optimization... And yes, I think the days of reciprocal gold are long gone... but still! I've been doing this for 11 years now and to say that not showing up for relevant searches doesn't affect business sounds very crazy to me at this point.

Maybe the point I'm missing here is that I shouldn't agonize over a particular search phrase in google?

Honestly, I don't know. Help me out. I just typed a bunch of stuff and I'm afraid I'm gonna have to re-read this thread because I MUST be missing something important.

[nelsonez]

Originally Posted by perry321

There is no sense to it, but that's just the way the search engines work. It has no rhyme or reason.

Hi Perry, this is why there are SEO specialists / experts. They figure out how the search engine algorithms work and use this knowledge to get their clients sites to rank higher.

With that said there is no such thing as a perfect algorithm. You will always see results for a keyword search that you think shouldn't be there. Usually though if you know the different criteria that go into producing this rank you will eventually find a reason why this site is where it is at. It will usually be heavily weighted for one of the criteria.

These search engine indexing algorithms are essentially multivariate equations that takes into account dozens of different criteria. This type of equation borders on what goes into simple artifical intelligence calcuations so of course it will be complicated. Many of the experts here have studied the search engine indexing process for well over 5 years now.

I am by no means suggesting you shouldn't try this at home but I do get a chuckle when someone reads a how-to SEO article on the internet then tries it for a few weeks or even a month and then declares that the search engines rank sites with no rhyme or reason.