|
| |
|
Webmaster
& SEO News and Articles
Articles about Web Design, Web Editing, Web Promotion, Authoring and Search Engine
Optimisiation, and How to Make Money with Affiliate Programs and
Affiliate Networks... |
|
Are Reciprocal Links
Dead?
Reciprocal Links and the Google Jagger Update.
|
|
|
by Will Moore
If
the current indications are correct, we may be looking at the end of
reciprocal linking as a method of building rank and link popularity, at
least as far as Google is concerned.
The latest 'Google Dance', nicknamed 'Jagger', has caused major concern
by those suffering loss of position on the top ranks of the search
engine's listings. So we decided to take a close look at what is happening
and see what we could learn.
We have a few small websites that have a limited number of links. These
sites are used mostly for research and testing of our primary business in
Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites, we were able to quickly get an
idea of what is happening in Google's Jagger Update, which is still in
progress at the time of this writing.
|
|
|
By
using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the history of visits by
the bots and the links to these small sites. We had to go back as far as January
in order to build a picture of Google's actions. Our software also allows us to
look at all links from the SEs, not just those shown by using the browser's
'link:' command. Google only reports some of the links to your site, not all.
Here is what we have seen:
Like many other homepages and sites, we noticed a sharp drop in
page rank or ranking in our test sites around the first of July. They lost about 40% of their
previous link popularity and moved down sharply in pagerank. Also, duplicate links
on a single site disappeared. We now only showed one link from each linking
site. And reciprocal linking ( = linking from one site to another
and back, also called backlink or link exchange) seems not to be dead, but much less important than before the change
of the search engine algorithm or ranking algorithm.
As the Google Jagger Update started, unlike many others we have
seen complain about Google's actions and timing, our sites stayed rather stable.
Evidently they had already suffered their major losses. However, there was a
small increase in the number of links. This caught our attention. We had
expected that, like many others, we would experience further disruptions to our
link structure.
|
 Read
the amazing true
story of how one woman, with no previous
business experience, earns 400,000+ per year
... selling other people's stuff online!
In her down-to-earth, sincere and often humorous style, Rosalind Gardner guides you through the entire process of building an affiliate marketing business on the 'Net. In 236 pages, and more than 68,000 words, you'll learn how to pick the best programs, negotiate a commission raise and save time, money and effort on everything from affiliate software to web hosting. To
learn exactly
how she does it
|
|
But when we examined these links, we were surprised to see that not one of them
had been listed with Google a few weeks earlier. Not one. Our research showed
that these links had been live in Google's archive, but none had shown up
publicly before now. It appeared that there was some sort of 'aging' process
taking place, but this may just be coincidental. It is more likely that older
links disappeared because the host site was lost in the shuffle and our links no
longer appeared 'relevant'.
The other thing we noticed was that not one of
these new links was listed on our reciprocal links pages. In other words, all
reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google is
down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This
does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying
popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it
that way.
JoeBucks
- Herbal Affiliate Program
- Highest Industry Payouts!
This is really a great affiliate program for webmasters! Joe Bucks
allows you to market and promote the worlds leading health products on
the net. They offer the highest paying affiliate program (50% sale + 50%
lifetime commission) and the best tracking software available anywhere!
This is really unique: You can get your own branded store, 1 single
code, textlinks and banners for all your domains, Highest industry
affiliate payout of 50% - up to 125$ per sale. Lifetime re-order
commission for customers refered through you. Everytime they re-order
you receive full 50% each as well. Plus 5% 2-tier commissions.
Regular payout twice a month. ... Look no further. Join
now...! |
If your web sites have suffered from the latest
'dance', you may want to take a look at the type and source of your links. If
they are mostly from link exchanges, you are probably looking at the reason for
your move down the list on the search engines.
During the second week of the Jagger Update, a
few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that
these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from
articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums
where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of
content, not linking.
|
 |
Microsoft
Frontpage
The newest version of
the Frontpage Webeditor now available at reduced price with amazon.com.
Grab your own copy
now!
Including professional coding tools, professional web
design, new layouts...
Click
here to Order |
|
 |
Norton
Internet Security
Protect yourself with the new version of the leading Internet
Security Package.
Including: Norton AntiVirus,
Personal Firewall, AntiSpam, and Parental Control...
Click
here to Order |
|
|
|
|
The other group that came back up was one-way
inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had
strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained
keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.
This research has us now re-evaluating our
linking strategy. We urge others to do the same.
We are now concentrating only on building strong
one-way inbound links. We are focusing on publicity, articles, directories, and
other direct methods of building our image and consumer awareness.
In addition, we are also looking for associated
but non competing firms like web developers, Search Engine Marketers, SEOs, web
site owners and designers to partner with us to build direct business
relationships and the resulting inbound links. This strategy may not be the
fastest method of building links, but we feel it is rock solid and within the
spirit of good business practices. The best thing is that it is search engine
independent.
|
|
|
|
We will no longer worry about chasing (or beating)
the search engines and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool's game we
are sure to lose.
Instead, we will focus on building rock solid
links and popularity with the group that counts: our customers. By focusing on
beating our competition and providing a top quality product, plenty of
educational information and relevant content, we are sure to move up and stay at
the top of the search engine rankings.
It's something to think about.
***
Want to get rid of your present job? Want to
Work from Home?
Make yourself independent and start building your own Internet Income now!
Hereīs how: http://dtsinter.webvista2.hop.clickbank.net
|
About the author:
Will Moore is a web analytics specialist with over 20 years of hardware,
software and web development experience. He has sat on the ANSII and ISO
standards committees, been a speaker at major technical conferences in the US,
Europe, China and Singapore and has written numerous articles on various
technical subjects. Visit Web Stats Gold
at for more articles and information on web analytics.
Article found at http://www.goarticles.com |
http://www.homepage-building.com
See List of
all Articles and Categories
Note for Webmasters and Publishers: This article
can be freely copied and published without prior permission, however itīs text,
content, name of author, "about the author" box and all hyperlinks
included must be active and visible and are not allowed to be changed! Otherwise
you are in danger of violating the authorīs copyright and can be held legaly
liable for copyright violation. Published with permission.
|
 Recommended
SEO Website Analysis, Optimisation and Submission Software Bundle:
Web CEO, an excellent tool for search engine optimization. Web
CEO is the leading SEO software package. What you will
love about this program, it will give you everything you need to run and
promote your site. It will boost your search engine rankings, bring more
visitors to your site, contains error analysation tools and will help to
make more money and increase the revenue generated from your site.
Because this great SEO software package is more than worth the money, we
recommend you to buy "Web CEO" full edition or download
the Free Edition from their Web site. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
