Contextual Links in Blogs Stronger as Ever in Google

[lfgoal]

I've read from time to time here that directory links don't carry much weight, article syndication links don't carry much weight, and links placed in the text body of blog posts carry increasingly less weight. Yet I continue to see sites ranking, month after month, year after year, when their entire backlink profile is composed mainly of this stuff.

What spurred me to write this is that I recently noticed a site that, for years, had been confined to page 3 or page 4, is now on page ONE.

What changed? They picked up hundreds, or thousands, of links-in-text-body from individual blogs (all in Asia--which make its very obvious what's going on since the link target is to a site that deals with a niche that is solely American and has zero relevance to anything in any asian country).

None of these blogs is particularly weighty. However, they do at first glance SEEM legit since they all have regular postings, and are tied to all the traditional promotional vehicles (stumbleupon, blogcatalog, etc, etc, etc).

Basically, these blog authors have gone out of their way to make pretty "real looking fake blogs", the purpose of which is to sell sponsored links abroad.

It's very very obvious that the optimizers for this company's site went out and bought hundreds, perhaps thousands, of non-disclosed sponsored blog links.

What's disconcerting is that it proves once again...1) a link is a link is a link, 2) its too easy to game google, 3)even the most worthless links can propel you far ahead of the pack...if you get them in sufficient number.

I'd appreciate comments on this. I have yet to do an authenticated spam report, because I've always had the uneasy feeling that spam reports go nowhere...but I'm tempted on this one to do a report--because it urks me so much.

[aristotle]

In my opinion part of the answer is the trend for many large sites to automatically attach a nofollow tag to all out-going links. It started with Wikipedia and then spread to many forums and social bookmarking sites. Also, many individual site owners began using nofollow in an attempt to hoard PR on their own sites. The result of this trend is that the relative number of dofollow links has greatly decreased, which makes those that remain more valuable, even if they come from the types of sites that you mentioned. In other words, as the relative proportion of dofollow links decreases, their increasing scarity gives them more relative value.

[karkadan]

Yes, there was a boost, and still exist a boost.
But Google has noticed the trend of people using blogs to boost their sites.

#1 they put a filter in their blogspot to notice some of those black hat blogs
#1b they seem to favour those blogs in the Google search results but not the sites linked

#2 Blogs that are not spotted but has not good content, traffic, structure, etc., don't have much weight in their outbound links (like years ago)

You really need to make a very good blog, with info, and traffic to have a boost in rankings. (IMO)

[idolw]

@aristotle - Nofollow links are only ~3% of all links and 75% of these are internals. I would not say that there is a decrease in dofollow links.

I have been seeing sites based on links from pay-per-post blogs in my area. I have seen some of them come quickly to the top and rule the SERPs for a quarter or two and then go away to 100+ due to a penalty and never see them back. I'd say - it is OK to go with this technique but do not rely on these links only.

[aristotle]

Quote: Nofollow links are only ~3% of all links and 75% of these are internals. I would not say that there is a decrease in dofollow links

idolw - Thanks for this information. It's very surprising to me, since so many big sites automatically put a nofollow tag on outgoing links.

But even if nofollow links are only 3% of all links, I still think the practice of using them has had a significant effect. As an example, in Google's ranking calculations a dofollow link from an obscure blog or free directory is worth more than a link from Wikipedia.

[idolw]

not really, how do you measure that?

Back in January Google gave a big boost to brands. Now imagine that Google is checking how often your brand is mentioned without being linked. Maybe they also measure who mentions your brand.
Once that works, being mentioned in Wiki may do same or more good as a crap links from end-of-the-internet.

[aristotle]

idolw- Thanks for your reply. But I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean that Google may somehow still find a way to include a link from Wikipedia into its rankings calculations even though it is nofollow?