Give
The Folks At Google What they Want
by Rick Hendershot
Recent developments on the
Google front have gotten web marketers and SEO specialists
talking even more than usual. What they're talking
about is the changing Search Engine Optimization landscape.
Some of the traditional assumptions about what gets
good Google ranking have been challenged by things
Google has said over the last few months -- especially
by the filing of their most recent patent application.
A number of sensible suggestions
have emerged about good SEO practice. Here is one
of the most important:
1. Don't add links too quickly
or all from one or two sources -- Google wants a "natural"
linking pattern.
This is not a new suggestion,
but Google seems to be prepared to penalize sites
which engage in blatant link buying. Clearly this
is targeted at services that sell links by the hundreds
(or thousands). So one month a site has no links,
and the next month it has 2,000 or 20,000 links from
one or two "name" sites. Obviously these
links have happened because of link buying.
Is Google trying to discourage
all link buying? I don't think so. Links are just
a form of advertising, and Google cannot discourage
buying advertising without being blatantly inconsistent.
Google itself is one of the primary sources of purchased
web advertising, and it would be a blatant abuse of
their dominant position to discriminate against smaller
advertising networks who are offering a legitimate
service to webmasters.
As I read the situation, what
Google is trying to do is safeguard the integrity
of their search results by ruling out massive overnight
link purchases. We're talking thousands of links here.
Without these safeguards, search results can be dramatically
skewed by the practice of buying large chunks of links.
There is clearly something wrong with a system that
claims that link popularity is an indicator of site
quality if a site suddenly has thousands of inbound
links when just a week ago it had none.
This practice makes a mockery
of the importance of links. Their only purpose is
to exploit the system and make a dramatic impact on
Page Rank and Search Engine positioning. Google wants
Page Rank and search results to flow from website
quality and relevance. And virtually all SEO experts
have maintained that quality and relevance come fairly
gradually as a site grows and its content develops.
The "natural" development of links should
happen more or less in lock step with the development
of content.
This does not mean that the
importance of links has been diminished. Just the
opposite. Google is reconfirming their position that
the number and quality of links pointing at specific
web pages is the most significant indicator of the
importance of that web page.
Nor does it mean that a webmaster
should never buy links on legitimate websites. On
the contrary, it means that links should be acquired
and developed consistently and steadily over time,
and that the quality of your link partners matters
more than ever. This applies whether your links are
the result of exchanges, purchases, blogging, article
publishing, or any of the other established techniques
for building traffic through linking.
When you are looking for link
partners you should look at the quality of the sites
linking back to you. Ask yourself how relevant is
the content in the pages, what is the balance between
content and links, how often are these pages updated,
how much traffic do these pages get, do these pages
link to "authority" sites like Google, Yahoo,
eBay, Amazon, Microsoft.
All of these things matter
more now than they ever have.
About the Author
Rick Hendershot publishes the Linknet Marketing Network,
a group of more than 35 websites and blogs offering
web owners advertising and link promotion opportunities.
