I go to Yahoo Site Explorer, and check out their backlinks. There are tools to do this, but I don’t mind this free tool for checking backlinks – a good tip for those of you looking to do the same.
My goal is of course to see if they have any backlinks that I could replicate. Maybe a blog they commented on where I can comment too… a forum or a profile site where I can get a link as well.
This particular site owner, despite ranking above me for a significant period of time, didn’t have any links worth replicating. In fact, I couldn’t believe what I saw. This site, ranking above me for a mid level competition keyword, had about 170 backlinks, I estimate about 160 of which were… directory submissions. Yeah, I mean like website directory submissions. Remember that ancient form of back link building? And they weren’t even good directories… sites like (fictional) seobacklinksdirectory.net – directories obviously created for SEO function (ie “manipulation” of search engine rankings through backlinks).
THAT guy, with THOSE links, is ranking above me. I don’t mean to brag, but I have some pretty rad links. So much higher quality than these links it’s not even a discussion. But it gets more weird…
I do a search in Google for their links… good old “link:” search. Google shows ZERO links. I’ve heard it said for a long time (but not had it confirmed more recently) that Google only shows backlinks from sites above a certain age or PR… so that isn’t so surprising. What’s surprising is that despite that… the site is RANKING in Google.
So let me be clear:
Google doesn’t show any of their links, but they’re ranking the website. That means they’re obviously counting the links, even though they don’t appear in a link: search (important to note, for those of you who check your own backlinks regularly). They’re ranking this website when all they have is crappy, low quality website directory links!
[On a side note, it was interesting to see that this site owner had so many of these directory listings indexed... I suspect they fed their list of submitted URLS that contained their link, through some kind of pinger to send extra spider activity in their direction, causing all the directory listing URLs to actually be indexed and "count" as backlinks - more on that another time]
What does this tell us? Here’s what it tells me:
For all their talk… for all the fear mongering… for all the algorithm changes…Google still just isn’t THAT good at judging the “quality” of a link. And for the most part, they’re still running on the same old algorithm rules they always have done. They rave on and on about all these different kinds of links they think are bad, and they will devalue, and tell us to focus on “natural” link building methods but it’s all BS.
Not just Google either. People in forums everywhere run around scared about a “penalty” they might get for some link they built… Nope. Don’t think so.
Like take this video that one of our readers pointed out last week (thanks DK!) – It’s Matt Cutts talking about how he expects that in the future, links from Article Marketing will be devalued…
Oooooh, I’m so scared!
I’m sure that when Matt looks at a republished article, he can tell it’s from a “low quality” site… Pity the Google algorithm can’t. His own company’s algorithm can’t even tell that a link from a spam web directory with a domain as blatant as “seolinksforyou.info” is low quality! Yeah, I’m sure article marketing links will get devalued… If spam web directory links haven’t even been devalued yet, I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Bottom line: This doesn’t mean you should go out and build a bunch of crappy links. What it does mean is that, when trying to determine what works and what doesn’t when it comes to SEO, don’t listen to Google reps, don’t listen to (most) SEO teachers… listen to the algorithm! Watch, and experiment for yourself to see what works and what doesn’t.
Sumber
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar