Do you know that engaging in link exchange schemes can be detrimental to your site?
Google has set out a basic quality principle in its webmaster guidelines against participation of webmasters in link schemes designed to increase site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web should be avoided as your own ranking may be adversely affected by those links.
The following are cited by Google as link schemes and violations of their webmaster guidelines:
- links intended to manipulate PageRank
- links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
- buying or selling links that pass PageRank
While it’s true that links to your site partly affect your site’s ranking in Google, take note that it’s not just the quantity but also the quality and relevance of links that matter.
Google advises webmasters to create unique, relevant contents that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community to get other sites to create relevant links to yours. As to your part, before linking to anyone, ask yourself the question: “Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?”. If not, then probably, it won’t benefit your site, too.
Hmmm… what do you think?
First Commenter:
~ First Commenter Will Get Some Linky Love ~
Linking for the sake of linking isn’t helpful in terms of pagerank or getting visitors. I think Google favors links relevant to your niche, and penalizes what they view as link farms. I wish Google would be a little more specific about what a “bad neighborhood” is, because it seems that there are many reciprocal linking sites that swear that they are not link farms, but only Google makes the final call. As you said, interesting content or comments are much more likely to attract new readers. Guest posting on a related site is probably the best way to link, but it takes a lot of time and effort.
I haven’t considered guest posting as a way to create a link. That’s a good suggestion. 🙂
aww, i dont know if im doing it right, i guess im not, please tell me more about getting page rank he right way…
Hi Jen, I maybe “Gee” but only Mr. G knows the secret behind the page rankings. Hehehe. But I’ll try to post whatever tips I get from others. Happy weekend!
That’s why i don’t just link up. You need to check on the site/blog first if it isn’t a “Bad Link” or belongs to a “bad neighborhood”. Even when using commentluv and being a DoFollow, you need to be more vigilant who you’re giving link juice too.. 🙂
You’re right Eihdra. I guess, I’ll do that just to be on the safe side.
That’s why I try not to just add links to my sidebar, and sometimes when I do add a link for a contest, I take it down after awhile.
No matter what the prize is, I don’t usually join contests that require a lot of sidebar links. Not because of PR but because it messes up my page layout. Hehehe.
I agree with Vera, if you will make links with other sites, make a separate page from the homepage, any outbound links from the homepage affects the ranking of the your site, this is from what I read from other webmasters.
thanks for sharing that josie. i’ve created a page for my blogroll not because of that idea but because i want less clutters on my homepage.
Thanks for the very informative article gee. I heard from someone before if links exceed 1oo di daw pwedi hehe, well this cleared my mind. daming mga blogs ngayon yung iba hindi blogs na hindi natin masyado kilala basta basta nalng in a add links natin tapos nag dedemand na i add links nila. Atleast now alam ko kung ano lang dapat i add na link. