Link Building

[shopgal]

Need advice on link building. I have a site that is 3 years old with 50 good backlinks that I've collected the past year.

I've noticed many of the larger domains rulling the top 10 have 5,000 Plus links. If i start a link building campaign to collect 1,000+ links could i cause a problem with google, trip a filter and have my site penalized?

Is link swapping still alive?

thanks all

[neuron]

Yes, shopgal, link swapping is alive. Search for "Analysis and Implications of Hilltop Algorithm " at google and you'll find an article by Atul Gupta that explains a lot about how linking has changed.

The article indicates that 20% of your rank comes from on-page factors, that 40% comes from Link Popularity, and that 40% now comes from Local Rank.

Local Rank is another form of link popularity, but it is a semantic ranking in topological relevance. What this means is that it is now more important than ever to get links from related sites.

The idea of being penalized is bit of a fiction. Links don't bring negative benefit, it's just that some links now get scored a different way, thus leading people to think that they've been penalized. It's just a new way of keeping score, that's all.

[Marcia]

We had a good discussion here quite a while back, in 2001, on the Hilltop algo with some interesting analysis:

[webmasterworld.com...]

It does raise some issues and give us some insights about what type of links to pursue, and has come under a bit of discussion here since Florida, as have the semantics issues.

There was another discussion here on Hilltop just last month:

[webmasterworld.com...]

There was also a discussion last year about the "Local Rank" patent, applied for in 2001 and granted earlier this year, that has also been generating some recent attention:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Then, this past December Brett gave us some links which he recommended make for a good read; apparently it's worth our while to be reading Kleinberg (Topic Distillation)

[decweb.ethz.ch...]
[cs.cornell.edu...]
[www2002.org...]

There's a wealth to read for those who enjoy the academics, but after all's said and done we can't be 100% sure exactly what's going on.

For the sake of simplicity, we do know that it's best to continue to create content-rich, semantically diverse sites. And for pursuing links, we should first of all look for on-topic quality sites that relate topically (or geographically, in some cases) to ours and also rank well for keyword phrases within the niche and framework of the topic of our own sites.

It doesn't necessarily take thousands. There are some with thousands of links languishing out in the lost, unfindable reaches of the SERPs, while other sites, with lower PR and far fewer links but those that are of the necessary quality, are doing just fine.

Yes, link swapping is still alive and well, even though one way links are worth pursuing if possible. It's the type of links that seem to be key now. Relevant, quality links seem to impress search engines and please site visitors as well.

[nakulgoyal]

BE fair in your link campaigns and if you keep a nice blend of links internal and externla with nice set of anchor texts, you would be in those top10 I am sure...!