Directories, link buying and the Google "Link Penalty" conundrum

[Marcia]

Regarding acquiring links, it is absolutely GREAT to get good directory listings; though none are the caliber or carry the kind of weight (in a few respects) that Yahoo or ODP does, a link from a GOOD directory is excellent to have.

Directories are springing up almost daily and so are sites designed for the purpose of selling text links (and running Adsense, too). So is the link brokerage and selling text links "business" exploding (read: some directories' primary purpose is to sell links) and as Mikkel pointed out elsewhere, there are differences among them and their sources. It's all connected.

Those are all multiplying faster than rabbits in a hatchery - and many, many sites being set up and even many conducting forum "spam" and "whisper campaigns" to promote them, particularly around SEO forums, and to get eyeballs. Oh yeah - and also to get found and crawled, because they just went up that day or that week.

While buying links is akin to simply buying advertising and is a good thing if done right, and while quality directory listings are a good thing if done right, it's the "done right" part that information is lacking on. And don't think for one minute we can count on people in that business to share too much that's productive if it's counter-productive to them rolling in as much cash as they can.

I said all that - which had to finally be said, though *believe me* there is much more - to say this:

Google is not unaware of what's been going on, they've got some pretty sharp people on board. There are many forum discussions, some with sad tales of people woes as a result of unwise linking, and many articles out there on the subject of what Google has been doing to curtail practices they do_not_like. Here's an article by Wayne Hulbert at WebProNews I found quite interesting, it's an easy read and right to the point, giving a concise view of the background of the issue. From Wayne's article:

Purchased links tend to be added to a website in medium to large quantities, and often all at one time. Large quantities of incoming links, appearing all at once, might indeed trip a filter.

Google could suspect a high volume of links added at one time to be purchased, and therefore suspect. The possibility would be in keeping with Google's strongly suspected policy of discouraging link sales. After all, Google's guidelines point out that any type of linking schemes are against its policies.

Google's New Link Penalty

And this:

Add one way directory links. Google's spider crawls the major, and even minor directories, on a very frequent basis. Categorized directory links, especially from human edited directories, are very relevant and theme oriented.

Again - let's look at that in regard to *rate*of acquiring directory links, as he points out above, and the quality of the source of those links. No way are they all of the same value, that would be impossible with them springing up almost daily using off-the-shelf scripts.

With all the latest buzz, not to mention papers and patents, about how Google analyzes and treats links, which there's much ado about all over in quality SEO forums, I think we need to think twice about how fast and furious we do any kind of linking - including buying links and submitting to a ton of directories without forethought. There are some great ones, but they're not all created equal.

I think it's time to get into a discussion about this here, most particularly if anyone has some positive, productive thoughts or suggestions on how to avoid running into problems unnecessarily.

Anyone have a good plan in place for current or future sites, to try to avoid getting on Google's bad side? Any ideas?

[sootledir]

My idea is bold, and could revolutionize the way webmasters do business forever.

I'm thinking of ignoring Google and building sites for users

[2003m2003]

While buying links is akin to simply buying advertising and is a good thing if done right, and while quality directory listings are a good thing if done right, it's the "done right" part that information is lacking on.

"done right" is always in gray area, nobody know clear which on is right and which one is correct. Even Google gave wide statement 'Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank'

[glengara]

*Anyone have a good plan in place for current or future sites, to try to avoid getting on Google's bad side?*

To be honest, it's hard to see how sites battling for position in the more competitive sectors can not but stray into the links scheme area.

From looking at some examples, I get the impression G has turned a blind eye to the goings-on in linkage terms among the RE or holiday sectors.

Mind you, for most "normal" sites you just need a dozen decent links, a properly structured internal link structure, and you're away....

[wiltonbiz]

Mind you, for most "normal" sites you just need a dozen decent links, a properly structured internal link structure, and you're away....

Glengarra: Can you give a bit more detail on the "internal link structure" you mention?

Also, I have several sites in what are probably low to medium competitiveness. I have been adding to directories, and hand-requesting links via Arelis. It's taking a while for some links to show up in a check of Google backlinks, while others, added later, show up almost immediately. Any thoughts?

WiltonBiz

[sootledir]

WiltonBiz, Google shows a basically random sample of your backlinks.

To see all your backlinks use Yahoo or MSN.

[Marcia]

Note: Side discussion on finding backlinks at search engines split off to new discussion

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ead.php?t=5989

It's been just about standard procedure to request and/or exchange links and submit to directories for new sites, but it isn't all that simple any more, and actually hasn't been for a while

>>There's an aging factor and historical data of sites to consider, not only ours but those we're associated with by way of links.

>>There's trust rank and the associated concepts and factors - which incidentally there are papers online about dating back to 4 years ago, so it isn't exactly anything new.

>>There are scraper sites out there multiplying like fleas on a dog on a hot day in July, duplicating portions of pages AND replicating the anchor text for sites' keywords.

Question: What's the balance between what's good and what's bad when our links are looked at or analyzed? Where is the line drawn, and how can we try to ensure that we've got at least some of what's good working for us with new sites?

sootledir

My idea is bold, and could revolutionize the way webmasters do business forever.

I'm thinking of ignoring Google and building sites for users

Not only bold and revolutionary, but just maybe it could be a winning defensive strategy.

I'm beginning to think that not only is it a good idea to start rolling out a new site 3-6 months before a normal planned launch would be, and not only gear it toward benefitting users, but *also* try to make sure that even though it gets indexed, it doesn't start ranking at Yahoo until well after we've had a chance to acquire quality inbound links from what we can, to the best of our ability, discern to be trustworthy sources.

