Links::: Life or death of your eBusiness.

[kgun]

1. Introduction.

There have been many intensive discussions here at WPW about many link schemes, where the last is this now 13 pages long thread about inbound links. As explained in my post #639
link selling and buying have been also been relatively extensively discussed.


2. Backlinks to avoid.

This backlinks to avoid article is a classic article about link schemes that you shall avoid. I think it is not fully up to date, e.g. on links and frames. It is fairly long time since I have accepted any link exchange after Google started penalizing sites that participated in link selling / buying and triangular link schemes. Triangular link schemes. There are thousands of them, many good portals have participated and participate in triangular linking. I doubt many of them even know about the rel="nofollow" attribute. Now, if I accept a link exchange, I rel="nofollow" the link and require that the link partner do the same. So what have happened to these portals that are based on triangular linking?

3. You are who you link to.

My own view on IBL's is that IBL's can not hurt you. You can only get what you deserve if you buy inbound links, that is what I personally have called zeroed out. We also know that Google operate with various penalties.

The worst. I personally have experienced, is a link that later redirected to a porn site (normal porn links are legal) but personally I can not think of anything worse for that site. The blame is of course on myself, since I did not do a good enough due diligence before linking out. That experience have made me very skeptical to new links, especially those that I find on forums and social network sites. In stead I try to make my old link collection that I started collected in 1995 more focused. The aim is not to get a biggest possible link collection. But outbound links can hurt you. So outbound linking is also a risky business, even if it is a free organic link.

4. A static banner link model.

Some weeks ago, I wrote this article, "pay per static brand link a better solution for professional publishers." The more I think of it, the more I reckognize that that is the best link model for the professional publisher.

5. Have Google achieved what they aimed at?

By rel="nofollowing", theoretically a large part of the web can be invisible to GoogleBOT or am I wrong? At last it has given me a lot of headache. Hopefully it has made the web more semantic.

6. Meaningful comments and remarks are welcome.

As a minimum, before you comment in this thread, I would appreciate that you read the article:
Backlinks to avoid. If you give a meaningless comment, it may be rewarded with a red rep point, so think before you post, since I don't want a new marathon thread unless it is natural. Good comments may get a green rep point.

[kgun]

Thank your for that comment. I see that you are new here at WPW. Welcome. Nevertheless be careful with such comments for the following reason:

1. Take time to read. Every second count in the digital economy operating at the speed of light.
2. If you leave WPW after a few posts, that can indicate that you are a spammer.

Personally, I would have appreciated that you gave a more thorough comment. If you gave a professional comment with extra / fresh / new information, you could have

1. got a link to your site(s).
2. got a green rep point.

Nevertheless again thank you for the nice words. Since you are new to the forum and you are the only one that has commented so long, you get a positive green rep point. That does not imply that the next poster with a similar comment get a green rep poing. (S)he may even get a negative red

[Lorel509]

Hi Kgan

I wrote the article referenced above a couple years ago while PR still made a difference and it does need an update. thanks for the reminder

[full house]

thanks for that! reminding webmaster who to link to and study the link first before linking. . .

[kgun]

Yes, I have experienced a lot of bad things with outbound links:

• Changed content as explained above. Linkfarms are worst.
• Broken links of course.
• Bad redirects.

So study a site in detail before you link out. I do not always have time to that since I have about 30 000 links in my collection.

And I cultivate them and look through them manually like a grape farmer does with his grapes.

You also find a lot of interesting articles when you review your link collection. As it grows older you get some really good links and you get a fairly good overview of the best internet sites in your niche.

Last but not least, you learn to be more sceptical to what you find.

[MtraX]

kgun

I really like your analogy of cultivating your links like a farmer (and no relation to link farming of course I find however that it takes an immense amount of time if you do it manually. Now what kind of cycle (time ways) do you go through to sift through all your links when you're checking them and how often would you do this?

There are of course some great tools for maintaining and checking your links, so I was just wondering whether you're doing it manually?

Regards
MtraX

[ldylion214]

First of all I want to say being a novice basically and having quasi ADD, I sometimes don't read articles because I get overwhelmed. I'm glad I read this one. My first question is this ~ does "dynamically driven database mean a program such as Zeus?
Next, I get many link requests wanting to do a 3 way exchange. When I go to the site my link would be on it's usually some site that has nothing to do with jewelry, native american, or art. I very rarely do the 3 way because my common sense tells me this will not benefit me.
I've avoided deleting certain links from my site because I have sense of loyalty to some. We've been link partners for years but some do not fall into this criteria.

