Are Reciprocal Links Dead?
If the current indications are correct we may be looking at the end of reciprocal linking as a method of building rank and link popularity, at least as far as Google is concerned.
The latest 'Google Dance', nicknamed 'Jagger', has caused major concern by those suffering loss of position on the top ranks of the search engine's listings. So we decided to take a close look at what is happening and see what we could learn.
We have a few small websites that have a limited number of links. These sites are used mostly for research and testing of our primary business in Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites, we were able to quickly get an idea of what is happening in Google's Jagger Update, which is still in progress at the time of this writing.
By using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the history of visits by the bots and the links to these small sites. We had to go back as far as January in order to build a picture of Google's actions. Our software also allows us to look at all links from the SEs, not just those shown by using the browser's 'link:' command. G only reports some of the links to your site, not all.
Here is what we have seen:
Like many other sites, we noticed a sharp drop in rank in our test sites around the first of July. They lost about 40% of their previous link popularity and moved down sharply in rank. Also, duplicate links on a single site disappeared. We now only showed one link from each linking site.
As Jagger started, unlike many others we have seen complain about G's actions and timing, our sites stayed rather stable. Evidently they had already suffered their major losses. However, there was a small increase in the number of links. This caught our attention. We had expected that, like many others, we would experience further disruptions to our link structure.
But when we examined these links, we were surprised to see that not one of them had been listed with Google a few weeks earlier. Not one. Our research showed that these links had been live in G's archive, but none had shown up publicly before now. It appeared that there was some sort of 'aging' process taking place, but this may just be coincidental. It is more likely that older links disappeared because the host site was lost in the shuffle and our links no longer appeared 'relevant'.
The other thing we noticed was that not one of these new links was listed on our reciprocal links pages. In other words, all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because G is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way.
If your web sites have suffered from the latest 'dance', you may want to take a look at the type and source of your links. If they are mostly from link exchanges, you are probably looking at the reason for your move down the list on the search engines.
During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.
The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.
This research has us now re-evaluating our linking strategy. We urge others to do the same.
We are now concentrating only on building strong one-way inbound links. We are focusing on publicity, articles, directories, and other direct methods of building our image and consumer awareness.
In addition, we are also looking for associated but non competing firms like web developers, Search Engine Marketers, SEOs, web site owners and designers to partner with us to build direct business relationships and the resulting inbound links. This strategy may not be the fastest method of building links, but we feel it is rock solid and within the spirit of good business practices. The best thing is that it is search engine independent.
We will no longer worry about chasing (or beating) the search engines and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool's game we are sure to lose.
Instead, we will focus on building rock solid links and popularity with the group that counts: our customers. By focusing on beating our competition and providing a top quality product, plenty of educational information and relevant content, we are sure to move up and stay at the top of the search engine rankings.
It's something to think about.
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About the author
Will Moore is a web analytics specialist with over 20 years of hardware, software and web development experience. He has sat on the ANSII and ISO standards committees, been a speaker at major technical conferences in the US, Europe, China and Singapore and has written numerous articles on various technical subjects. Visit Web Stats Gold for more articles and information on web analytics. You may contact him at will@webstatsgold.com
Copyright 2005 by WG Moore
Permission is granted for this article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for in ezines, newsletters, websites, to offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and this resource box is included.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Boost Your Website Traffic
By Rory Canyon
Search engines bring more than 80 percent of the traffic for small to medium websites. This tells exactly how important it is for small and medium websites to optimize their web structure and pages for search engines. Optimization of your website for search engine includes many aspects: website content, keywords, URL, meta-tag, back links, etc. Let's explain it one by one.
Select the right keywords. You can pay a visit to your competitors' websites (only those with top-ranked search engine placements). Through analyzing their web contents and meta tags, you can easily find out the keywords they are using. Overture keywords selection tool can also provide you valuable information. Open your favorite browser, enter http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, type in the search box your keywords or phrases and see how many times they were searched last month. Select those with high search frequency. Google also has a similar keyword selection tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. You can have a try of both of them and balance the search results.
Target your web site content at selected keywords. After finalizing the keywords, you can now build up your web pages with them. But, be careful, don't overuse any keywords on your web pages. Overuse of keywords may make search engine spiders think you are spamming and get your website banned. How can I judge overuse or not? Go to http://www.gorank.com/seotools/ to have a check of your keywords density, make sure it is within a reasonable range.
Make search engine friendly URLs. Although some of the search engines can follow all dynamic URLs, like http://www.scriptmenu.com/detail.php?id=25257, some of them still prefer static URLs ended with html, htm, etc. To make search engine friendly URLs, you can create real static pages, but you don't have to. The web server URL rewrite engine can make this job much easier by reinterpreting the URLs before getting actual pages. If you need more help or tips on how to implement URL rewrite model, follow the link http://www.scriptmenu.com/detail_24379.html and get a tutorial.
