Natural Linking Patterns: What They Are and What We Think They Are
Category: Link Building Advice |
At the end of 2005, Google (in the person of Matt Cutts) announced Google's new link evaluation policies. Valuing natural (and earned) links more highly and devaluing unnatural (or unearned) links is the core of these new policies. First of all, it is supposed to affect reciprocal links, three-way links and paid links, and though, as usual, there is no way for us SEOs to know exactly how they will be affected, hot discussions of these new policies started at once. Some quick conclusions were drawn, such as:
- Reciprocal links from now on will be ignored by Google, because they are always unnatural;
- Three-way links will be ignored, as well, and probably the sites caught linking three way, will receive penalties;
- Link pages are evil, and all links located on them will be considered unnatural and disregarded.
To me, however, these apparently obvious statements seem to be wildly oversimplified on closer inspection. Some contradictions lie on the surface; others will become obvious if we just analyse them and brainstorm a little bit.
I know that this article is going to cause a lot of doubts and disagreements among people who usually agree with me, and I'm ready for it and welcome all alternative opinions. The following is just a presentation of my personal opinions and doesn't claim to be anything more than this. But I disagree with all three statements given above.
The why
I can't deny an obvious fact that there is a certain logic behind those statements, and in many cases they are absolutely true. What I can't accept is the generalisation and oversimplification of them, as well as the attempt to apply them to all cases. Life is just more complicated than this.
Oversimplification leads to panic. Panic leads to stupid actions. Stupid actions aren't always harmless. Reciprocal linking and link pages are issues too subtle to oversimplify. And I'm sure the people who work for engines know it very well, or all reciprocal links would have been devalued years ago. Technically, it is not hard to do. But ...
Reciprocal links can be natural
We all know that there are a lot of cases when sites are expected to link to each other. For example, sites belonging to the same owner and dedicated to slightly different but related issues (like web design and SEO) in many cases will link to each other from the "About Us" or "Portfolio" pages. Business partners usually interlink their sites. Is there any reason for them not to do so that I'm missing? One thing that often happens to me is this: I make a new acquaintance (usually through participation in forums) that quickly turns into friendship, visit the person's site, find it great and link to it, often twice (first from one of my resource pages to the homepage, and second from one of my articles to a related article on my new friend's site). At the same time, my new friend visits my site (out of sheer interest), likes it and links to it. Usually, there is no need for us to ask each other to do so. It just happens, and it is usually very touching.
Who will call this linking pattern unnatural or those links unearned? Who will volunteer to find anything even remotely unethical in this scenario? And who will tell me Google should devalue both of those links, unless one of us removes it to get the "one-way" benefit? Personally, I would hate to do so, and if any hypothetical search engine ever starts forcing me into this, I'll just tell that engine that I'm not someone to betray my friends for the sake of rankings.
Another example would be an authority directory (like DMOZ.org) listing a site. Should the site owner avoid linking to DMOZ, in order to not to lose any benefit that listing might provide? Absurd. No, worse than absurd. Actually, harmful to the Net as a whole, just like any other paranoia would be. Can you imagine crowds of SEOs, all telling their clients not to link to a site because "this site is linked to us"? And the engines have to take it all into consideration when working on their algorithms. And they do. The engine engineers are much smarter than we often assume. That's why they have their jobs.
One-way links can be unnatural and unearned
And no, I'm not talking about paid links: that's a completely separate issue, deep enough for another long article. I'm talking about all those inbound links that we all have, though we didn't ask for them - links from spammers who use automation to speed up their link exchange process. They automate all stages of it, including adding their outbound links to their link pages, and so we get links pointing to our sites, but never return the favour, because automated requests are so easy to spot and habitually trash, and also because many of us don't do link exchanges at all.
As a result, we get purely one-way links. Some scripts will automatically remove them after a certain period of time and at least three automated reminders. Others will forget to do so. Usually, the links will stay there long enough to be discovered by the engine spiders. The worst (or is it the best?) of it is that it is almost impossible to tell them algorithmically from real one-way links, given voluntarily, without a "link back" expectation. It can only be done by detecting a typical link monger pattern and depriving the whole site of its ability to pass "link love". Not an easy thing to do, which would explain why Google still relies on human intervention. All these procedures take time, of course, which would explain the trial period given to all new links now (though I could think of a couple of other explanations).
One thing I know for sure is that I don't envy Google engineers. Their job is too hard.
Three-way
Now, let's look at three-way links. Usually, three-way strategies come to mind when people start thinking how to trick the engines into believing there is no reciprocal linking here. That's very old stuff actually. I link to your site, and you link to my other site (or my client's site) in return. It is almost as easy to spot as regular reciprocal links. The question is how the engines are going to treat sites that do so once they have spotted the familiar pattern.
The answer is, we don't know. Quite likely, the sites abusing this strategy heavily are really asking for trouble. But here again, the engines risk throwing a lot of babies out with the bath water. And they know it.
The triangles, I'm sure, will appear naturally now and again as the Net grows. Though it should be fairly easy to tell natural triangles from repeatable, "strategic" three-way patterns, there is always the chance that a new filter (not properly debugged yet) will punish a lot of innocent sites by mistake. I believe it happens all the time, and thus Jaggers and Floridas come to life, causing a lot of "bad SERPs" complaints and finally rolling back and bringing a lot of unjustly filtered sites back to life. The engines tread carefully. They can't afford to do it otherwise. They have a lot to lose.
I'm sure, once the three-way strategies are completely wiped, a lot of people will start experimenting with 4-way, 5-way, or even 30-way schemes. Just what we need: another silly competition between the spammers and the engines: "We have just figured out that if you make it 31-way, the engines won't be able to tell you are doing it!" - "Sorry, our new algorithm is capable of detecting 31-way linking strategies as easily as we detect 30-way schemes". Not as funny as it may seem.
But my main point is different. While it might not be a good idea to base your link building on the three-way scam, there is no need to be afraid of natural triangles. Unless you don't link out at all, a few triangles will appear sooner or later, but if you are not tricking the engines on purpose, you are safe.
Once again about link pages
I know that a lot of link pages lost their Google PR during Jagger. I know that a lot of other link pages retained it. Some link pages were completely excluded from Google index, and others remained and didn't even get the "Supplemental Result" award. What's more, I'm seeing a pattern here.
It's widely believed that since link pages have been so enormously abused by spammers, they are now considered worthless by default, and any site that has them will soon be given a black mark. Is it really so?
Recently, I launched a new site which needed a couple of link pages because of the concept of the site. I needed to list those resources, and I needed them in the most obvious place for my visitors, so they could find them easily. So, I created those pages, and Google indexed them.
I'm not worried about the future of my site. My link pages are what I define as "good link pages". From the pattern I'm seeing on the web after Jagger, it looks like Google agrees with my definition.
I believe that there is still nothing wrong with the link page concept. What is definitely going to become a thing of the past is a purely reciprocal link page. I have already touched the issue in the "White Hat Linking" article |.
The point is, a purely reciprocal link page is something created, most likely, for the engines only, while a link page containing 10 links and only one of them reciprocated, quite probably exists for the greater good of the Net. I don't know where the borders lie, all the more so because Google engineers are probably still tweaking this variable, looking for the optimum value. As is usual with SEO, when we don't know the correct number, we should rely on our common sense and logic, and let the engines do the maths.
Not to be misunderstood
I'm not telling my readers to go and start chasing reciprocal links again with a renewed passion. Far from it. My recommendation is still the same: link out to good sites for free, watch for bad neighbourhoods, accept reciprocal links with calm gratitude, but don't worry if you haven't got one. That's how a natural linking pattern will form.
If you don't do link exchanges, just trash the requests and forget about them (though it could be a good idea to check the site out first, provided the request looks genuine). If link pages don't look good on your site, don't create them. But don't be afraid of occasional two-way links, as they are no more unethical or unnatural than the cards you exchange with your friends at Christmas.
What is devalued?
One thing I know for certain is that if Google really devalued all reciprocal links overnight, we would see significant changes in all SERPs (much more drastic than Jagger), and we don't see them. As mentioned above, Google owners have their business to lose if they start playing such games, which they can't afford. So, the majority of the older reciprocal (or three-way) links still count. Only the sites that had over-abused this method never returned to their pre-Jagger positions.
Others will, most likely, be very carefully re-evaluated during future updates, so we should be ready and stop abusing reciprocal linking right now. It has never been a good idea anyway, and deep in our hearts we all knew it was coming. Soon, sites using FFA-like link pages will go to the same place where the pages over-stuffed with keywords are now going - to the 1000th page of the Google SERP they used to dominate.
But what is already devalued is brand-new links. Actually, they now need to sit on sites for a few months before they start giving any SEO benefit to the sites they point to. It just has to be accepted. After all, if they are good links, they will bring us some visitors even during the trial period.
Link popularity itself, as a ranking factor, is also given less importance now. It's a good thing, because it encourages us to look for links that will bring us visitors, as opposed to links that will be read by Google and give us a ranking boost. Link mania is coming to an end.
A good reason to relax.
|
|
