We hired a SEO guy who is proposing a link exchange plan that sounds a bit fishy.

He said we should create a link page where we deposit all the links we get from other webmasters who have agreed to link to us. So far so good.

But, he propose we should "hide" this link page from the search engines by either (1) using the meta tag to tell the search engine to skip the page, or (2) use the robot.txt file to not index this page, or (3) do both.

I think this is kind of fishy, as I read in the "Search ENtine Visibility" book by Shari Thurow:

"Always make sure your Links pages is part of your web site and is hosted on your web server. If your Links page is not part of your web site, your site might be penalized for artificial link building. For example, one of the best URLs for the TranquiliTeas site looks like the following: www.tranquiliteasorganic.com/links.html. THus, it is best to link to credible sites."

I'm not quite sure what that paragraph means, but it sure sounds like Shari would not approve of our SEO "expert's" strategy. I am only one of the developers of the website, so my vote does not carry the day. I already pointed out to my partners that this is immoral, but they are willing to try it if it gives us an edge.

My only option is to convince them that this strategy will backfire on them. Any thoughts?

What in the world does this dope thing he'd be gaining you by hiding your links page?

Fire him, he's an idiot.

He explained that we are using this "strategy" to exchange links with competitor sites which are more popular than ours. According to him, hiding the links page will fool the search engine into believing that our competitors have linked to us, while we have not linked back to them, thus raising our "link popularity".

:confused:

LOL...that's a pretty funny story.

Have you fired him yet?

If it were up to me I would fire him in a heartbeat. Even if his strategy worked, I would still not want to do something so dishonest. But my other partners still trust this guy. I'll direct my partners to this web page and show them that other SEO pros would laugh (and did laugh) at this plan!

It might gain you some extra PR (nothing much though). However, the other side of the coin is, it might gain you a total ban from Google. Bit like betting $1000 to win $1.00

I would go beyond firing him and tell Google all about him and the SEO company he represents.

"explained that we are using this "strategy" to exchange links with competitor sites which are more popular than ours"

Ok, well, if they are more popular than yours, chances are, they know what they're doing search engine wise. Which means they may figure out this little charade. If it really pisses em off, they may send an email to all of the other link partners on the page telling them about the shady tactics as well.

Then, not only will you lose these "one way" links, but, they'll likely never want to deal with your site again when you try to do a legitimate link exchange.

I would suggest to your "seo consultant" that at least a triangular link exchange (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=26178) only attempts to fool the search engines and not screw over your competitors.

I don't have a problem with this guy wanting to fool the SE's - as long as you and your partners understand the risks involved with it, if any, depending on the tactics. But, hell, the least he could do is do it in a smart way.

First no matter what "THIS DOES NOT WORK" to get 'you links'

I assume they wish to get you exchange links so that you gain benefit and the reciprocating website gains nothing [search engine wise].

If your website has 'click value' e.g. an abundance of traffic leaving your website to theirs - well - I guess that's ok.

But if the reciprocating website owner gains no benefit - why would they link?

From the other side - if all websites did the exact same thing for links to you - and ask for a static link in return - what would the SEOs response be?

"no way" - right?

They need to consider - 'links of any half decent quality' the recip owner is more likely than not familar with 'deceptive' exchanges and will not link... thus you are stuck with those that are 'unfamilar' and these links tend to be of the lowest quality.... because they are 'unfamilar'.

It would be extremely rare to get any link of value - thus a total waste of effort.

As I stated before - "THIS DOES NOT WORK" and 100% a waste of time.

As for 'will it harm you' - certainly not - but will never help either unless they can convince 10K+ reciprocators that they [I guess you] are being honest! ;)

We hired a SEO guy who is proposing a link exchange plan that sounds a bit fishy.

He said we should create a link page where we deposit all the links we get from other webmasters who have agreed to link to us. So far so good.

But, he propose we should "hide" this link page from the search engines by either (1) using the meta tag to tell the search engine to skip the page, or (2) use the robot.txt file to not index this page, or (3) do both.

I think this is kind of fishy, as I read in the "Search ENtine Visibility" book by Shari Thurow:

"Always make sure your Links pages is part of your web site and is hosted on your web server. If your Links page is not part of your web site, your site might be penalized for artificial link building. For example, one of the best URLs for the TranquiliTeas site looks like the following: www.tranquiliteasorganic.com/links.html (http://www.tranquiliteasorganic.com/links.html). THus, it is best to link to credible sites."