Get quality backward links to your page. Although keywords optimization of your web pages can improve significantly your search engine placement, it is still far from sufficient to get your pages top ranked. You have to get some quality backward links to your websites. You need at least 35 quality back links to make google going to your web site and take a look at you. You can get these quality links by submitting your site to high-ranked web site directories or by writing some quality articles and then submitting them to the high-ranked online article archives. Many other ways exist, but remember, only backward links from quality web sites count. Websites poorly indexed or with very low search engine ranking have no value to you.
Keep on improving your website. By keyword optimization, URL optimization and quality backward URLs, your website should have gotten remarkable search engine placement. However, the placement is not static, you competitors are optimizing their websites and trying to kick you out of your current position. To maintain a good search engine ranking, you have to keep on improving your website. Keep on optimizing your website navigation, content and structure. Keep on getting more quality links from top-rated sites.... The battle for top search engine positions will never end. Good luck, :-)
Rory Canyon is the founder of ScriptMenu.com. For more information, visit http://www.scriptmenu.com.
Get Linked - Part Two
SwapIn last week's article: "The Secret Behind the Internet" I discussed the vital role that linking has to play in your Internet marketing campaign. This week I'm continuing the linkage theme, concentrating on outbound links and reciprocation.The Story So FarWe already know that the text that people click on to get to a site (the "anchor text") has a vast impact on the way Google ranks sites. We also know that more links equals a better PageRank, but there's more to it than that.No Free Lunches HereI'm sure you know that you can't get anything for free these days, without someone wanting to sell you something or get something in return. This mindset forms the ethos behind reciprocal linking. Very simply, I link to your site, you link to mine.Unfortunately however, it's no longer that simple. As we discussed last week, Google's getting cleverer. It used to be the case that any old bunch of inbound links would improve a site's ranking. This is no longer the case. Now, links have to be relevant. This is the watchword for search engine optimisation when it comes to Google.If you have a bunch of random sites linking to yours, Google won't be impressed, because the target has nothing to do with the source. One of the oldest examples is the American casino link: a site - owned by, let's say a management consultant working in Scotland - places a link on his site that goes off to this American casino site. The casino site has a generic "links" page - known as a "link farm" - which has hundreds of links with no order or categorisation, and somewhere in the midst of all this rubbish is the management consultant's link. Viz:"These pages with countless links to other websites were created during the fervor of link popularity when it was thought that the more links that linked to your website, the higher your website ranked in search engines such as Google. It was also thought that a reciprocal link between sites, any site, counted in your favor"Kimberly Krause Berg, Search Engine GuideKimberly's nailed it there. Link farms have existed for a good while, and are starting to die down now because people know better.Tidy UpNo-one's saying that having a good number of links is a bad thing. It simply boils down to two important questions: Are they meaningful? Are they relevant? The first question can be addressed by categorising your links. If you run your own website (ie: have access to the HTML code) you can do this by splitting up your links into different categories, effectively making a directory. For one thing, this reduces the number of links that are displayed on each single page, making Google happier because it looks more like a list of useful resources rather than a link farm. For another it means that human beings, ie: the people you want to actually view your site and therefore more important than search engine robots, can really make use of your directory. Another good point is it means more people will be inclined to request link exchanges if they see that their link is placed within a meaningful list.But that's not it. The second point is equally, if not more important. Google is built on relevance. And when I say Google by the way, I don't just mean the site, I mean the many other sites that use the Google database (AOL Search for one). If someone is looking at the "Links" page of a management consultants firm in Scotland, why would they be interested in an American casino? Listing relevant resources for your visitors to look through is not only logical and good web practise, it's also how Google thinks. Search engines aren't made for webmasters, they're made for web users, so the guys who write their software try to make them think like web users. Therefore, if your links aren't relevant, Google will not be likely to rank you highly. Also, if you link to disreputable sites, your PageRank will be adversely affected.Finding a PartnerIf you've got in mind the two questions from the previous section, you're probably going to have to throw out a tonne of links. I can wholeheartedly sympathise. After gaining "The Knowledge" not long ago, I decided it was time to reorder my links. That meant getting rid of the irrelevant and the disreputable, the link swap sites and the free-for-all directories, and effectively starting from scratch. I needed to find people to link with, and they needed to be relevant.So, how do you find good link partners? Simple: just remember the word "relevance",. and try and ask yourself: "what other companies are relevant to mine?" Don't think about the competition, think about the buying cycle. For instance, someone looking for management advice might want team building exercises, IT training, accountants, discussion forums and possibly office space. None of these are competing with you, but they're part of the cycle.Here Endeth the LessonSo just remember: are your links meaningful and are they relevant? If so, you're sorted. If not, and you need some more advice on how to spruce up your links page(s), or even if you think you're part of the multimedia design buying cycle and would like to swap links, e-mail me via mark@msomedia.com and we'll chat.Mark Steadman 26/10/05
I'm Mark Steadman, director of MSO Media. My weekly eNewsletter "Getting Results" helps people get the most out of the Web, with practical advice, tips and tricks.Find business cards and stationery at msomedia.com.