Great article. I saved it to desktop.

Thanks, Nicci

[Mel]

Hi Kgun yes that article is out of date and while it does make some valid points I am of the opinion that it goes a bit too far when it makes statements like:

Link farms - 100 or more unrelated links on a page (banned by search engines and also your site if you link to it). - Somehow I doubt that this statement is factual as its not too hard to find pages with more than 100 links on a page indexed in search engines.

Or

The site has a PR of 0 (either because the website is too new or page is in a dynamically driven database) Use your discression here--a new, well designed website may grow in page rank.

- while it makes good sense that back links from a PR0 site may not be indexed and thus will do you no good from a ranking standpoint there may be traffic to be had from such sites.


I don't want to turn this into one of those never ending links debates but surely there is a better article somewhere on which to base the thread?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by MtraX

Now what kind of cycle (time ways) do you go through to sift through all your links when you're checking them and how often would you do this?

I cannot answer that on a forum for natural reasons.

Originally Posted by MtraX

There are of course some great tools for maintaining and checking your links, so I was just wondering whether you're doing it manually?

Yes, like Find broken links on your site with Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM)

[kgun]

Originally Posted by ldylion214

My first question is this ~ does "dynamically driven database mean a program such as Zeus?

Now I am unsure of what you mean.

1. Did you mean the above mentioned Xenu or Application Delivery Networking, Application Acceleration, Internet Traffic Management System : Zeus.com
2. Something else?

Originally Posted by ldylion214

Next, I get many link requests wanting to do a 3 way exchange. When I go to the site my link would be on it's usually some site that has nothing to do with jewelry, native american, or art. I very rarely do the 3 way because my common sense tells me this will not benefit me.

Note according to the above mentioned articel, triangular linking should be avoided. The same with other linking schemes like trapezoid or stealth linking (wait to the link redirects to post #143).

See my answer to the next poster, though.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Mel

Hi Kgun yes that article is out of date and while it does make some valid points

Yes the author of the article admitted that above:

Originally Posted by Lorel509

Hi Kgan

I wrote the article referenced above a couple years ago while PR still made a difference and it does need an update. thanks for the reminder

Originally Posted by Mel

I am of the opinion that it goes a bit too far when it makes statements like:

Link farms - 100 or more unrelated links on a page (banned by search engines and also your site if you link to it). - Somehow I doubt that this statement is factual as its not too hard to find pages with more than 100 links on a page indexed in search engines.

May be I go too far on resiprocal, triangular linking etc. But Google has made me put the rel="nofollow" attribute on links I exchange with friends and family.

Example: DigitalStart, hvor du starter ditt søk eller din surfing på nettet.

• The link with anchor text "Søvde AS". A large regional company the is owned by the father of my daughters man.
• Jul2008 My daughters mans blog. Made for Tradedoubler. That should deserve rel="nofollow" on the link.

100 % of all requests from foreigners are ignored.

As a SEO expert

1. do you think I go too far?
2. What about submitting to authoritative Norwegain portals like ABC Startsiden

Originally Posted by Mel

The site has a PR of 0 (either because the website is too new or page is in a dynamically driven database) Use your discression here--a new, well designed website may grow in page rank.

That is the problem. A professor don't worrying about submitting, social media, press releases etc. may have one of the best sites on the internet. Will his site be found?

But I don't know of a better SE model (I don't talk about meta serach engines like clusty thay is good IMO) than Gooles inverted link matrix model.

Originally Posted by Mel

I don't want to turn this into one of those never ending links debates but surely there is a better article somewhere on which to base the thread?

Neither do I.

[ldylion214]

Originally Posted by kgun

Now I am unsure of what you mean.[*]Did you mean the above mentioned Xenu or Application Delivery Networking, Application Acceleration, Internet Traffic Management System : Zeus.com[*]Something else?

Yes, I was referring to Zeus the link exchange program. I've often wondered if an automatic program like that as opposed to individually writing the site makes a difference to the search engines. I used to use Zeus ages ago and as I recall it was easy to have numerous links in a short period of time. Forgive me if I'm not explaining this correctly.

