With the end of the year approaching I threw couple of thoughts regarding what I think were hot topics for this year in our favorite game of SEO.
Selling links
Don't mess with selling links. Google may be closing their eyes for some of the big players but if you are not under Google's blessing, simply don't do it.
In the immortal words of my friend Dave, drop it, you have more to lose than you can gain.
If you do get penalized, clean up your site and submit a reconsideration request. It works.
I do have to say I am surprised to see big link selling companies like Conductor, despite open conflict with Google, still continuing to grow?
Google Webmaster forums
Google's webmaster forums are teeming with life. Use them for your webmaster questions and now it's a specially good time since Google started openly bragging about them.
I used it in the past and almost every instance finished with a satisfying resolution. This was not always thanks to Google employees but the forum also has a whole bunch of savvy lurkers who like to help out.
Recently I was pleasantly surprised when a forum member helped me find a canonical problem that was quite obvious but I kept blindly missing it. I sent them $100 through Paypal and they returned it. Quite nice people out there.
I later decided to include this check in SEO Doctor as a standard tool so I don't miss it anymore.
Page Rank Gravity
I like this word, page rank gravity. It describes a thesis I first time mentioned about year and a half ago when I noticed what I thought was a strange behavior in page rank algorithm.
It seems to be that page rank does not work cumulatively ie. more links means ultimately more page rank as all these links add up.
No, it seems that page rank works like gravity and site's page rank is 'drawn' to the PR of largest number of originating backlinks.
For example a site with a single PR7 link is likely to be PR 6.
But a site with one PR 7 and 1000 PR 0 links seems to get only PR 2 - PR 3 in practice, in contrast to what you may expect.
If this is in fact built into algorithm, it could mean big G found an elegant way to start dealing with spam backlinks among other things.
Backlinks
While on the topic of backlinks, they are still big for SEO. In fact - huge.
Widgets still work marvelously for backlinks. Make a popular widget with your link on it, have people put it on their sites and you'll push anything to the top of SERPs.
This was the year of infographics as an SEO tool as well. Never seen so much funny, creative infographics as this year.
Of course, a carefully planned infographic also had an embed code below it that you can use to place the pretty image on your site, while giving a nice link to whoever ordered the infographic campaign.
I am only wondering why Google still allow these links to pass full (or near full) value when they can easily be detected as they always use the same pattern.
They devalued footer links and have patents for 'reasonable surfer' model of valuing links so I guess this will be on the table soon.
That's all folks! Happy Holidays!
Suggested reading:
- Better handling of 404 pages using Google
- How to Improve Page Rank? Linking is the Key!
- SEO Case Study: From Zero to a Hero in One Month
Posted in: SEO
TAGS:end 2010 comments, pagerank gravity, seo strategy 2010 prelovac, state seo, when seo stated
11 Comments
"If this is in fact built into algorithm, it could mean big G found an elegant way to start dealing with spam backlinks among other things."
Does this mean that if I buy a lot of low quality profile links for my competition, they'll get a lower PR eventually?
Indeed, although this does not necessarily mean lower rankings as well.
Vladimir,
I was quite fascinated by your PageRank Gravity theory. I incline to agree with it: your page rank directly correlates to the quality of links you get.
Question: in your SEO Doctor plugin, you state that Google potentially counts only the first 100 links to a page. Can you suggest more reading on that? Would love to explore this further.
Thanks!
Ana Hoffman
This was a part of the first official Google SEO guide. I think they have dropped it in the recent version but it still kind of makes sense.
Wow! Great post! Do you wonder what SEO in 2011 will be like with the ever-changing fast-paced marketing growth? Check out this article: http://bit.ly/eWExro. What do you think? Thanks for the tips!
I think it will start to settle down actually, the wild-west age has already reached it's peak
Google doesn't care if you sell links, they don't want you to sell links that pass on PR. So by all means, sell your links, just put nofollow on them. Oh wait, all of the link buyers want their links "followed".
If your income is not mostly derived from Google traffic do what you want. But if it is, think twice. You might fly under the radar for 1-year, 2-years, etc., but when they lock-on, Game Over.
:O)
Hi Vlad, can you make some example of widgets that can be included in a wp blog with personal link inside?
'Widgets still work marvelously for backlinks. Make a popular widget with your link on it, have people put it on their sites and you'll push anything to the top of SERPs.'
Check out my WP Wall plugin
Thanks for the tips Vladimir! What do you think about selling links manually? Guess there is less chances of getting penalized, right?
Greetings.
I always thought of selling links as a poor, short-term business model. Why not sell something else?