Google Linking Strategies

[HHI Golf Guy]

Everyone knows that both links and anchor text play an important role in improving your Google search engine rankings. The trouble is, the spammers know this too. For a year or so I have been predicting that in order to combat link bombing Google will need to make major changes in the way that it calculates the value of links. It looks like that day is just around the corner.

Last year at SES Matt Cutts (from Google) showed how easy it was to identify link pages, reciprocal links, paid links, and three way links (it was scary how quick he could identify these things). This year the Big Daddy update rolls out and among other things changes Google's crawling and indexing of pages.

Read Matt's blog post on Google's indexing timeline (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/indexing-timeline/) along with his comments about trust for both inlinks and outlinks. When you put this altogether it certainly looks like Google will stop indexing and crawling many pages with low trust. In other words, it looks like many, many links pages will be dropped from the Google index. And if those link pages are no linger in the index, guess what? The links on that page have ZERO VALUE.

If you want to learn more on this topic including relevance, trust, site structure, and strategies for future real estate link building (http://thekosloffgroup.com/blog/?p=13) on my real estate SEO blog (http:/blog.thekosloffgroup.com).

Google link strategy is changing. You have been warned.

[HHI Golf Guy]

In Matt's blog he talks about the trust level of inlinks and outlinks, so I will remind everyone once again to physically verify their links every 30-60 days.

Last night I was checking some of link partners and it seems that one real estate site now redirects to a naught adult site. OOPS!

[Jade456]

Ouch. I was checking mine and found that a site now was loaded with trojan installers.....my avg went nuts. People....you just gotta love'm. :mad:

[bmegowan]

Advanced Access just sent out a marketing email that says that essentially, traditional link exchanging is now worthless. They offer two suggestions:

1) Create content on the State Realtor link pages relating to the State. My problem with this is how to create "original" content about a State. The only way I see to do this is to copy information about a State from another site, and that could lead to penalties for copying content.

2) They seem to infer that it would be beneficial to simply drop your State links pages. This seems to be extremely unfair to those sites that are still linking to you, but since Google has dropped all of my links pages from their lndex, maybe this doesn't matter anyway,.

Can someone help me as to whether it just makes sense now to drop all of my third party realtor reciprocal links pages. Will Google penalize you if you have a bunch of in bound links with no outbound reciprocal links?

I have a large amount of original content pages that had been previously indexed by Google, but now only have 3 pages indexed, so it is apparent that Google has decided that I have excessive reciprocal link exchanges. My Google results for my key words initially dropped , but now is not too bad, with some results listed first.

I hate to wipe out all of my reciprocal links that I have worked so hard to build over the last year. All of my links go to reputable real estate sites, so I don't have a problem with linking to irrelevant sites. I have never linked to sites that don't have relevance to real estate.

What do you think?

[HHI Golf Guy]

Can someone help me as to whether it just makes sense now to drop all of my third party realtor reciprocal links pages. Will Google penalize you if you have a bunch of in bound links with no outbound reciprocal links?


Do not make any wholesale changes to your site just yet. And remember that Yahoo and MSN still like the traditional links pages, and both of those SE's still drive web traffic if you have great rankings. Putting all of your eggs in the Google basket is not a wise thing to do.

Being penalized by Google is a very rare occurrence. There is a big difference between being penalized and having Google ignore certain pages. If none of your pages are in the Google index then you have been penalized. If some are in the Google index then you have not been penalized.

In SEO it's generally not a matter of being penalized, it's a matter of whether or not your content and links are beneficial or useless.

As far as what Google is doing now I would not jump to any final conclusions. The Big Daddy infrastructure change is still continuing, and it's still too early to draw any conclusions. How do I know this? Depsite the fact that millions of pages have recently been dumped out of the Google index I have NOT seen any major changes in the top 10-15 search engine rankings in various markets. That leads me to believe that even though these pages do not show in the index, they are still being used in ranking calculations.

I do see discrepencies in search results across the datacenters, however most of the differences in results are for SERP's outside of the top 20 results for any given phrase.

However, I do expect that to change in the near future (inside of 6 months). Google does need to find a way to combat link spam, but they also need to make sure that their is still some integrity in their results.

The problem with reciprocal links is that the majority of sites that most webmaster exchange links with are of very, very poor quality. Over the past few years most webmaster have gone for quantity over quality, and now their sites are suffering. I know that I get more pop out of 500 quality links than most people do with their 3,000 links - even if these site owners have exchanged with only real estate sites.

What it is going to take to rank well on Google is a lot of hard work, and most site owners - and SEO's - are not willing to put in the time and effort. That's OK by me - it means that I can raise my prices even more :)

For example, you mentioned about creating content for individual state pages and fear of duplicate content penalties. Why would you plagiarize content? Why not read information from a number of sources and then write your own material based upon what you read? Sure, it's a lot of work. But you get out of it what you put into it.