THanks! Nicci

[kgun]

Automatic programs are far from good enough for the following reasons:

1. The links I place directly on the site is never placed there randomly. Take DigitalStart.net: The starting point for English speaking surfers and webmasters as an example. On the toolbar, you see the "Domain" option. Click "domain" and you will see that my preferred site on that option is Whois.net - Domain Names. I try to order other important resources (on the submenus) just below the main menu. Less important sites IMO are placed longer from the main menu. On the left menu (light green) below the toolbar, I have put some important SitePoint resource links. Semantic and pedagogical ordering / categorizing is important. Then click the global link "OopSchool" at the top. At that site, click the global link "Links" to the left of the "Digg" link. These links are only put in categories and ordered by IE 6.0. Some of them may be deleted or put directly on the site later.
2. I categorize and recategorize links nearly daily. The categories get more and more stable though. I have a shortcut to my favourites folder on my desktop. Drag and drop a folder / category to a new destination or rename it in seconds. IE 6.0 is best suited to this task.
3. site dot com/+longURLheremaybebroken and now changed to site dot com. I prefer to link to site dot com since it nearly always redirects to site dot com/whatever. That link (site dot com) is simply more stable.
4. Content may have changed sometimes radically. The link is no longer semantic.

[Webnauts]

Kjell, a tip I was missing on that article you recommended us to read:

Make sure that the page where your link will be living, that it is not "nofollowed" using X-Robots.

Do I get a green point for this one?

Cool post by the way.

[kgun]

A green rep point. Reminds me that you deserve one for all your great hints, not especially for this. You have so many.

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Make sure that the page where your link will be living, that it is not "nofollowed" using X-Robots.

Can you repeat the code?

Ok, John I have to look it up myself:

webnauts kgun X-Robots site:webproworld.com

How to prevent bots from crawling individual links? (Redirects to post #22)

NEWS!!! Google re-introduces PageRank (Redirects to post #38 )

Matt Cutts Announces NoFollow Google Help Center (Redirects to post #43 )

[kgun]

I could have started a new thread and could have called it IBL's facts, fiction and speculation. But I find it natural to post it here.

How would I have programmed a SE algorithm that depended on IBL's (some call it votes / references / citations) to a site / page).

Here is one version. The IBL's are divided in two sets:

1. White links that carry weight.
2. Black links that carry no weight (in other words they are zeroed out).

Can black links (link patterns) hurt your company / site in this model?

Here is another version. The IBL's are divided in three sets:

1. White links that carry weight.
2. Grey links with damped weight.
3. Black links that carry no weight (in other words they are zeroed out).

There are of course other more advanced models like dividing the links in more refined sets of semantic links and link patterns. That does not make any difference. The methods are the same. I think it is an easy task for SE programmers to make these more or less refined algorithms.

Related WPW threads:

Can inbound links really hurt you?

The ability to pass pagerank. Can it be lost?

Can PR Be Negative?

Links-Do they have too much weight?

[clientdixon]

Interesting topic. Nice to know about this. Keep it coming.

[kgun]

1. Thank you for replying. And I still see some new comments. If PageRank can not be negative, and we don't go outside PageRank, within the concept of PageRank, inbound link (patterns) can not hurt your site. That should not be difficult to program as I wrote in my last post above.
2. What if we start speculating about a link carrying malvare or other negative elements to a site (that is a link that we have categorized as white - see above is actually black)?That is another story and then you have to introduce the browser the surfer uses etc.

Algorithms are not perfect and can have side effects. If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts (your algorithms). I have concentrated around 1 above, since 2 becomes more speculative.

Finally, for those that know the JavaScript mouse over event (handler), if you mouse over an element in a web page like a link, that can fire a download or an other event that starts infecting the surfer's computer. But that hurts the surfer's computer and not your web site.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Mel

Hi Kgun yes that article is out of date and while it does make some valid points I am of the opinion that it goes a bit too far when it makes statements like:

Link farms - 100 or more unrelated links on a page (banned by search engines and also your site if you link to it). - Somehow I doubt that this statement is factual as its not too hard to find pages with more than 100 links on a page indexed in search engines.

I have bolded an important word.

"Link farms - 100 or more unrelated links on a page (banned by search engines and also your site if you link to it)".

My personal opinion: Your site not banned by search engines if you link to one or two, but if you link to many ...

An important update:

Matt Cutts June 15, 2009 about PageRank sculpting