Forum Moderators: martinibuster
If memory serves me correctly, I seem to recall something from Max Cutts to the effect that Google looks on blog links in a favourable light.
If I post a super duper blog entry which is interesting enough to receive responses from total strangers, then that blog entry (and the embedded link) is probably justified.
But if I scatter numerous blog entries all over the web purely for the embedded links, with no expectation that anyone will be even slightly interested in the blog content, then these are just artificial links for the express purpose of gaming the SE's. They are not really any different from guest book links.
Will blog links continue to have any value when the vast majority of them will be articicially created by the person with the vested interest?
purely for the embedded links, with no expectation that anyone will be even slightly interested... then these are just artificial links for the express purpose of gaming the SE's.
You could use the same words to describe a DMOZ link you obtained.
Will blog links continue to have any value when the vast majority of them will be articicially created by the person with the vested interest?
It's not happening now. There are too many blogs out there for that to become an issue on the scale you are talking about. Otoh, there are a lot of spam autogen blogs, but these are typically poorly linked and in bad neighborhoods lacking trust, so I don't really see that as being an issue either.
I take your point about DMOZ although there are some who argue that it is still a useful resource for a significant number of people. Irrespective of our personal feelings about editor bias, delays, regional die-back and stagnation etc etc, people still use it.
It's when I see mainstream SEO advice to load up your links into as many blogs as you can, then I can't help but think "here we go again with the latest quick fix".... and the resulting abuse that will inevitably follow as every man and his dog tries to get on the bandwagon.
and the resulting abuse that will inevitably follow as every man and his dog tries to get on the bandwagon.
Yeah, I totally agree with you, 100%. The more you dig around the crazier it gets. I see quite a lot of abuse in my hunts for links and have to move on to fresher pages because of that. I try to keep out of those kinds of neighborhoods, too. Link tips, like any other idea, spreads and eventually burns out. What can we do about it?
I think the essence of developing links that will stand up through updates and tweaks boils down to telling someone about your site and giving them a reason to link to it. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
A reason to link to your site can vary, right? It could be your great content, the depth of your resources, helpful tools, free software, etc. These are all reasons why someone may find your site to be useful to their readers.
On the dark side of that coin is offering incentives for a link, such as cash or a reciprocal link.
Nevertheless, link development is generally the cornerstone of a successful site, which includes content development as well as paying to get a link from a blog. I know a service that has hundreds of bloggers in the network. You pay the fee, the bloggers blog about your niche and stick a link to you. Is that abusive? Maybe. Will it overrun blogs to the point that links from blogs will have to be deprecated, I may be wrong, but I don't think so. Will the search engineers figure out a way to identify these kinds of links? If it grows large enough in popularity, probably.
Not according to my logs. ;-)
My question is: If you're genuinely interested in a blog article and wish to comment on it, is it bad net etiquette to link back to a site of yours that doesn't contain a blog? I have noncommercial informational sites that I wouldn't mind getting some backlinks for, but I couldn't help but wonder if webmasters were occasionally linking back to a client's site.
"occasionally" may be understating the reality somewhat. Many webmasters with a vested interest in improving their SERP's are now embracing links in blogs and articles as a sure fire way to acquire links. Those with a responsibility to improve their client's site results will be doing the same thing with those sites.
I was recently forwarded a flyer for a "global seminar" where the topic was the latest sure fire way to fame and riches by way of "previously unpublished" methods for dominating Google SERP's. Internation speakers from around the world, leaders in their field, all online millionaires etc etc....
And what was this seminar really all about.... how and where to embed links in blogs and articles.
It's this level of obvious abuse that prompted the original post. I have no desire to seem like a sanctimonious twat on this subject but I fail to see how self serving, artificial links can maintain any value in the longer term.
That is likely you're biggest problem - thinking that people see long term value out of them. Artificial links within blogs, when the content of the blog post serving the links is nothing but rubbish is not something people working a long term SEO plan are doing.
- The spammers putting up splogs know the risks, know they don't have a ton of time until all three engines have combatted it and are trying to make their money on the method while they can. They have no intention on these sites generating income in a few months/years and won't be on the boards in the search engine forums complaining about them getting killed when they get caught.
- The "legit webmasters" doing this are likely doing it because they're too novice to realize that any known method with a high possibility for abuse will eventually stop working. Anyone putting all their eggs in a "manufacturing content for the sake of getting myself an inbound link when said content has no value to anyone" basket is doing so out of naviety, IMHO.
- Then there are many webmasters creating useful blogs and using it as a chance to promote themselves, when possible and when it makes sense, within them. These webmasters are only using this as one small part of their link development (AKA marketing) plan and figure that by building a truly unique and "good to read" blog, if and when the links within their posts are devalued, their blog will still be generating enough traffic and visibility to be passing along actual users, if and when they are no longer passing along link credit.
That said, a blog is really just a CMS system, a lot of very "powerful" sites are blogs both in commercial and non commercial areas (using a mainstream system or running a custom system) and devaluing them completely would be a dis-service to the net. As mentioned by MB, crap blogs have footprints. My two cents...
For example:
A site similar to mine posted a link to my blog in one of their posts. They also put me on their blogroll. I noticed that their site was regularly updated and has good content. As a bonus I also get a fairly good amount of traffic from their blog. I decided that I should return a link to their site.
Now how does the Big G know that I did not ask for a link via email or some supersecret link directory. How do they know?
But how does Goolge tell the difference between a reciprocal link that was asked for and a reciprocal link that "occured naturally".
I don't think Google is concerned with that. Certainly you can infer something about quality from a site that is reciprocating from a link directory. But I think you can infer more from the neighborhoods.
Quality sites tend to link to other quality sites, and vice versa. This might not be true across the board, but I think it happens enough so that you can make some meaningful assumptions based upon who is linking to who. It's more meaningful to do that, imo, than understanding whether something was reciprocated naturally or not.
1: Imo, what matters is the neighborhoods you're in. Regardless if a link was reciprocated naturally or not. Chances are that naturally reciprocated links, as you described, will follow a meaningful pattern. That's what really counts, the neighborhood, not that there was some reciprocation.
2: Check out the TouchGraph [touchgraph.com] to get your mind around the concept of neighborhoods. Now scale that up to a system that can see vast areas of interconnections between sites, billions of sites, and make meaningful assumptions about quality from who is linking to who based upon that map.
Codegal
