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Here's a hard truth for the hardliners to swallow: Outlawing something sometimes has worse consequences than the thing outlawed. Or, as the mob tried to tell Congress once: Prohibition's a bitch.
Pardon my French. I'm descended from Appalachian bootleggers.
Google's recent and notorious hard line stance against paid links is resulting in something quite predictable: The disaffected are leveraging every back-alley strategy they can think up. At least it doesn't involve exploding trailers, tripwires, or bullets.
Andy Beard was a bit of a pioneer on the link-laundering front; his (complicated) strategy for masking paid links got some attention last month. But simpler tactics are emerging, some inspired by Google itself.
One of them, which is the digital-world equivalent of impersonating a police officer is destined for a crackdown. Dave Naylor points to (and thus becomes a bit of a narc) what appear to be Google ads but are really nicely done spoofs.
Now that's pretty sneaky.
John Andrews reports another method, which Google would have hard time targeting since the idea came from them to begin with. Instead of buying links, barter for them, which makes for a weird 21st Century currency time warp.
It's so dreamy, oh fantasy free me/ So you can't see me, no not at all/In another dimension…
It's just a jump to the left and then a step to the right to find Google rewarding volunteer participants at the Google blog with juice-filled back links. Andrews gets a little dramatic in his analogies (so do I, for that matter) comparing Google to a casino and SEOs to card-counters before suggesting Google is actively looking to destroy the entire SEO industry.
There is a nugget of reason within this paragraph, though. See if you can find it. (Hint: It's in bold type.)
The take-away is this, folks: Google is controlling you not for some benevolent reason, but in order to control the currency of the web. It took X amount of effort in those forums, dedicated for free by those posters, to earn a direct backlink from Google’s very popular webmaster blog. What was that worth? Google got to decide. Google thinks it is fine to barter in links without the nofollow… it just wants the price for such links to remain pitifully low, managed by Google. Can you see it now? Do we really need to wait a few more years until it is perfectly clear beyond any doubt that Google has all of the money and there is no room for us to share?
… But it's the pelvic thru-ust/ that really drives you insane-yay-yay-yay-yane.
Bob Massa carries on that idea in this extraordinarily long, but perhaps more reasonable, post, which you can read for lots of good industry insight, or you can rely on Aaron Wall to dig out a solid, actionable nugget. In a smaller nutshell, people will barter links in exchange because:
Either it makes them money, saves them time, provides added value to their visitors or they believe it makes them look good or smart or benevolent to their visitors, their peers, their friends, their relatives, to the search engines, award sites or just about anyone that can make them a buck or stroke their ego.
Or, as it's still known by the revenuers in Washington: You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.
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Comments
well we learned something
well we learned something from this. first links matter a lot to search results and also you cant even sell no follow links which also kinda in way makes it show that no follow have some value
The 9 steps of the dragonfly (shapirit)
The point on this is that the math's are different so you will never get your website in the first 10th all over the web and that will give some balance to promote others, I built a 100% seo website and also W3C compliant and after four months from birth hit the 4th page competing with a more than a million other sites having the same tag string or keyword string and 1st on unique keywords both on google and Yahoo! (different keywords) and all this without exchanging links or affiliate or whatever kind of recip. links you can come out off, let say it outloud... I vote against any kind of link usage for promotion unless you want to add someone else on your site, as I did, in good will.
My formula :
1) Build a website for costumers not for search engines.
2) Try to give some addon for the visitor like articles with non-tech words.
3) Check for validation of your pages (individually) and the CSS at www.W3C.org and add the validity icon to your site.
4) Check for Meta Tag and such till you get 100% (green) at www.seocentro.com.
5) Check 100% at www.whois.sc + their SEO checker.
6) Use free "addurl" websites.
7) Write good articles and find a top PR articles website to publish your work.
8) Participate in forums and blogs and share your knowledge on your field.
9) Make (as I did) a funny video and a serious one about your business and publish it to the web.
You are all welcome to visit my site at www.shapirit.biz - I beg your pardon but my site is in Hebrew language so not all of you will understand it.
HOPE I HELPED, (this is another way to promote your site... by helping others with reliable or valuable info)
This box
Interesting info contained on site but this box popping up right in the middle of reading something is very annoying
Webmasters have a thick layer of dust on their links.