Not easy, but at least it could give us some degree of control over our own sites before our IBLs get corrupted beyond our control.

[wiltonbiz]

before our IBLs get corrupted beyond our control.

I don't understand what you mean about IBLs getting corrupted. I read recently that IBLs cannot hurt a site, because otherwise it would be too simple to sabotage a competitor. That made sense to me, so can u explain the quoted sentence, please?

WiltonBiz

[glengara]

*..give a bit more detail..*

OK, it starts at the design stage with the site "architecture",I like to use a themed pyramid structure where possible.

I'll not go into detail yet, as hopefully Marcia who used to be hot on this IIRC, will step in.

In the meantime you can have a look here
h**p://www.searchengineworld.com/engine/theme_pyramids.htm

With proper naming, you can ensure your inner pages, which may never receive an IBL, have at least a few links pointing with the proper anchor text, and more for your sub-cats.

For an example, see the site in my profile, bear in mind though it was from about 4 years ago, before the dodgy-hyphenated-urls and their file names came in, I'm more subtle today ;-)

[Gurtie]

Not only bold and revolutionary, but just maybe it could be a winning defensive strategy.

Honestly, for non competitive terms I think ignoring linking for ranking is about right. If you promote your website (as in try to get actual real humans to visit it without using a search engine) you naturally get links. By natural I don't necessarily mean not from directories or not paid for, I mean you get links that are good for attracting visitors, via paid ads, niche directories, promotions etc.

Once you start to get competitive of course that doesn't work but for a lot of people it would, back when TBRP mattered (probably) thinking about marketing and not SEO used to get PR6's and 7's, and the principal should still work now.

[sootledir]

I've actually heard people lately speaking of disallowing Yahoo and MSN in robots.txt so that the site gets fewer links.

I guess its almost like the boss rushing up to everyone at work: you have to look natural or you can get in a lot of trouble.

[cspence]

Google is very selective on who they penalize. I use similar methods as my competitors such as interlinking the sites I own using a footer link and using subdomains for geographical pages. I own a media company with 5 different and distinct web site and I choose to interlink them. I also have an affilliate program where other sites carry my content. My competitiors use this to a great extent and they don't get penalized.

This is unfair and shows a bias to the big companies who spend millions on adwords. I've done something to piss Google off and the only thing I can pinpoint is the interlinking and affiliate programs which all major players in my arena use in large numbers.

So what do I do? Sacrifice my rankings in Yahoo and MSN for rankings in Google? Risk loosing the traffic I get from one of my sites to another? Risk losing traffic from my affiliate partners? No! I wait and hope that I eventually get recognized by Google as a legitimate site with good content and worthy of competing head to head with my competitors, who by the way, have enough money to move mountains.

[Marcia]

cspense, a lot of us are facing the issue of sacrificing rankings on other engines to try to comply with what are thought to be Google's requirements.

This thread from a short while back definitely deserves a fresh look right about now

Value of Links

[sootledir]

I personally wouldn't sacrifice traffic from MSN or Yahoo. They are both becoming very strong purveyors of traffic that converts.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by Marcia

cspense, a lot of us are facing the issue of sacrificing rankings on other engines to try to comply with what are thought to be Google's requirements.

Yeah, I had this recently, with a big client badly sandboxed. I faced the conundrum of reducing the link numbers to better comply with Google, but the Yahoo! and MSN rankings started to fall.

I figured if they weren't going to impact Google yet, then they should at least have a good spread in Yahoo! and MSN, so I cranked up on the links to get them back top.

The client came out of Google's sandbox this Friday regardless, and now has a very strong presence across a range of competitive keywords.

Point is, be patient, and let Google sort out Google. If you link build in volume for newer domains, you are going to be sandboxed by default, so play a waiting game and ensure your client knows the risks of delayed rankings for Google.

[wiltonbiz]

Marcia said:

There are scraper sites out there multiplying like fleas on a dog on a hot day in July, duplicating portions of pages AND replicating the anchor text for sites' keywords.

What exactly are scraper sites, and what is their "business model?"

WiltonBiz

[sootledir]

Basically, scraper sites do this:

They compile a list of keywords. They create a page from those keywords and search Google for the top 10 results. They "scrape" the snippets from those sites.

Each page consists of 10 outgoing link to the sites that rank, along with optimized snippets. The entire site design is keyword rich with urls like our-keyword-domain/our-keyword-directory/our-target-keyword.html

Each page has 4 Google Adsense ads above the fold. They hope that since the site is of such low quality, the surfer will be forced to click on an AdSense ad so they earn revenue.

There are literally tens of thousands of these things with millions of indexed pages.

[wiltonbiz]

Thanks.
Amazing how so much of the garbage out there, which G is so righteous about penalizing (rightly so) owes its very existence to G's moneymaking schemes (in this case Adsense). I'm not arguing against G's right to make a buck -- that's what most of us are doing. But since they created this particular can of worms, they should get down off of their self-righteous high horse. (Tell me again, G, how Adsense contributes to your lofty goal of putting all the world's information on the web?). I actually think that Google's Adsense program has created more garbage on the web than any other development in recent memory. (Unless I'm missing something).

WiltonBiz

[glengara]

I another post I speculate file names have been dropped from allinanchor calcs, could be to help combat scrapers from the sound of it..

[Marcia]

Nice, clear description sootledir. Some also run PPC adverts; same thing - lousy site so people have to click on something, which is easier than using the back button.

glengara, where is that post of yours, could you link to it for us?

I haven't spent too much effort with checking, but at first glance I'm wondering if there have been some changes reflected when doing an allinurl: search. Just a stab at it, I haven't looked too much.