I'm not quite sure what that paragraph means, but it sure sounds like Shari would not approve of our SEO "expert's" strategy. I am only one of the developers of the website, so my vote does not carry the day. I already pointed out to my partners that this is immoral, but they are willing to try it if it gives us an edge.

My only option is to convince them that this strategy will backfire on them. Any thoughts?
In purely technical terms, there may advantages to the method your SEO suggests - presuming you get enough people to actually link to your site in this manner. A links page that is perpetually PR0 is not going to be attractive to link exchange, however.

The real objection is perhaps that the internet is best less thought of as a collection of websites, as much as an international community. If such a practice were found out, it could be damaging in the longer term for your business, simply because you have been associated with practices that clearly and intentionally sought to deceive other webmasters.

Ultimately, the strategy is potentially short-sighted.

BTW - it is rare to see 'so many professionals' with different backgrounds in agreement - so weigh that accordingly.

It may also be worth pointing your SEO here as well... there are far better ways to gain - while offering mutual benefit.

Ultimately, the strategy is potentially short-sighted.

And stupid! :p

BTW - it is rare to see 'so many professionals' with different backgrounds in agreement - so that weigh that accordingly.

LOL - So true! :D

our competitors have linked to us, while we have not linked back to them".


this would then be some sort of one way link. AFAIK since all the sites are from the same industry, i don't see some reasons why the SE's would "penalize" your site for getting one way inbound links from your competitors. Your problem is more of an ethical issue than a technical one. And its up to you to decide how far you want to go here.

BTW - it is rare to see 'so many professionals' with different backgrounds in agreement - so weigh that accordingly.

It may also be worth pointing your SEO here as well... there are far better ways to gain - while offering mutual benefit.
It almost wants to make you back the other side.... when gambling always go against the consensus... I am going to have to start looking at the way people have their link systems set up... I personally like the create a directory method... or the triangle swap (that seems to have favor)

Thank you for the fantastic response everyone. :)

I certainly pointed my partners to this thread and they have backed down from their previously "short-sighted" ideas. I guess it is human nature to get something for nothing, and that is what the SEO expert was exploiting.

I also pointed the SEO expert to this thread. I wonder if he will respond. :D

We hired a SEO guy who is proposing a link exchange plan that sounds a bit fishy.

He said we should create a link page where we deposit all the links we get from other webmasters who have agreed to link to us. So far so good.

But, he propose we should "hide" this link page from the search engines by either (1) using the meta tag to tell the search engine to skip the page, or (2) use the robot.txt file to not index this page, or (3) do both.

I think this is kind of fishy, as I read in the "Search ENtine Visibility" book by Shari Thurow:

"Always make sure your Links pages is part of your web site and is hosted on your web server. If your Links page is not part of your web site, your site might be penalized for artificial link building. For example, one of the best URLs for the TranquiliTeas site looks like the following: www.tranquiliteasorganic.com/links.html. THus, it is best to link to credible sites."

I'm not quite sure what that paragraph means, but it sure sounds like Shari would not approve of our SEO "expert's" strategy. I am only one of the developers of the website, so my vote does not carry the day. I already pointed out to my partners that this is immoral, but they are willing to try it if it gives us an edge.

My only option is to convince them that this strategy will backfire on them. Any thoughts?

You'll find it hard getting links back to your site if your links page isn't accessible from your home page. Doing what your SEO has proposed is essentially cheating your link partners.

There is no denying that the link page (resource page is better - why bull's eye it for the engines) must have access and also page rank

Regardless if this sneaky underhanded dirty tatic would work, it's just plain dishonest and unfair. Ever hear of karma?

A little update. The SEO guy said he still stands by his tactics, but if we feel uncomfortable with it he will do link exchange the "old fashion way."

Geez, since when is being honest "old fashioned"? :)

A little update. The SEO guy said he still stands by his tactics, but if we feel uncomfortable with it he will do link exchange the "old fashion way."

Geez, since when is being honest "old fashioned"? :)

I would think this is now a CAVEAT for which the SEO can use to illustrate why your strategy didn't work - if lackluster performance occurs... so you also need to be mindful of this.

Notwithstanding, this has nothing to do with your comfort level, more to do with comfort level of others linking to you.

Also this reciprocal exchange with 'one way' benefit must be able to gain links of similar value to 'old fashioned' exchanges in order to have any enhanced value.

While in theory - one way links have more value - no dispute there - but in practical application of an 'old fashioned' reciprocal link exchange where the mutual exchange is removed - the 'better quality exchanges' tend to go with it -- and 'I guarantee your SEO can't dispute this'.

Rarely do website owners that participate in exchanges achieve successes by mere chance... which means your SEO is focused on exchanges with those that don't succeed.

I'd agree that by not allowing a SE to find your outgoing links pages it would appear that all your incoming links are one-way, which is better than reciprocal links. To what degree I'm not certain. However, I would call this extremely unethical in that the whole purpose of the link exchange (and the primary benefit of reciprocal link swaps when there are link pages involved and not just put on regular content pages) is to build inbound link popularity. If you hide your links page you are not making a fair exchange. Stealing really.

I'm confused as to why some are stating this is 100% safe. The reason (manipulate PageRank) is clear so IMO it can never be 100% safe.

I'm confused as to why some are stating this is 100% safe. The reason (manipulate PageRank) is clear so IMO it can never be 100% safe.

Well 'it is' safe and this is because search engines have allowed website owners the ability to stop or prevent bots from crawling pages you don't want them to crawl, index, cache, follow.

Unfortunate the intent of manipulate PageRank isn't as black and white as you make it out to be... if it was all use of Meta Robots, Robots.txt, etc. for whatever reason would be a problem and as Google itself says 'you should use them' means -- you can 100%.

Hasn't it be shown that a Robots.txt file Meta tag etc does not stop googlebot fully. In other words, the URL's only still show?

Regardless, I still cannot believe it is 100% safe as Google may even give special attention to pages they are told not to go to. If that page is a links page it would surely be a red flag Google may notice.

Hasn't it be shown that a Robots.txt file Meta tag etc does not stop googlebot fully. In other words, the URL's only still show?
The page the links are on would show up as URL only if it's linked to, but that's different from the links that are on the page.

Regardless, I still cannot believe it is 100% safe as Google may even give special attention to pages they are told not to go to. If that page is a links page it would surely be a red flag Google may notice.
I don't believe they could give special attention, there are just far too many pages on the internet that are robots excluded, for any number of reasons most of which are legitimate.

If it comes up for hand review, it wouldn't be just that looked at so it's far better not to do anything that would seriously irritate people who expect links back and find tricks being played.

I'd agree that by not allowing a SE to find your outgoing links pages it would appear that all your incoming links are one-way, which is better than reciprocal links. To what degree I'm not certain. However, I would call this extremely unethical in that the whole purpose of the link exchange (and the primary benefit of reciprocal link swaps when there are link pages involved and not just put on regular content pages) is to build inbound link popularity. If you hide your links page you are not making a fair exchange. Stealing really.

The other side of the coin...

While this may be distasteful and some website owners will get 'HAD' that are not versed in link exchanges - some of the blame does fall on the linking partners...

if every single person that exchanged links were acting with informed decision-making -- no one could get away with it.

Ever go shopping and buy something for $20, and walk a bit further and the exact same item is on sale for $6 - would you believe the first merchant stole your money?

Guess what - with hindsight you can buy the second item for $6 return to the first merchant and get your $20 back - and this isn't any different than going back and JavaScripting the returning link - and now a fair exchange...

or learning in advance of exchanging links who and what you should be mindful of...

Acting based on ignorance in business developments isn't just foolish.... it also means you have no recourse to blame others

The page the links are on would show up as URL only if it's linked to, but that's different from the links that are on the page.Isn't it being linked to, to fool humans?

I don't believe they could give special attention, there are just far too many pages on the internet that are robots excluded, for any number of reasons most of which are legitimate.But as link popularity and PR is important to Google, surely it would be too much bother to have googlebot check if the blocked page is a page of external links?

IMO, the only things that are 100% safe are those within Googles guidlines and manipulating PageRank is certainly not.

Hasn't it be shown that a Robots.txt file Meta tag etc does not stop googlebot fully.

No, there is a difference between crawling and indexing. Google may chose to index a page based on links it finds to it regardless of the fact that it is being blocked from crawling with a robots.txt or META-robots code. These codes will tell Google not to visit the page and crawl it and they usually respect that.

