Thinking
(a lot) About Linking
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.
May 31 2006
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Links are the primary arteries of the Internet, the underlying connectors
between different places. Links are the transporters that take you everywhere
on the web. You likely came to this space via a link and are as likely
to follow one out again. Links keep you going online, hopefully to places
you want or need to get to.
Google created the most successful information retrieval device of all
time based on sending spiders to follow each and every link they can find
on each and every web document they come across. Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and all
the other search databases have acquired the vast amounts of information
they contain in similar fashion. Links play important roles in the ranking
formulas of all search engines, especially Google, by providing numerous
pieces of data for their algorithms to chew through.
How links are valued by search engines and by savvy webmasters who build
sites have changed over the years however the way most web users think about
links has not changed all that much. When discussing link strategies with
clients, a lot of confusion comes from having two different understandings
of what links are used for and how they should be used.
For most Internet users, links have always been pathways between points
of interest. Link-paths might be intricate and informative but they are
not necessarily seen as complex.
Search marketers however, see links a multi-dimensional universe that vaguely
resembles the central nervous system. A good visual representation can be
found by typing a URL into Touchgraph.com. (Readers are advised to do so
before continuing…)
Links exist in spatial relation to the document or set of documents associated
with them. Some links are internal, or contained within a unique URL. Others
are external, pointing into or out from a specific document. Some links
are located close to a specific page while others are two or more documents
removed. Links also exist in time. Each link was placed on a certain date
and will be removed at a later date. The timing of the placement and the
longevity of the link have an effect on Google rankings. Lastly, and most
importantly, they exist in context. Each link was originally placed for
a reason and each document linked together will contain some form of information.
If the information found on both pages is topically similar, the link was
likely placed in order to benefit site visitors. If, on the other hand,
information found on the two pages is not topically similar, the link might
have been placed in order to artificially inflate Google’s perception
of the site.
For search marketers and the engines they work on, links are powerful directional
tools that act as indicators of a site visitor’s interests. They are
used to move spiders from A – Z through a website and steer visitors
towards useful information and/or specific conversion points. They are also
used to gain the attention and respect of search engines. Having a number
of links pointed towards your site from other topically relevant sites is
a good thing. Since the earliest days of Google, link strategies have played
a key role in winning strong search engine placements.
Links can give search marketers information on how a website operates.
By examining the link structure of a website, most good SEOs can find points
or techniques that might cause problems for search engine spiders and make
suggestions for improving access. Similarly, good search marketers can show
a client how live-visitors use their website. By examining data found in
site logs, search marketers can often see and explain user patterns and
suggest ways to reorganize the site in order to drive visitors towards conversion
points.
Though links provide important tools for search engine marketers, they
are amazingly difficult to understand and employ without somehow exploiting
the way search algorithms are written. Learning how to acquire links without
intentionally exploiting Google’s algorithm is one of the hardest
facets of search engine optimization.
Building links has long been considered an important component of search
engine optimization. Search engines use links to find and catalog information
from one page to the next. They compare what they find on pages linked together
in order to determine the topical relevancy of linked pages. Shared topicality,
or context, is extremely important for strong search placements. Search
engines expect that links, in all cases, should lead to useful information.
As search users travel across linked pages, the search engines track how
much time users spends on linked pages and the pathways they take when leaving
a document.
The first commercial search engines, Alta Vista, Infoseek and Lycos tended
to place weight on keywords found in the text of websites or documents,
without considering the effects of links between documents. Back then, webmasters
had to submit URLs to each search engine as an invitation for spiders to
visit and record site information. This tedious and repetitive task is no
longer necessary though hand-submission of sites to certain search directories
is sometimes recommended.
In the early days, links between documents were placed by hand. A website
designer had to open the source-code in Notepad and write a new line expressing
the link in the appropriate place. It was a process that took a few minutes,
especially when using a 14.4 or 28.8K dial-up modem.
Understanding the amount of work it took to place links, Google’s
co-founders figured that each link could be valued as a positive vote. That
was the original assumption behind the PageRank algorithm. When combined
with traditional on-page factors such as titles, meta tags and content,
link-popularity became a fairly accurate gauge of the relevance of information
found on pages linked together.
As Google rapidly grew in popularity, many people working in the search
engine marketing sector began using links as a means of manipulating or
influencing Google’s rankings. That is where the practice of building
link farms and wild networks of unrelated links came from. Over time, an
expanding sub-section of the search marketing industry developed, devoting
itself to building, buying or bidding for links in order to boost their
clients’ chances of scoring high rankings in Google’s index.
Though links provide important tools for search engine marketers, they
are amazingly difficult to understand and employ without somehow exploiting
the way search algorithms are written. There is absolutely no question however,
since the earliest days of Google, link strategies have played a key role
in winning strong search engine placements. Learning how to build links
without egregiously exploiting Google’s algorithm is one of the hardest
facets of search engine optimization.
Nobody likes exploitation; especially search engineers frustrated by seeing
their brilliant sorting algorithms serving spam-filled results. In order
to combat link-based exploits, Google has gotten far stricter over the past
two years about the types of links it considers relevant or important. While
doing so however, Google and the other major search engines seek to place
high value on links that are useful to site visitors, leading them to information
that is likely to create a better user-experience and more loyal customers.
Links that provide a positive outcome, or lead to a series of pages that
can guide the user towards what they want, are highly valued in search rankings.
In other words, search engineers are required to balance the bad against
the good and try to weave rewards to sites with relevant links that are
beneficial to site visitors.
Many webmasters and SEOs take the time to search out complimentary websites,
writing personal emails requesting a link. Some send out mass-emails to
tens or even hundreds of thousands of other webmasters asking for a link
to their site. Some hire link-building firms to do the job for them.
Ultimately, the best way to get good incoming links is to work for them
by providing extremely good content and finding ways to let others in your
business or interest sector know that content exists. Other webmasters will
often link to good content; the trick is finding an effective and acceptable
way to present it to them.
Be very careful when hiring a company to do link building for you. The “rules” around
link building can change and vary depending on the circumstance. There is
no one-size-fits-all solution for link acquisition. There are a number of
ways to bungle the job though.
In one well known case, a large SEO firm in California claims to have hired
a link building firm that created a dense web of reciprocal links between
tens of thousands of unrelated sites. The system worked well for over a
year but infamously broke-down late last summer, resulting in a system-wide
ban for several websites associated in the link-network. Google banned the
firm, many on its client list, and many associated with the link-network.
The penalty was doled out for the crime of link-farming, a practice in which
a lengthy list of sites are linked together (knowingly or unknowingly) in
order to artificially boost the link density Google perceives for sites
within the network.
Links will continue to be an ongoing point of conversation within the search
marketing community. It is a complex subject with enormous implications,
regardless of where one’s opinion falls in the discussion.
Phoenix over at the SEORoundTable points out a discussion thread at the
High
Rankings forums that includes a quotable line from HR member Jonathan
Hochman, “Looking for links is like trying to get a date. If you are
desperate, nobody respectable will be interested, but if you relax and behave
nicely, you'll have plenty of success.”
The thread also contains links to a number of good articles about link
building along with a lot of common sense advice. Anyone interested in thinking
about link acquisition is well advised to read through it.
Last week, I had a conversation with Dirk Johnson, one of the owners of
Domain Drivers. Domain Drivers uses a reciprocal linking strategy that is
different, as Dirk explains it, from other recip-linking programs. Dirk’s
thoughts, along with others I find digging around the web, will be the subject
of another piece, very soon.
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