Google and link fixing

[frobn]

I was examining several real estate sites that are doing well in Google for SEO ideas and found a SEO technique to accumulate links. This particular method used 'junk' or meaningless web pages with ads to target their main sites. Some of the sites had articles and other fluff but they were obviously spam. I wouldn't call this white hat or black hat but rather gray hat. We know that Google is continually adjusting their alogs to eliminate this type of link "fixing" so deception doesn't make much sense in the long term, but it did spark an idea that I believe will play well with Google and the other Search Engines. There has been a lot of action over blogs and we know that Google treats blogs as content so why not use blogs to target sites with links. A link embedded in blog content should, theoretically, be worth more than a link buried deep on a 'link' page.

If anyone has a blog and would like to pursue improved ways for linking contact me via PM or email.

[frobn]

Up until now most of my backlinks were from forums such as this one. I just checked through my backlinks, 95% of the the forum links are gone with none from this forum. Most of the backlinks now are from my own site.

[Real Estate Forum]

They will come back as soon as G recognizes the new url (realestateforum.com) in full :)

[frobn]

They will come back as soon as G recognizes the new url (realestateforum.com) in full :)

I thought that might be the case with this forum, but I what I was referring to is that most of the forum links from the several forums I post in are now gone. The most I have found on any of my sites are two from the same forum. I had read that Google was eliminating backlinks from the same site. While the forum links have disappeared multiple links from my own sites and from other sites are still active.

BTW, if anyone one thinks you need a large number of links for PR be assured its only a myth. I have two sites at PR5 both with less than 30 backlinks in Google and a site with over 130 backlinks with only PR4.

[justicewhite]

I thought that might be the case with this forum, but I what I was referring to is that most of the forum links from the several forums I post in are now gone. The most I have found on any of my sites are two from the same forum. I had read that Google was eliminating backlinks from the same site. While the forum links have disappeared multiple links from my own sites and from other sites are still active.

BTW, if anyone one thinks you need a large number of links for PR be assured its only a myth. I have two sites at PR5 both with less than 30 backlinks in Google and a site with over 130 backlinks with only PR4.
Your PR also depends on the quality of your BLs as well as the quantity. In other words, as you rightly stated, you don't necessarily need 100s of BLs for a PR5 page.

[frobn]

Your PR also depends on the quality of your BLs as well as the quantity. In other words, as you rightly stated, you don't necessarily need 100s of BLs for a PR5 page.

What would the optimal number of quality links be? It would have to vary with geo location and key word competivenes but I don't belive PR is dependent at all on links, quality or otherwise. From my, albeit, limited experience, it appears to me to be dependent on html markup, content, formatting and probably a large number of content pages.

[bmegowan]

Will Google rank a template site if it also has a lot of quality original content? I've been told that regardless of the amount of my quality content, Google still recognizes my site as a template site and will not rank me.

[Chief Tutor]

Any website is rankable in the search engines, however when dealing with a templated website, the process is much harder. We have a member in the forum who has an advanced access website and is ranked very well in the Phoenix real estate market. You may want to PM him and see what he suggests. His name on this forum is Phoenix Realtor and his website is www.phoenixhomes.com (http://www.phoenixhomes.com)

Good Luck and glad to see you participating in the forum.

[frobn]

Will Google rank a template site if it also has a lot of quality original content? I've been told that regardless of the amount of my quality content, Google still recognizes my site as a template site and will not rank me.A similar question was just asked on another forum, so if you visit the other forum you will see a similar answer.

There is no evidence that a correctly designed template will hurt your chances in the search engine I would argue and I do that a well designed template is search engine friendly. I know many commercial templates like "monster template" are not and they are downright search engine hostile, not because of being a template but because of thier poor design, html bloat and image content.

I have extensive experience with a template based system -- open realty . Not only is open realty template based but over 90% of version 2 web sites use the same identical template structure. The design is different from site to site because the css is different but I don't think Google, MSN or Yahoo go into the CSS file to find the differences all they see for navigation is <div class="navlist"> or for content<div class="content">. Now let me go a step further, I was one of the first to introduce css/xthml structure in open realty over 2 years ago. I can not give an accurate figure but there must be a thousand to several thousand open realty web sites worldwide. If templates caused a search emgine problem for open-realty I think it would have shown up in many of these sites and we know about it by now.

Here is a page on the anatomy of a template (http://cssdesignmagic.com/template-anatomy.htm) which is similar to the open realty.