Forum Moderators: martinibuster
A frightening prospect but surely possible?
I think that only themed links will be of any value in the future.
Collecting thousands of irrelavant links just for PR may well blow up in your face one day soon.
Collecting thousands of irrelavant links just for PR may well blow up in your face one day soon.
..I could not agree more, I can't wait until the walls cave in on the useless, impertinent links of the world!
I can't wait until the walls cave in on the useless, impertinent links of the world!
You forgot to say, "Nee-ya ha-ha-ha-haaa!"
:)
I think that only themed links will be of any value in the future - Dino_M
I guess part of me hopes this is true, simply to garner better search results but at the same time this idea bothers me. The reason it bothers me is all the sites put together by ‘real’ people, including the mom and pop sites and hobby sites that add links to other sites because they like the site and not because it ‘adds’ to their authority to have them or builds on their PageRank because of the links back. In my experience these 'non-themed' links aften drive better traffic because they are presented in the form of an actual recommendation.
I do like the idea of more emphasis put on the anchor text though, even though we tend to manipulate those when possible. It can be difficult to work an unrelated anchor text into a link on a site if the anchor text doesn’t have anything to do with the content of the page or the site. In that since the anchor text of a link is easier to manipulate from a similar themed site, right?
I also do not like link pages. I like links out weaving through the actual content of a site. For instance, I want to link to an associates site and am in the process of creating a new page around the content of what his site is about and then adding his link to the text of the page. I believe we both win in this situation.
I also love directories so if I have lots of reciprocal links or I have lots of reference links I want to offer then developing a directory for this is preferable to me to a links page. Presently on my own site I do have a links page, which I call ‘recommendations’ but I’m working on moving those into the main sites content. I think this helps to keep my linking clean, for lack of a better word.
To respond then to the initial question put forth by salmo (with a warm welcome to Webmaster World),
Does anybody share my feeling that the entire concept of reciprocal linking will one day come crashing down
I stay clear of reciprocal linking, as much as possible. I know that sounds odd coming from the Reciprocal Linkage Topics moderator. Too much reciprocal linking I think creates both closed loops and adds to the appearance of ‘over optimization’. So, in the absolute sense I believe Google has been and continues to look for ways of perhaps filtering out the most obvious reciprocal linking loops. See Crosslinking, Interlinking and Reciprocal Linking [webmasterworld.com] for peripherally related discussions on the subject.
I wrote an article [webmasterworld.com] on this from personal experience about a year ago but the principle still applies today. Perhaps it is worth revisiting.
Onya
Woz
Go60guy very true, I do like to go after a couple of nice pr7's or 8 links but don't really bother hunting hundreds of pr4's and 5's
I don't know of any substitute for a careful link campaign (reciprocate if you have to) to get the ball rolling.
I have the feeling that the great majority of members here run very commercial sites, affiliate sites, and maybe a few corporate sites. And the lurkers would be an even bigger percentage. The former 2 especially generally will not get external links on their own, and since it became obvious that linking was a major part of their logo, these webmasters had to find a way to do it "unnaturally". Link farms was the first strategy, which died a natural death. Then there were multiple interlinked domains, which also died a natural death.
Getting reciprocal links (usually unrelated) is the last hope.
The hard fact of life however is that Googles algorithm, like the nature of the Web as the as originally conceived, does not naturally expose sites which are corporate billboards, mainly advertising and such. They are natural "islands". Reciprocal linking, usually off topic as nobody wants to link to their competitor or even sites that include links to their competitors, is an unnatural way to go. One day, Google will just ignore reciprocal links, or install a theming algo.
For our commercial sites, we dont even worry about Google. Web use Adwords, Overture, and paid placements and many otehr promotion methods.
Those who think that Google will continue to provide major free promotion for sites with limited info, and are just mainly shopfronts or billboards may be in for a shock.
If you wanna promote a commercial site, ya gotta pay - long term. Now is the best time to look at which paid avenues are best.
For example, I maintain a website with homeschooling information and resources. Many sites link to mine as an "Education" resource. I often get visitors to my website that were looking up local schools, education policies, or teacher resources.
Sites that link to me in this aspect, bring me a whole new type of visitor, and many return or contact me to say that they were delighted to be informed on a subject they barely knew about, if they knew about it at all.
Often the same thing happens with the site that I exchanged links with. I bring a "new thing" into the community of people that my website caters too. Being "one of those people" myself does help me know what "unrelated" sites may be of interest to them, but isn't getting into the minds of our visitors one of the keys to website development?
If you can find these "unrelated but of interest" types of sites to share links with, I for one highly recommend doing so. :)
Just my opinion of course....