As Nathan posted - it is a bit sad.
I have been trying to set up some common ground exchange links for the better part of the past few months and no one is interested in reciprocals any more. Why the sudden change of heart in so many? Has big business taken that much of a choke hold?
Now you just have to find people to barter with...
It's been my experience within the industry I'm currently SEOing for that most webmasters have a thick layer of dust on their links. Even waving money in front of them won't get a response...
Affiliate sites are our answer
It's not all that difficult to find other sites to barter with. I operate Benchmark Reviews: Performance Hardware Tests and Overclocking Guides, and since there are literally hundreds of websites like my own, there are plenty of juice for the trading.
Back links Study
I serched more than 300 sites for back links, found that 89% of the links are from link farms.Is it legal?Big question on Google?
The good ole days
Remember the good ole days when owners of small websites would e-mail each other and trade links? Perhaps this is what needs to be done again. I tried to increase my rakings by creating a community with with nothing but links to business in my area - I got almost no response. The main response I got was from a local web developer that asked me to take down the site because they were trying to charge business for the same thing I put of for free. It's hard for a small startup with no money to buy links so lets trade! http://www.defoenet.com
My Three Cents
There is always a dilemma that webmasters face whether to be the good and morally honest or to join the less than morally honest and make the 3 or 4 cents G pays out 1000's of times over. One thing for sure if you are a small website you could not even begin to afford buying enough links where it would even be comparable to a drop of sweat off an amoeba in the internet bucket. As a embyonic newbie in this internet world I learn day by day that the dreams of internet success are almost like the odds of hitting the lottery (a chance out of millions).
We forge on (us little honest people by continuing to input good content into our pages and sites to hope that one day it will provide a smiling roi. That investment being hard work to provide great stuff and not taking out a loan to buy 10000 links.
I have a couple of sites that hang on by the internet strings and sometimes even though I provide good content they are run over by the massive link buyers and don't make profit like the group clicker sites which makes it laughable sometimes.
This observation inspired me to make a comedy site thecomedynet.com with day to day added great content . I figured If my website is going to laughable by roi it might as well be laughable by content. One day I guess great content will again rise to the top. :)
My 3 cents
Well put!
A Sketch In Time | Capture time with A Sketch In Time
My 5 cents
The more I get into the SEO and webmaster thing, the more confused, discussed and appalled I get. Why is it that the kinds of genius that is at play when it comes to SEO is not shared by the search engine providers themselves? Proper planning and forethought could have minimized a lot of our woes today with regard to getting decent rankings without having to pay, barter or cheat just to get the rankings that each site should disserve. What I believe to be a travesty is that backlinks have greater importance than site content. I know that certain search engine providers developed this method of ranking because the other criteria that they used in the past was bested by that genius at play that I mentioned earlier. I know the only prudent way to judge and rank a website is for someone (open directory) to physically review your site using accepted standards and criteria but it would be an undertaking of biblical proportions to do so metaphorically speaking that is. Even saying that, corruption can and will find a way to infiltrate this method too but what to do about it? Pure greed in it’s most natural form is the cause of most if not all of this mess. My website was built to make it so my wife could live her dream while us knowing that getting rich was far from realistic. For us to compete with others in our field is for us to spend immense amounts of money to do so and/or playing by somebody else’s rules whether those rules make any sense in the first place or not. A website’s backlinks, pay per click, paid links etc, do not qualify your site as it pertains to search engine results. I have surfed many websites, using many various search engine providers that were ranked in the top 10 just to find a lack of relevance with regard to my search, hard to navigate pages, and mass confusion. In my opinion, the only way that they achieved these rankings were so called quality backlinks, SEO trickery, and/or pay related emphasis hence they paid dearly to play. I have been playing the game up to this point (no pay stuff BTW) but there is a point at which I will no longer accept the excuses given by the search engine providers and/or the professional SEO community because they have the biggest stake in online affairs mostly because that is how they make their ever growing profits. You don’t become a publicly traded company without taking advantage of the disadvantaged majority and manipulating the rules to suit themselves instead of their advertised purpose that they so emphatically claim. I may not have the answers to this mess but there are those out there that may have especially if they were able to put their heads together.
