I’m back after a little business and a dash of pleasure north of the border. Special thanks to J.D. and Tony for a good time had by all.
In my absence, looks like a little hell has broken loose via a recent blog post on Recruiting.com entitled “Link Swap.” It even inspired John Sumser to chime in saying, “In short, a group of bloggers think that by banding together, they can make the search engines favor the blogs in their collective. It’s a remarkable idea that will probably work. Sadly, it brings an end to one of the foundational ideas of blogging….that an isolated blogger can create an audience without resorting to the same book of tricks always used to create an audience.”
J.D. replied, but I feel obliged to comment:
A massive link swap between a bunch of recruiting blogs is not a “remarkable idea that will probably work.” Sumser can relax and everyone else should get on with their lives. Search engines put the smackdown on such tactics since about, oh, 6 years ago. At best, it won’t help much at all. Reciprocal links are second-class real estate. At worst, it’ll look like a link farm and get everyone involved pinched.
Search engine optimization is sophisticated. It’s not a game for amateurs. Google is smarter than you (and me). If you don’t know what you’re doing, just chill out on these kinds of tactics that may do you more harm than good.
If you want to start ranking well in search engines, your time is better spent creating quality, remarkable content than it is playing verbal tennis and link swapping.
It’s good to be back.
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April 27th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
My understanding is that the search engines reward sites (and therefore blogs) that have a higher quantity and quality of links from other sites and to other sites but that the search engines also are smart enough to detect if a significant number of those links are reciprocal. If so, the search engines will infer that the primary reason for you having those links is to try to improve your search engine rankings, which is a big no-no.
So if Cheezhead links to CollegeRecruiter.com (which it does) and CollegeRecruiter.com links to Cheezhed (which it does), that’s a reciprocal link. But because the vast majority of Cheezhead’s links to other sites are not reciprocal, the search engines will not penalize Cheezhead for its link to CollegeRecruiter.com. Yet if a significant number of Cheezhead’s links to other sites were to sites that also linked back to Cheezhead, then the search engines would likely penalize Cheezhead for trying to spam the search engines. The penalty could range from a figurative slap on the wrist (Cheezhead’s pages would come up lower on the search engine results pages than they would have otherwise) to the death penalty (Cheezhead removed from the search engine results altogether).
The bottom line is that sites should do everything they can to create content, design their pages, and link with other sites in ways that are beneficial to their users. If your site is good for users, the search engines will reward it with higher rankings and you’ll therefore be rewarded with a higher quantity and quality of traffic.
Is that right?
April 28th, 2006 at 5:11 am
You’ve got the idea, but it’s a little bit more complicated. Google most likely will not penalize every recruiting blog that links to the other. (Non-related sites such as Viagra and online casinos would be different.) The question is how much benefit each reciprocal link delivers to the other.
So, in your example, let’s say I link to you today. Then a week later, you link to me. Google would not look at that as shady.
The Recruiting.com swap party is dangerous because if you get a bulk of blogs all linking in a short period of time, then you risk tripping a link farm spam filter, which you don’t want to do.
April 28th, 2006 at 7:26 am
See what what happens when you don’t post for a few days? all hell breaks loose.
April 28th, 2006 at 9:28 am
I believe when you say this Joel, but linkswapping was common just two years ago, and I’ve seen it make a big difference in the search engines. Maybe we need to be less blatant about it, but linking games work when they are done right.
My original idea may not work anymore, but there has to be ways for communities to build traffic in the world outside their online communities.
What would your suggestion be for bloggers who don’t have the money to pay for Search Engine Optimization?
April 29th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Link farms and automatic link solutions have been a no-no for a long time. Manual link-swapping was an effective strategy up until the next-to-the-last update at Google around 6 months ago. Now, not so much.
My free SEO advice to any site is to work hard creating link-worthy content.