If
the ongoing indications are correct we may be looking at the limit of
reciprocal linking as a form of building rank and link popularity, at
least as far as Google is implicated.
The
current 'Google Dance', nicknamed 'Jagger', has caused major interest by
those suffering deprivation of position on the head ranks of the search
engine's listings. So we decided to take a close peep at what is
happening and see what we could grasp.
We
have a few little websites that have a circumscribed figure of links.
These sites are used for the most part for analysis and testing of our
dominant activity in Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites, we were
able to hastily acquire an notion of what is happening in Google's
Jagger Update, which is still in course at the date of this scribble.
By
using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the annals of
visits by the bots and the links to these mini sites. We had to go back
as far as January in order to build a drawing of Google's actions. Our
software also allows us to look at all links from the SEs, not just
those shown by using the browser's 'link:' command. G only reports some
of the links to your location, not all.
Here
is what we have seen:
Like
abundant other sites, we realized a jagged drop in rank in our test
sites around the first of July. They lost about 40% of their earlier
link popularity and moved down sharply in rank. Also, duplicate links on
a distinct site disappeared. We at the moment only showed one link from
each linking site.
As
Jagger started, unlike many others we have seen complain about G's
actions and timing, our sites stayed fairly constant. Evidently they had
by now suffered their major losses. However, there was a small advance
in the count of links. This caught our consideration. We had expected
that, like many others, we would experience additional disruptions to
our link arrangement.
But
when we examined these links, we were amazed to see that not one of them
had been listed with Google a few weeks earlier. Not one. Our research
showed that these links had been live in G's archive, but none had shown
up publicly before now. It appeared that there was some breed of 'aging'
course taking place, but this may just be accidental. It is more
expected that older links disappeared since the host site was lost in
the shuffle and our links no longer appeared 'relevant'.
The
other item we realized was that not one of these fresh links was listed
on our reciprocal links pages. In other words, all reciprocal links had
vanished. We believe that this is because G is down-grading or
eliminating reciprocal links as a degree of popularity. This does
constitute sense, indeed. Reciprocal links are a form of falsifying
popularity. Sort of a low-cost form of buying a link, if you want to
think of it that way.
If
your web sites have suffered from the current 'dance', you may want to
take a look at the type and source of your links. If they are above all
from link exchanges, you are doubtless looking at the cause for your
move down the list on the search engines.
During
the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did
come back up. However, we also realized that these were from places
where we had extremely relevant content. They came from articles where
we discussed our domain of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums
where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back
because of content, not linking.
The
other class that came back up was one-way inbound text links,
disregarding of the originating web site. These links also had strong
relevance to our web analytics job. In other words, they contained
keywords and/or phrases affiliated to our site and its business.
This
research has us now re-evaluating our linking strategy. We appeal to
others to do the aforesaid.
We
are now concentrating only on building strong one-way inbound links. We
are focusing on advertising, articles, directories, and other direct
methods of building our appearance and consumer awareness.
In
addition, we are also looking for associated but non competing firms
like web developers, Search Engine Marketers, SEOs, web site owners and
designers to associate with us to build direct business relationships
and the resulting inbound links. This strategy may not be the fastest
method of building links, but we feel it is rock solid and within the
soul of positive business practices. The best part is that it is search
engine liberated.
We
will no longer agonize about chasing (or smacking) the search engines
and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool's game we are quite
certain to lose.
Instead,
we will centre on building rock solid links and popularity with the
crowd that counts: our customers. By focusing on beating our competition
and providing a top quality creation, plenty of educational info and
relevant content, we are certain to move up and continue at the top of
the search engine rankings.
It's
something to think about.
About
the Author: William Moore is a web analytics specialist with over 20
years of hardware, software and web development experience. He has sat
on the ANSII and ISO standards committees, been a speaker at major
technical conferences in the US, Europe, China and Singapore and has
written numerous articles on various technical subjects. Visit Web Stats
Gold at <http://www.webstatsgold.com/> for more articles and
information.
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