Forum Moderators: martinibuster
In light of the high potential to damage a site with inappropriate links, what rules should I lay down for the quality of the link and the process of it?
Would defining "good neighborhood" by using Y! and DMOZ/ODP groups be sufficient?
Has anyone had extensive experience with hiring people to do this? What were the pitfalls?
If that were the case I'd be buying inappropriate links for all my competitors.
I also think, maybe incorrectly, that certain "gray-bar" inbound links, or "sin site" links to a "non-sin site" would lower the site.
Example - a forum discussing blue widgets, with inbound links from a commercial adult site which had nothing to do with blue widgets.
I could be completely wrong.
Here are some basic things I would expect:
- recent cache
- something on the Greenbar as a "litmus" test
- topic related to your site
- static links
- no more than 50 outgoing links on page (I actually prefer 20 or less)
- quality of outgoing links
When you find a company I would set-up a "Test" Campaign to see the quality of the links they will get for you. Everyone has a different idea of quality and the only true way to find out is to test them.
Good Luck!
high potential to damage a site with inappropriate linksThe likelihood of damaging a site via linking is slim, however, when this does happen, the penalty imposed may be severe. Usually this will not happen to people who are cognizant of the possiblity, and take even minimal measures to avoid it.
Also, it is not which sites that are linking to you that will hurt you, but which sites you are linking to.
I cannot think of a bigger waste of time than to try to control who is linking to you. Anybody can link to you that wants to, good, bad and ugly. You have no control over that, don't even try. It is who you link to that is important.
The best way to control this is have a plan that will lead you to establishing lots of links to sites that are of canonical/semantic/topologic significance in your subject matter, which is, of course, widgets, which just so happens to be what my sites are about too.
This doesn't mean you must limit your outgoing links to only sites in your footprint area, but that part of it goes a long way in defining your own footprint. However, no matter who you link to you do want to avoid linking to sites that link to other sites without discretion.
By "discretion" I mean "ability or power to decide responsibly". As long as you only link to sites that practice discreet linking then you should have no problmes.
Anybody can link to you that wants to, good, bad and ugly. You have no control over that, don't even try. It is who you link to that is important.
I am not sure. I had several examples with my own sites showing that an external site can dilute the topic of your site.
If a large site with a different theme places many links to your site, SEs may "shift" the focus of your site (as they perceived it) to the focus of a site heavily linked to your site.
In other words, let's say you have a 500 page site about apples and a 30,000 page site about oranges (both with equal PR). After you put a link from every page of the orange site to the apple site, the apple site will significantly drop in google SERPs on apple-related queries.
Tested several times.
Nevertheless, the point I made about linking with discretion could be applied to both situations.
When you are going for link development you should keep in mind that the links should be directly matched with the theme of your site. Links must be having Keywords in Anchor text. It helps you.
Cheers
P_P
I guess, if I read the comments by vitaly and neuron, you two are not really in disagreement.
But my understanding was indeed, the "shift" focus of the SEs as vitaly described it.
Would you agree that if we had a site about apples, and majority of the links are from sites with orange discussions - the apple-site will drop in the "apple" related topics and rise in the "orange" related searches?
Would you agree that if we had a site about apples, and majority of the links are from sites with orange discussions - the apple-site will drop in the "apple" related topics and rise in the "orange" related searches?
I think so: the apple-site will drop in the "apple" related topics.
It may be difficult to register the rise in the "orange" related searches (especially if orange is a competitive keyword) though. The "weight" of the apple site is still low (but higher than before the links were put) on orange related searches.
Think of all the large news sites or Wikipedia. These sites, by their very nature, donīt have a theme and no "on topic" inbound links. Still, they outrank many sites that are build around a specific theme and have on topic inbound links.
Getting an inbound link, I believe, cannot hurt in any way.