Google may chose to index a page based on links it finds to it regardless of the fact that it is being blocked from crawling with a robots.txt or META-robots codeThere must be a reason for that though?

Acting based on ignorance in business developments isn't just foolish.... it also means you have no recourse to blame othersOf course you have recouse to blame others. You don't need to be a mechanic to have recourse and blame a used care salesperson if you were duped.

If someone at Google becomes aware of what is being said to be 100% safe, there will be plenty of recourse and the blame will not be toward any of the duped ignorant.

Of course you have recouse to blame others. You don't need to be a mechanic to have recourse and blame a used care salesperson if you were duped.

If someone at Google becomes aware of what is being said to be 100% safe, there will be plenty of recourse and the blame will not be toward any of the duped ignorant.

I would think one of two possibilities would occur:

1. the linking partner understands 'not a fair exchange' and doesn't accept the exchange - I doubt they would spend their time attempting to prove to Google a manipulation... they just wouldn't link.

2. the linking partner sees 'a fair exchange' because they don't understand - and because they don't wouldn't spend their time attempting to prove to Google a manipulation.

Who will do all the leg work for this hideous crime and terrible injustice?

Be realistic?

There must be a reason for that though?

There is - Google crawls links - in order to manage million [possibly billions] of excluded pages it must have a record in order to keep all those pages out of ranked results.

Google only has a memory based on what it archives - which includes excluded, penalized, and banned pages.

Google may chose to index a page based on links it finds to it regardless of the fact that it is being blocked from crawling with a robots.txt or META-robots code

There must be a reason for that though?
Yes, there are reasons - those represent dangling links. But that's another topic entirely, it's one for the Google Search forum.

FWIW, and opinion only, I don't think anything is "safe" when it comes to a hand review. I think all is fair at that point, since it's a human doing it, not a robot, and only the robots have to obey robot tags.

At no point does Google or any other SE say or imply that their staff are restricted by robots.txt or other robot specific requests that I am aware of. If a human can get to it, it's fair game, since they are looking at improving the human visitor experience, not the robot visitor experience.

Having said that, I do believe that something can be 100% safe from a robot standpoint - that's just how robots are. But I don't think that's overly helpful, and may be misleading.

All it would take is a savvy human visitor and a spam report, and you have gone from 100% safe from robots to 100% at the mercy of human review.

And a human with easy access to surfing from a known SE IP address, plus full access to proprietary link and content analysis, would be in a very good position to show mercy - or not...

Ian

All it would take is a savvy human visitor and a spam report, and you have gone from 100% safe from robots to 100% at the mercy of human review.
And all it would take is one who gets indignant enough to file a report. That's it - just one and the party is over.

There is - Google crawls links - in order to manage million [possibly billions] of excluded pages it must have a record in order to keep all those pages out of ranked results.Huh? It crawls links that a robots.txt file requests not be included so it can exclude them from the SERP's??? I think not.

Sorry, I have read nothing here that comes close to suggesting that manipulating PageRank in the manner suggested is 100% safe.

Fathom, I'm finding it increasling odd that you are admant that this is safe, when it's clearly not.

Huh? It crawls links that a robots.txt file requests not be included so it can exclude them from the SERP's??? I think not.

Sorry, I have read nothing here that comes close to suggesting that manipulating PageRank in the manner suggested is 100% safe.

Fathom, I'm finding it increasling odd that you are admant that this is safe, when it's clearly not.

Example: website restructuring - I move all pages to a new directory.

Unfortunately, some pages have external links coming to them [not because of an exchange but because they 'just linked' to the page.

I don't want duplicated content so I noindex the page and robots.txt to excluded.

Unfortunately, because there are still links to the old page and there are no instructions at these websites for Google not to follow and to exclude, Googlebot will enter my website via this page each time it recrawls these other websites.

Question:

1. Is this manipulation?

2. Short of a hand review that inspects all links to and from all the pages in question - how does Google determine good or bad intent with a certain level of accuracy?

If purely manipulation that gets a hand review this usually involves multiple reports from multiple people involving multiple domains... Google engineers don't sit there day in, day out, hand reviewing every bloody report.

Site by site - is reserved for automated processes - which now has the problem of identifying the difference between the thread topic and my example, and a 1,000 other variations.

