Linking Psychosis is Treatable. Link Obsession & PageRank
Linking Psychosis is Treatable. Link Obsession
& PageRank
by Mike Banks Valentine © September 21, 2004
Search Engine Optimization has become inextricably
linked with linking schemes over the last couple
of years. During that time EVERYONE has noticed
the value of inbound links to their web sites.
This has lead many agressive webmasters to buy
up hundreds of keyword focused domain names, slap
up a few weak and repetitive content pages over
dozens of domain names in an attempt to build
their own little empire.
MINI-WEBS BECOME ROAD KILL IN TRAFFIC GENERATION
SCHEMES
This misguided strategy has littered the web
with garbage that nobody wants to clean up. Outdated
sites that no longer reflect the businesses that
created them, with broken images, broken links
and broken promises to visitors are everywhere.
Their owners don't maintain them, update them,
and sometimes don't even pay to host them as duplicated
domains are strewn across free hosting services
and are forgotten for years.
WHO IS TO BLAME FOR PAGERANK OBSESSION?
I'm reluctant to place the blame for this on
Google, but I'm afraid I must. Google made PageRank
the holy grail for the web and everyone simply
set out in search of the holy grail. For those
of you NOT obsessed with PageRank, it is only
a small part of a complex set of factors Google
uses to decide how important a site is based on
how many other sites link to it. Linking is important,
but many have become obsessed with it to the point
of linking insanity.
-----------------SPONSOR
AD-----------------
Do You Want Part of $3 trillion Spent Annually?
If You Do Not Currently Accept Credit Cards,
You Can Now Accept All Major Credit Cards in Your
Business with No App Fees, No Setup Fees, Free
Terminals and Free Software Solutions.
If You Currently Accept Credit Cards in Your
Business, We Will match or Beat Your Rates, and
If We Cannot We Will Send You $50 In Cash!*
http://www305.usafreemerchantsource.com/
Start Accepting All Major Credit Cards In 24 Hours!
-----------------END
SPONSOR AD-----------------
There are linking clubs, reciprocal linking
services, link building software, link popularity
software, and now even link brokerages that purchase
links on your behalf! Search engine optimization
firms have now begun to establish and position
domains solely for the purpose of selling links
in multiple categories. Those same SEO firms fill
their fully optimized pages with Google Adsense
Ads to earn income from that portion of visitors
not interested in pages of links.
ADSENSE PROVIDES ESCAPE FOR VISITORS TRAPPED
IN LINK FARMS
Those visitors click away on the Adsense ads
simply to find escape from the contentless link
farm that they've found while looking for information.
The SEO firm has made money both selling links
and now from Adsense clickthroughs, but provides
no useful information. This is litter generated
along the road to traffic generation and link
popularity!
Another phenomenon created by linking insanity
is the self- referential linking scheme, where
webmasters link ALL their sites from the footer
of EVERY page on EVERY site to gain link popularity
increases. If they've also created mini-webs of
repetitive content strewn across hundreds of domains,
they will inevitably link every domain to every
other domain they own, sometimes from the bottom
of every page on every single mini-web site -
even their main domains!
SELF REFERENTIAL LINKING OF MINI-WEBS IS LINKING
PSYCHOSIS
Often the owners of these linking fiefdoms will
refrain from using every page of their site to
link out to their many tiny domains, but will
create "index" or "sitemap" or "search" or "resources"
pages that essentially do the same linking, but
with keyword focused anchor text encompassing
every possible search phrase that might be used
to find their business site.
Those afflicted with linking psychosis have
entirely lost contact with reality in favor of
the fantasy of PageRankLand. The missing ingredient
for these lost souls is the "Authority" site concept.
They link from every page or domain TO every page
or domain randomly and this confers no prominence
of "Authority" to any one domain. They might actually
succeed in their attempt to rank well if they
weren't so unclear on this single concept.
A PARTIAL
TREATMENT FOR AFFLICTED LINK PSYCHOTICS
A single link from each domain - from ONE page
- back to the "Authority" site will increase link
popularity of the main site. Those mini-web sites
SHOULD link to each other, but only once and only
in one direction, in a daisy chain fashion to
confer authority to the main site and lead the
search engines to the next domain that does the
same thing - it in turn confers authority to the
main site and leads the spiders to the next mini-site,
etc.
The mini-web site psychosis isn't cured with
this treatment. They STILL offer no substantial,
original, useful content and the visitor gains
nothing except being lead to the main site where
they might find the product or service they set
out to find in the beginning. A total cure comes
only when real content of unique value is added
to those individual mini-sites. Then they become
self-actualized and they matter.
I've rescued many client mini-webs from linking
psychosis by filling mini domains with useful,
relevant and interestingly unique content. Those
sites become destinations themselves, gain rank
and status of their own and then link to the main
business site, conferring even more relevance
upon the single authority site they link to.
A treatment is available, the cure is substantial,
relevant, unique text content. There is hope for
linking psychosis.
------------------------------------------------------------
Check your own Link Popularity with a free Software
download: http://website101.com/download/link-popularity-software.html
Mike Valentine is SEO at http://OrangeCounty-re-helpcenter.org
Where he's treating their self-referential linking
psychosis
This article available on the web with additional
content at: http://website101.com/linking-psychosis.html
The Linking Matters Report
A free report to help website owners and publishers
plan effective linking strategies and boost link
popularity - includes guidelines, worksheets and
links to over 50 articles on linking.
Return
to SEOptimism articles index
|
Visit Our Sponsor! WebPosition Gold