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How Google’s New “Linkback Laws” Could Sink Your Boat - And How You Can Get Around Them.
It is odd, but true. Google has said “no linkbacks”!
Okay, it’s not entirely that simple, but that’s the essence of it. If you trade links (”Link to me and I’ll link to you”), your PageRank (Google’s measure of coolness and a major factor in where you’re listed in the search results) will go down.
More details at the Search Engine Journal.
What this means is that, if you want to get more PageRank, be found more often on Google, and increase the traffic to your blog, you should not be trading links with other blogs.
I’m going to talk today about the specific things that you shouldn’t do as well as some alternatives that you can use that’ll get you the traffic without being whacked on the head.
THE IMPACT OF GOOGLE’S “LINKBACK LAWS” AND HOW TO KEEP YOUR BLOG GROWING
What most immediately comes to my mind is traffic-building techniques. Here are things that you should now think twice about:
- Don’t Post a Review To Get a Linkback - These are standard “contests” around the Blogosphere these days. You post a review of whatever site on your site and they’ll give you a linkback. John Chow has had this sort of contest going for months because of the massive response he received.
However, Google’s stated direction may be part of the reason that John Chow, with one of the most visited blogs in the blogosphere, no longer ranks at the top of Google’s listings (not in the Top 50, anyway) whenever you search for “make money online” (or similar terms) whereas he’s #8 at Yahoo for the same search.
BETTER WAY: Just enter the contests that have a one-way (you-to-them) link for prizes. You can still get traffic off of that and some good publicity.
- Don’t Trade Links With Your Buddies - Everyone wants to help everyone by trading links. That way, at least in the past, you would build up your traffic and your friend and yourself could help each other. Now, you’ll just be drilling holes in each others’ boats.
BETTER WAY: Get a group of at least 3 friends. Do a “circle link” (that term created here on this day…) where you link to Friend #1, Friend #1 links to Friend #2, and Friend #2 links back to you. The effect is the same (maybe more), but you don’t get dinged for reciprocal links.
- Get Rid of your Blogroll - Wordpress, and just about every major blogging software, has a specific area for your blogroll. That is, blogs that you enjoy reading and are recommending to your readers. If any of those blogs link back to you on their blogroll, you could be hurting yourself.
BETTER WAY: Put all of the blogs that you enjoy on their own link page. If you’re using Wordpress, for instance, this would be a “static content” page. No BE SURE to put a noindex and nofollow tag on that page. Also, be sure to exclude that page from your Google Sitemap generator (if you have one).
This way, Google won’t look at the page you have of all of the links and you won’t get dinged for it. At the same time, you don’t have to worry about whether the other blogs have done this with their own blogroll because Google will see it as a one-way link.
- Be Careful About Buying Links Through Consortia - Let me start by saying this is all unclear right now. That being said, Google has said that they will downgrade PageRank for “bought links”. And the companies that are selling links (excepting, I guess, Google and their own Adwords program - DOH!) will have their influence downgraded.
For instance, if you were to buy a regular text link from Text Link Ads, there is the possibility that it will hurt your ranking to be associated with a domain that sells keyword-based / link-based ads.
BETTER WAY: If you’re going to buy links, do it directly with the webmaster of the blog or through a consortia like Pay Per Post that isn’t serving up the links through it’s own domain (they check your domain for the link, but the blogger that posts is posting a link directly to the buyer).
These are just the things that come immediately to mind, but remember the general rule: One-way links are still the best way to go
Enjoy the Search!
-Dan
—–
Daniel R. Sweet
Chief Cook-And-Bottle-Washer / Technical Recruiter
FRACAT.com - Free Resume and Career Toolbox
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielrsweet
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August 11th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Maybe perhaps you can just write content that people would just want to link to without you asking.
Also, search engine rankings are not the be all and end all of things. I may not be the highest ranking one when it comes to the keyword “Curam”, but I hear from other colleagues that I am the site their colleagues go to when they are looking for information about it.
August 11th, 2007 at 9:58 am
I use mybloglog and autoroll widgets. Do these new “laws” affect these types of widgets. My guess is no since the widgets themselves aren’t creating links. They do generate comments and in some cases links, but the links are organic in my mind. However, if someone from mybloglog links to me, I’m going to link back as I believe in this practice, but maybe that’s not a good idea anymore.
On the other hand you are talking about page rank and Google’s new rules aren’t going to hurt my unique visitors from growing if I just keep social networking and naturally building my community. My page rank isn’t all that high anyway, yet my visitors grow each month and I’m getting high quality interaction.
Thanks for the great article!
August 11th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
wow, thanks for the info! i swear this SEO game only gets harder.
August 12th, 2007 at 6:47 am
Thanks for the comments, guys!
Archimedes - Agreed on writing content that people find useful. If we’re not doing that, we’re sunk no matter what search engine stuff we do. The problem comes when our space is very crowded or the audience rotates based on their need. How do we attract people to the blog?
Philip - If there are links involved, even in the widgets, then you’ve got a *potential* problem. If the Google spider can see the links (which it probably can) and they don’t have the “rel=nofollow” flag, you’re in the same boat.
Yes - social networking is absolutely the way to go. But if all of your traffic comes from one source, then your entire site (and business, if that’s what it’s for) is at risk from one little change in the social networking area.
Demetrius - Ain’t it the truth! And this isn’t even any advanced stuff. This is just the basics that most people do every day and now can hurt them!
Dan
August 12th, 2007 at 9:33 am
UPDATE!
Okay, I’ve checked out a few things and wanted to provide and update for this.
FIRST - WordPress Blogrolls *will* cause this problem and I don’t see a way to have a WordPress blogroll with a “rel=nofollow” tag.
SECOND - MyBlogLog (also used here) won’t cause that problem because the links are to each visitor’s MyBlogLog page. EXCEPTION: If you have posted a message that that user’s page and included a link to your site, you could create some problems. Low risk in any case.
THIRD - As to the autoroll widget, I just don’t know. It does provide links directly to the blog of someone else, but it does so through a Javascript, so I’m unable to tell if the links would cause problems.
The sad thing is that if it *does* create a problem because of linkback, it will create a problem for your most loyal readers.
Hope the helps to explain a little bit…
Dan
August 18th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Some great info and now I need to look at my blog again and see about reconfiguring it if I can.
September 4th, 2007 at 10:48 am
These points simply are not true. I ran a contest where I gave links back for people linking to a certain post of mine with certain anchor text and that post is now on page1 of google. I’m currently running another similar contest and also have friends blogroll links pointing to a certain page and it is not page3 in google for its search term.
What you say may be true for very large scale link schemes, but for the average blogger this is not an issue.
September 4th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Matt - thanks for the comment!
Here’s something additional that you need to know about Google - they have standards that they will (eventually) enforce, but are a little lacking in enforcement on a day-to-day basis.
As you raise your blogging profile, this becomes more and more of a problem.
They *will* enforce these rules eventually and, at that point, your ranking will suffer and you will have to move mountains to fix it.
Dan