SEO: Google Hateses Evil Fat Link Schemes
If you’re interested in SEO, a really good place to get a handle on what Google wants is by spending time at well… Google. Their Webmaster Central is chock full of information on everything from site construction to META tagging and you can find its homepage at:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/
And if you think you’ve already been, remember that things change. As Google bots get smarter and smarter, they’re looking for ways to stop manipulation of their results, and we can all understand that, of course. Nobody wants to type a search phrase into Google and have the first 10 results all pointing to the same page. It’s not good for Google and it’s not good for us — the searchers.
I don’t know about you, but I use Google at least 10 times a day and on most days, it’s more like 50. And for simple things like spelling, too. I know… There are better ways, but well, how convenient, right?
Anyway, there are things that Google absolutely abhors, and one of them is “linking schemes.” This wasn’t always the case. A few years ago, any link to your site was a good one whether or not you had one pointing back in the reciprocal manner. Didn’t make a hoot of difference. Then, Google decided they didn’t like “bad neighborhoods.” Those were places like porn sites, gambling sites, even free card sites or what they term “link farms,” which are nothing more than pages of links pointing to sites without a human editor to decide whether the sites are good or bad.
Today, there are many more reasons for Google to hate your links. One biggie is paid linking. In fact, that might be THE biggie to them. You’ll notice that SEO and all, my blog has zero page rank. Why? Because I sell a couple of very inconspicuous links in my sidebar. Oh, well. The advertisers have been with me a long time, and they must be getting benefit from being there or they wouldn’t keep paying me month, after month. Since they’ve been loyal to me, I can’t help but return the favor and be loyal to them. Does it hurt my SEO? Yes. Does it help theirs? No.
So why does Google hate paid links? That’s obvious. They see any linking that involves a transference of page rank as a scheme to manipulate search results. In my case, it’s kind of silly, but well… About three years ago, people were paying big money to have links on high PR sites (PR4 and above). Some of the links were “site wide” links, meaning that the buyer would have a link on every page in the site. Google didn’t like that at all, but you could still get away with having one link on a highly ranked page and it would help your search rankings and your page rank.
Then, about two years ago, that ended. Google says:
“.. some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”
And they took a hard line against the practice. I get that, and I can blast the poor little advertisers on the side of my blog into the ionosphere and tell them I quit, but I just can’t. That, in my mind, would be unethical of ME. So, they remain.
But Google really doesn’t like reciprocal linking anymore, either, so watch out. They say they don’t like “excessive” reciprocal linking, and to me that means… why bother? The same with linking outside your niche. That’s a BIG blooper to avoid. It makes no sense, when you think about it, really. Though many of my search marketing people might be interested in dogs, a link to a dog training site on my blog would be ludicrous. They don’t come here to learn to train their dogs.
My advice is to concentrate on what Google really wants and that’s the addition of quality content on the Web. When you put something out there, be sure it’s in a quality place, like Ezine Articles, for example, and that it has some teeth. Make it something people can learn from or enjoy and laugh about or use in their daily lives or whatever… it should be good. If you can do that, Google will love your links pointing back. Engaging in schemes meant to boost the quantity of your backlinks, without regard to quality, can just turn around and bite you. Why waste the time or effort?
Britney Bennett
October 13th, 2009 at 6:06 pm #
If your content is good, your site will rank well. It’s possible to get good ranking in Google with ZERO incoming links.
It’s not easy, but it is possible.
Keep in mind that if it were possible to hurt yourself through linking, people would just set up the kind of links that Google hates to their competition!
The worst problem you’re likely to encounter from Google over links it doesn’t like is that they’ll simply ignore them.
Arleen Bothwell
October 13th, 2009 at 6:50 pm #
Even if a few of these schemes work for awhile, the algorithm brigade will eventually catch up and on to them.
I really needed to read most of this article, and some of it was very usefully reinforcing information. Thank you for this.
Tweets that mention ovblogger : SEO News – WordPress – Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » SEO: Google Hateses Evil Fat Link Schemes -- Topsy.com
October 13th, 2009 at 7:59 pm #
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Pat Marcello. Pat Marcello said: New blog post:: SEO: Google Hateses Evil Fat Link Schemes http://bit.ly/SCOwJ [...]
Pat Marcello
October 13th, 2009 at 8:06 pm #
Thanks for your comment, Britney…
I agree, except for the issue re: paid linking. I’ve been bitten by the Google ghods. My site gets a PR4 and then suddenly, WHAP! It’s zero again because of those two stupid links.
And I disagree that it can’t hurt you if you’re linking to the wrong sites. You can most definitely hurt yourself from linking. Links coming in from sites can’t hurt you no matter where they are, but they most definitely can if they’re going out to sites in what Google considers to be “bad” neighborhoods.
And yeah… I don’t put a lot of stock in linking. Let it happen naturally, and the Google ghods will approve.
- Pat
Pat Marcello
October 13th, 2009 at 8:07 pm #
Thanks for your comment Arleen! Happy to have helped. But Jeez… Amazing to see that you look EXACTLY like Britney. Hmm…
At least you read the article and One of the yous liked it. LOL
– Pat
seorealtor
October 14th, 2009 at 11:06 pm #
I’ve been doing some research while working at economical SEO firm. This advice might not be what you were expecting. Search engine optimization will give your website exposure. But, at the end of the day, your website needs to provide visitors with some sort of useful information. Think of it this way. For traffic and rankings to stick, your website needs good, relevant content.
Looking for a good introduction to SEO guideline that an economical SEO firm can follow. It was written by google, and it’s really good.
Pat Marcello
October 15th, 2009 at 5:36 pm #
Yes… That’s very true. Google won’t be happy with your site, no matter how well you optimize it if it doesn’t provide a good experience for the end user. This means good, relevant content. Excellent point! Thanks for your comment.
Auto Insurance Guy
November 7th, 2009 at 4:46 pm #
Ah!!! at last I found what I was looking for. Somtimes it takes so much effort to find even tiny useful piece of information.
Nice post. Thanks
Pat Marcello
November 7th, 2009 at 5:19 pm #
You got it! What information about linking are you hunting for? I’ll be happy to make another post that answers your questions.
- Pat