So, here are the key items to remember:

1. There is a big difference between a site penalty and doing something that does not help your search engine rankings.

2. The BIg Daddy infrastructure change still appears to be ongoing. Don't jump to too many conclusions just yet.

3. Google will continue to fight link bombing and link spam.

4. There is no easy way to get to the top and stay at the top of the SERP's for competitive keywords.

[bmegowan]

Can you give me any help in understanding why Yahoo simply does not rank me for any of my key word searchs even though I get good rankings from MSN and Google.
For instance, for the key word search "Palos Verdes condos", I rank #1 in Google and on the first page of MSN, but no where to be found in Yahoo. For the key words "Palos Verdes real estate", I am on the 2nd page of Google results (I used to be at the top of page 1 in Google before the "Big Daddy" update), and #1 on MSN, but again I can not be found on Yahoo. I thought it might be because I had'nt paid my $299 to get added to the Yahoo Directory, even though I had submitted my site for free inclusion about a year ago. Interestingly, right after I was added to the directory, I was on the first page of results for Yahoo, but within a few days, I was again no where to be found.

My website has many times the amount of original content than any of my competitors, and has far more useful information for residential buyers and sellers.

Any thoughts would be helpful
Bruce Megowan
http://www.maureenmegowan.com

[HHI Golf Guy]

Can you give me any help in understanding why Yahoo simply does not rank me for any of my key word searchs even though I get good rankings from MSN and Google.

I don't mean to rude or offensive, but I no longer publicly discuss details about individual sites. Since one of the services that I offer is SEO, it is counter productive for me to give away my strategies.

What I can tell you is that Yahoo is more of a "literal" search engine while Google is more about semantics and stemming. Since Yahoo only shows 94k competing pages for the phrase you mentioned, it should be relatively easy to get to the top for that KW.

[HHI Golf Guy]

I checked some datacenters today and see many pages that were previously removed from the G index have now come back. Many of these pages are coming back as supplemental results, and there are even some old pages (pages we had long ago removed from the sites) showing up in the results.

I don't thinks it's a true rollback, though. The cached pages are up to date.

The latest step in "Big Daddy" turned out to be a "Big Flop". It looks like G is going back to the drawing board on this one.

[kensmith]

Bruce your HP has to much infomation on it, narrow the focus. Also look at all of those banners on your HP, only link to ones that are giving you traffic and drop the rest. You have a ton of content, but it isn't organized. Fix this and you will see some improvemnet in your SERP's. Also post in the AA forums asking about what can be done, there are some very helpful people in there.

[Patrick Mc]

I have no experience with SEO, but I am very serious about optimizing my site. Does it still make sense to use real estate directories like RealEstateABC.com, Reals.com, E-Powered Professionals, RealEstate4.com, and others? If it does make sense, what directories are the best? It seems that there are so many, and most want a fee or recipricol link.

[Ralph]

I always thought paying a fee was buying a link. Not considered a good thing. We are still linking and will continue until we see a negative consequence. We have always been very careful to whom we link and check each one before linking. Keep an eye out for bad neighborhoods. As was mentioned before, we also scan all our links fairly regularly. I agree with you, it is not time to through the baby out with the bath water. Spend your time cleaning up your sight. Keep in mind what would be useful in meeting the needs of those coming to your site just as you do for your clients.

[Patrick Mc]

Ralph, thank you for your response. How do I check on directories or potential link partners?

[Ralph]

With link partners it is rather easy, but time consuming. If you want to link with them, open their site. Does it fit with what you do? For us, real_estate-to-real_estate or something very close. Read Matt’s blog. He will tell you what to look out for. Look at the site’s links pages. Who do they link to? Are they a bad neighborhood? Go over your links and make sure the site still exists and are still the business you linked to originally.

Generally the same thing applies to directories. We link only with directories that are specific to our business and not general directories. That is just a personnel preference.

Things are changing with G, and it makes us all nerves. Life goes on. I personally feel the changes G are making are purely economic. By dropping pages they have saved a lot of server time and therefore money. My theory is on a thread by HHI Golf Guy, in here someplace.

[kensmith]

A paid submission in a niche directory is fine, actually much better than a reciprical link. This is not what G is talking about when they refer to paying for links. Heck G suggests getting listed in Yahoo directory and that is a $300 fee. "Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites." A must read is Google Information for Webmasters (http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html).

If you are going to link to the directory than stay away from linking to any directory that sends leads or links to Homegain or other lead generators. Also pay attention as many directoies use scripts to hide your link from the search engine so there is no point in it. Next try and find directories that will give you traffic, there is a lot about this topic on my blog (see sig).

[HomeSurfer]

I have no experience with SEO, but I am very serious about optimizing my site. Does it still make sense to use real estate directories like RealEstateABC.com, Reals.com, E-Powered Professionals, RealEstate4.com, and others? If it does make sense, what directories are the best? It seems that there are so many, and most want a fee or recipricol link.

Some directories make sense, some don't. The web is a cooperative venture, by nature. As a site owner, you have to decide who you want to cooperate with and who you do not. That is sort of the difference between a "Link Ninja" and a "Link Monkey"....

[Realestateguy]

I agree golf guy

[fsbo-man]

links from normal sites - real estate sites....are better than links from directories, forums...etc.