Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
How are you searching for their incoming links?
Maybe you have missed some key links. They also get credit for outgoing links.
Ranking is relative; without inter-site linking, a site cannot rank, as there can be no relativity.
The reason being that trust is such an important factor now, that trust also counts on internals. Feel free to scoff, unless you try you will never know.
[edited by: Crush at 8:24 am (utc) on Feb. 15, 2007]
i think you also need to consider not just if the site has a gazillion inbounds but perhaps whether or not its whitelisted....
as for most of the other big travel widget sites...i havent yet found one that hasnt setup bogus networks of links....
Not for every phrase. Just look at the internal anchor on their site and you will get the picture of what is going on. It is huge internal anchor manchine and like I say, there is a good reason behind it. Again feel free to not do anything, does not bother me.
And as he now accepts that such sites DO have incoming links, how can he possibly separate out the effects of either?
As for externals tripadvisor buys links on news sites (sitewides) for locations where they need lots of links, like london and new york, btw that works for them too because their site is a steamroller. There was some debate about internal strength a while back and the main factor IS STILL external links. I am not disputing that at all as we spend 1000's a month on incoming links.
To make it easy for you all, what I think has changed is trusted internals count a lot more now than they used to.
recently, i made an overhaul on one of my sites. a trusted one, that's for sure. i added plenty new pages and after 2 weeks they rank page 1-3 on many keywords just on internals.
then i put lots lots lots of links to a page on am much less trusted site. it eventually went up but the number of links i used would be enough to get the entire trusted site to #1 everywhere.
looks like they dont want to listen, Crush. let's take our money and let them do their own thing.
Tripadvisor has a ton of inbound links to thousands of internal pages...this is where their strength lies...
If you don't believe me .. check it out...
This is where their real strength lies...
Their internal linking structure is very well developed and with deep interior pages garnering some serious inbound linkage from sources outside of their domain...they can pretty much rank for what and where they want..
It's called "market structure saturation"
No-one is disputing the importance of good site navigation either.
Instead of getting huffy and feeling abused (you are not), why not let us now how you can be so sure that what you see is what you think it is.
Can't say I've ever noted a drop in their "value" and I'm a big fan of a proper site architecture, maybe other factors were to blame for your noting a drop in internal link value?
What I know is that if I add a new primary page (a page that is linked to by all other pages) it will quickly gain a PR5 or PR6 within two Google PR updates and that new content fairly quickly raises up in the SERPs of any search engine once they get indexed.
So is heavy internal linking important? You bet your ___ it is. With that said, heavy internal linking without having a lot of inbound links will do you no good. Quality inbound links give a site as a whole relevance and "trustworthiness". Internal links help define pages and rank their importance within said site.
Internal linking will not help pages of a site rank better if that site doesn't have lots of inbound links from other sites to begin with.
[edited by: KenB at 3:55 pm (utc) on Feb. 15, 2007]
Spam sucks, but it works right now :(
[edited by: Nick0r at 4:25 pm (utc) on Feb. 15, 2007]
To over-simplify it ( for myself ) I like to think that every single site and page has a different trustrank for every single phrase / topic. And this trustrank-for-phrases ( or themes ) is spreading with both external and internal anchor text ( since it's page and not domain based ).
If your homepage gets a link from a trusted site that's relevant to it, and with an anchor text that's relevant to both, you'll still need to pass on this trust to the categories/subpages with the internal anchor text. Previously this wasn't so, if a domain was trusted, all it had to do is add on-page relevancy signals. Now trust is tied to the themes/phrases/phrase sets of the source page/target page/anchor text ( note i'm using the word PAGE ), with all three having to match ( share at least broad relevancy ).
This comes at a time where relevancy signals seem to be measured with not only the actual words and phrases used on-page and in the anchor text. Meaning you don't have to add a link for every single variant of the same phrase, only those you don't see to be "matched up to each other" by Google when doing a search. As Google gets more and more data for its phrase matching systems and builds entire dictionaries on different topics, it'll apply these sets to pages to see if they're relevant, on topic, or spam. And since trustrank had this interesting habit of giving the power to off-topic pages to vote ANYTHING into the primary index, in that way this is a HUGE change.
Only on-topic links will pass on broad relevancy.
And trust is tied to relevancy as well. Thus only trusted, on-topic links will work with a clustering effect, and this includes the way you lay out the internal navigation.
Not that most of us haven't been working according to this for quite some time... but many others have not, and played the "keyword penetration game" instead. Their sites will most likely sink like a stone... unless they watch out for these things.
From my perspective, as a relative new comer to SEO but looking at it as a programming issue.
The site mentioned
reg/online early 2006
already has in excess of 5 dmoz links
in excess of 8,500 unique sites linking in
Probably set up by an apex seo chap :-)
TBPR 8
with the level of link power this site has on each page, whether tansferred from the index page or from direct inbound linking, the anchor text of internal links are bound to carry extraordinary influence in the SERPS.
An awesome achievement, but entirely consistent with everthing i've learned from you guys here, and logical from a programming view
Can't say I've noticed any threads on this, did it come out from one of the 950 penalty ones?
Just like in the real world, trust is not something that happens overnight. If you can day by day, build your site into a resource, Google will learn to trust you. That trust then is inhereted by those you surround yourself with (pages are like people) and ther is an inferred credibility that is passed along. Thus, with a family like the Kennedy's it's almost automatic that their off-spring have their reputation (good or bad, depending on your POV).
I know I am probably over simplifying things, but I truly believe that most SEO debate is over-reaction to mythical monsters that don't exist.
Another twist on this is "whats holding" and "what's not" on recent changes of emphasis with link srengths. If the observation is in the travel sector, which i believe to be highly competitive, then those with preceding strengths built up over many years have seen them challenged.
Typically reduced or gone are:
- reciprical link strength
- duplicate content
- purchased links ( more indentifiable )
- link networks ( more identifiable )
So those remaining with good internal link architectures, good "trust rank" will float to the top. ( IMO )
Just my angle on it for what it's worth.
they probably just turned up the dial for internal links.
From recent serps for internal pages on several client sites that might be "trusted," I can say anecdotally that on some pages they've turned up the dial, and on some they've apparently turned it down. ;)
I suppose if you want to see who's abusing internals you turn up the dial and flag "unnatural" risings...
Not to get too off topic. But with this latest update I couldnt disagree more.
Methods that would seem obvious to me to find, have successfully ranked link buyers even better now with this latest update.
Internals will always be the key to ranking legitmate internal pages, but for now volume of external crap links rules.
