Reciprocal linking
While traditional link trading is beginning to require more effort to produce the same results as before, it?s not going to be disappearing anytime soon. Search engines have already been discounting reciprocal links when compared to one-way inbound links for quite some time, but they are now becoming more aggressive in attempting to reduce a web site owner?s ability to manipulate SERPs by simply trading links – even when they are from relevant sites.
Aside from the evolution of the search engines, we also have to contend with other site owners, some of whom are lacking in integrity and internet knowledge. Some feel the need to cheat their link partners out of the benefit that the link would have created by hiding it in a java script or an I-frame, removing any navigation to the page that the link appears on, adding the noindex,no follow tag, or even completely removing the link! While we can monitor our links with software, it is time consuming and uses resources (bandwidth, manpower, etc.) that could be better utilized elsewhere. The solution to this is to choose reputable and honest link partners related to your site in the first place.
Google?s patent became publicly available in March of this year (it was originally filed in 2003) and verified many of the widely held theories and even some of the less common theories. Many aspects of Google?s patent are related specifically to inbound links and their rate of development during the lifecycle of a website. For example, Google continually monitors the accumulation of inbound links for a particular site and compares that historical data to the site?s current accumulation to look for anomalies. If a site is found to have an increase or decrease beyond a certain threshold of their historical increase or decrease, the impact of their newer inbound links may be reduced. This is because breaking this threshold is often indicative of a site owner attempting to manipulate the search engine results. It?s important to note that this portion of Google?s algorithm also takes into account factors such as current topics of interest based on spikes in queries for a particular key phrase so as not to unfairly penalize legitimate sites that acquire a large number of links over a short period of time.
Several experiments that we have conducted have indicated (and now Google?s patent proves) that Google analyzes both the anchor text and the surrounding text to determine variance or lack thereof in the links pointing to a particular site. This enables them to discount the benefit that would be received from inbound links in cases where they have the same characteristics (i.e. same anchor text, same description, etc.) because they can be viewed as an attempt to manipulate the search engines since links that have developed naturally would not all be worded the same.
With that in mind, the most effective link building campaign both for immediate results and more importantly, long term results is one that generates a steadily increasing number of varying links. This ensures that the recipient site is not penalized due to a spike in inbound links, and that the longevity of the campaign is maintained because the site owner does not have to generate an unrealistic number of inbound links in the future to maintain the proper historical growth.
Google (and likely most other engines) can also utilize the IP of a site to partially determine the weight it will contribute when linked to another site. Oftentimes, sites with the same ?C? block in their IP will have a less significant impact even on other related sites as they are on the same server and therefore could potentially be a link farm rather than legitimate sites linking to other legitimate sites. Because of this it is not advantageous to host multiple sites for the purpose of interlinking them together. The minimal benefit that could be achieved does not outweigh the risk in being banned from the search engines.
One way linking
A more time and cost effective method of link building is to accumulate one way links, whether by purchasing them, by providing relevant content for other sites to post which contain a link back to your site, or just creating content that other site owners feel is worth linking to.
In purchasing links you need to be careful to choose relevant sites but also choose sites that offer the best chance for live traffic rather than focusing on just the SEO aspect of the inbound link. This will significantly increase your ROI. In purchasing relevant links it is also recommended that you avoid ROS or site wide links as they generally offer no benefit beyond what a single link from a site would provide but do have the potential to harm the recipient site.
Creating relevant content is beneficial to a site owner first of all because it creates a reason for visitors to stay at that particular site longer and thus increasing their likelihood of being converted into a customer. Secondly it provides the site owner with a means to generate additional exposure by posting the content to other related sites which will provide a link back to your site ? often with your choice of anchor text within the article. A tertiary benefit to developing relevant content is that other site owners finding the content useful will often link to it as a service to their visitors.
Outgoing RSS feeds
While many site owners are just beginning to utilize RSS feeds to offer fresh content on their sites, a handful of others are using RSS to generate additional exposure for their sites. RSS (really simple syndication) uses an XML file that contains info on the title, content, URL, and date which is parsed to an aggregator or web page.
Once the content is developed, an XML file is uploaded and the feed is syndicated, other site owners search for relevant RSS feeds, and then utilize a parser such as Magpie RSS (a server side php based parser) to display the feed on their site. The benefit to this scenario as a site owner is that you will acquire links with your choice of anchor text which can be changed as often as you like and these links will most often be displayed on extremely relevant sites and many times on the index page of these sites.
