Search Engine Optimization

State of Links Buying and some thoughts.

In 2007 Google declared war on paid links. It sent crapstorms through SEO world, igniting blogs in psychotic chaos.

Couple of month later fearmongering continues. Aaron of SEO Book is getting new proposals of some new link building techniques:

The fact that people are trying so many different strategies to get free links show how powerful Google’s fearmongering campaign against paid links is, and just how detached from reality the idea of link = vote is in a marketplace where everyone either knows that link = vote OR is gamed by someone who knows that link = vote.”

The meaning of a link has changed since Google came into being. Links no longer mean navigation, links are Google currency and navigation is Google. Links brought Google dominance and link buying pokes it the hive. Ban on buying links is just a measure, not hard feeling to SEOs. Back in early days(so I heard) Altavista and Excite banned sites even hinting SEO. It hurt their bottom line.

Google is protecting the empire, building higher walls and getting more troops in the fortress. It arms for future battles, sharpens the swords and trains the cavalry. Battles are being fought at this moment and nuances that threaten to dig under the fundament must be terminated. Link buying is one of them. Just like link farms, link buying aims to manipulate.

Paid link are not votes, but rather sponsored Google juice and are there to make money. Google wants it out and I get Google.

Umm, what’s next, people getting laid for a couple of links?

A lovely comment by Bobby on SEO Book.

Aaron, as long as you do not get free Sex offers for a link, you will be alright..:)

Another one.

Links become THE key. Though content is believed to be king site can get tops without it.

Google is definitely working right at this hour on new generation of algorithms. Danny called them search 4.0. As from comments:

“…..the answer to the question about the replacement for link analysis is most likely “social search”, a mixture of user behavior data (which I think Aaron started writing about first) along with personalization and based on demographics, user history and the “social graph”.

Link analysis was ultimately the first form of social search.”

How soon and how real? Danny hangs out with Eric and Larry so he must “have clue” on the topic.

Link will not go away, but links will become less important, just like on page content. On page SEO was once THE key. Links + on page SEO now do the trick. In the near future equation will have one more number: link+on page+behavior data. In another post Aaron mentioned:

“After they bid low and lost the C block of wireless spectrum Google has started talking to the media about using unlicensed whitespace. From the WSJ:

The other (big) piece of this, is that if Google works this deal, they will likely end up with a lot more usage data – and a strong starting point to triangulate other usage data against. With links becoming a commodity, how hard would it be for Google to find a better signal? In 5 years will they still rely on links and have 10,000 people rating content? What if they could somehow get everyone to start rating content (through usage data), and place more trust on natural looking Google user accounts with years of a natural usage profile. If they slowly mixed it into the relevancy algorithms over time who would even know they did it?”

Gotta love Aarons insight. If he proves to be right? Assuming that Google fails at getting into ISP business, they will still have a ton of usage data and will figure a way on getting more.

Better develop “extremely useful” sites to stay afloat.

PS

No hard feelings for paid links.

Spent 1.5 hours writing a post and then BLANK. The whole block went out of power and I was using Dreamweaver to write.

Tough Lesson. Loosing momentum is the worst thing. ALWAYS use Word. It got a nice safe recovery feature so your efforts wont go to waste.