In an academic theoretical sense - it would be totally awesome if Google could prevent this thread situation from occurring [it's simply is an inferior strategy] - in reality they can't - they don't have the people-power.

I still don't understand your point Fathom. You said that Google spiders pages, that a robots.txt file instructs not to index, so it can exclude them from the SERP's. That makes no sense.

I think the truth is we do not know why Google spiders pages it's been intructed not to index. With this in mind, decepetive links pages, could be a reason.

1. Is this manipulation?Yes it was cleary stated why it was being done.

2. Short of a hand review that inspects all links to and from all the pages in question - how does Google determine good or bad intent with a certain level of accuracy?It could be that googlebot 'flags' certain pages and then these pages might be dealt with by futher automatic scrutiny, or even by hand eventually.

However, as has been said, it simply cannot be 100% safe to set up a links page in this manner. It may only take one spam submission from a Webmaster. I would say it is very likely that sooner or later a they will be 'busted' even if only by spam submissions.

Dave, it seems like you are confused about the terms. Indexing is not the same is crawling or "keeping a record of", as Marcia said.

Robots.txt and META-robots does not prevent search engines from indexing - only from crawling. However, in the case of a META-robots the sprider actually need to request the page to see the code. Also, robots.txt files are cached so if you change it today they may still spider tomorrow untill they update the cache.

There are only 2 points I'm confused with.

1) Fathom said: Google may chose to index a page based on links it finds to it regardless of the fact that it is being blocked from crawling with a robots.txt or META-robots codeI replied and stated that there must be a reason why it does that. Fathom replied with;There is - Google crawls links - in order to manage million [possibly billions] of excluded pages it must have a record in order to keep all those pages out of ranked results.

I'm reading this as saying that Google is crawling pages (that have 'no index' robots.txt files) just so these same pages are kept out of the ranked results. That makes no sense to me.


2) The method being discussed is 100% safe.

Both of these are what I'm confused about.

Sorry, my bad on point 1, the penny has finally dropped. It's all down to the possibility of links from other pages.

Mikkel deMib Svendsen said the first statement.

Nonetheless - Google will obey your instructions however, by default it indexes pages and follows links thus there is a 'conflict of instructions' between 'your' site instructions and the instructions at another site or 'in lieu of' Google's default. [noting my example]

Now apply this same conflict to the thread topic... a page intentionally excluded to appear as 'one way links' but has links pointing to that page basically says prior to receiving your instructions [the next time it follows a link] and that is likely set as 'default'.

The 'intent' is totally different but the results are the same.

<added> was typing at the same time - but longer in the tooth! ;)</added>

The whole thing is confusing, but in essence the owner of a site is ultimately responsible for what's done on it or with it, is ultimately responsible for the relationships, linking and otherwise, established with other webmasters, and will ultimately bear the consequences and responsibility and/or blame for what's done or not done.

There may be many SEOs who do what's expedient for rankings regardless of the impact on others, but ultimately it's up to the webmaster or site owner himself or herself to decide what they are comfortable with and how far they are willing to go, based on their own personal principles.

Regardless of how much of a genius an SEO may be, if linking partners are deceived, it will be the site owner who takes responsibilty for deceiving them and rightly so. Unless they've not just fallen off the turnip truck and haven't got a clue, that's still where the buck stops and the only difference will be whether or not they admit to knowing about the deception.

Everyone has to live with themselves personally and it's not a matter of judging others. But "George did it, not me" doesn't fly. Unless there is true ignorance, it is NOT the SEO who is to blame, it is the site owner who will be responsible for screwing other webmasters over or not.

Exploiting others because of their ignorance does NOT obfuscate or make excuse for the dishonesty of practices, nor does it justify avaricious greed and ruthlessness.

Totally agree Marcia! Ignorance is never a valid defence and neither should it be.

I can't stand these nitwits. Dishonest pri*ks. As Jill said, have you fired them yet? Anything you link to from your site, you should be proud of linking to, otherwise it just shouldn't be there.

I can't stand these nitwits. Dishonest pri*ks. As Jill said, have you fired them yet? Anything you link to from your site, you should be proud of linking to, otherwise it just shouldn't be there.

While a less desirable practice - at least the SEO give the client the ability to make informed decisions, seek second opinions because they are aware of the strategy being implemented.

They could have simply cloaked the page, or robots.txt - and many more wouldn't be the wiser - including the client.