Search engine reality
I too have spent a great deal of time trying to add great content to my website. It is very frustrating to see inferior sites rank for my keywords in the top ten, when they are providing little or no value to the consumer. I rank well on Yahoo and MSN, it is Google that seems to be the one that can't seem to differentiate between sites. If Google's main algorithym is based on back links-then one should put their focus on linking and less on content. The consumer loses the optimal experience due to the weighting of back links.
A hard stance on paid links is correct
I cant believe how many people are against Google taking a hard stance on paid links. Buying links is the worst kind of spam. It creates a web where the search engines find websites that have got the most money not those that have the best content.
I agree with you that Google rewarding contributors with links is bad but do you really think that people have enough non monetary currency to beable to manipulate the search engines like paid links have done and still do.
Straightalk your ad clicking campaign is theft. People pay for those clicks you make your not taking from the big G you are stealing from small to large websites trying to make a living.
Link buying link exchnage call it what you like..
I know google is a formidable force on the internet, I think its time the know they cannot control stuff that has been going on on the internet even before the came into existence.
Like the article indicated, if you ban something, you just opening doors for another way, perhaps a worst way for that thing to continue.
Unsure
As a user of google and other search engines I have no problem with them using links(or not) to guage popularity of web sites. But I do have a problem with the host of online directories that charge for an entry (on the premise that they are generating trfic via a paid link) and then do their best to knock you off the 1st page of a search engine using the key works you supplied them with!
If these directory entries are to be included in the paid link ban then I am all for it.
I think it's a cat n mouse chase
I think the people which want to keep selling & buying links will continue to do so, but at the risk of being blocked by search engines.
If you look at the other side of the coin, site's which do stuff in ways which comply with search engines, may get better traffic from them and with some expertise can turn that traffic into profits.
Now this is Straightalk!
I'm about to start a Mad campaign, just having people click on anybodies banner ads.
Ok whats the point! Think of this, If all the Prisoners 'only in the US terretories' take each of their cases to trail, for a whole month (maybe sooner) the system {court houses, prisons, police officers we get the point} "Will not be able to meet the demands"!
Prisoners will be cut free, because Our system will colapse! frightening right.
"This is my Opinion :,0
"It's simple instead of having surfers clicking websites." I have a web community {surfers}. We click each others Yahoo, Google, Bid vertizer, Adjungle, and this just keep going on... and honestly I've been at this for few years now at first I made $26.72 my last deposit was $2103.19 and my community has only few hundreds. I know sounds like I've done something real wrong..
STRAIGHTALK
"I know sounds like....."
Yes, it sounds exactly like you are advocating "click fraud", which may not be illegal but from an advertiser's point of view is "real wrong" indeed. Meanwhile, whatever sum you and your community are sharing will be a pittance compared to the profits you are contributing to Google, Yahoo, et al. further strengthening their ability to dominate/dictate the market which is kind of what the article was actually about.
Well, good on you for finding a way to "screw the system" - sounds like a "nice little earner" - but excuse me if I don't join you.
(P.S. If you see any banner ads for "Bjewelled Silver Jewellery " on your sites I would be extremely grateful if you did NOT click on them, thank you!)
Link buying replaced with bartering
links and barter
I think that cracking down on paid links was a good idea! It had become a means of manipulating search results. Having said that, the crackdown has had a negative effect on the honest exchange of links as well. Some folks are afraid to link at all now, for fear that it will be percieved as paid linking.
Gloucester Double Glazing
Link buying has made an effect on seo of websites. The web is changing all the time and eventually relevancy will be measured by the stats on users using a site and traffic, if you are in lots of directories and write quality aricles you will get automatic back links from sites being built just for adsense. Many internet marketers don't write content so they just copy articles and press releases.
This is absolutely correct!
Couldn't of said it any better!
Link buying replaced with bartering
Link bartering is old school. All the effective search marketers have been bartering links for years. Of course, when link buying was at it's hieght, who would want to trade something (that takes time and energy) when they can value the effort with money.
Sooner or later the Link methodology is going to come under question, then ALL links will be suspect.
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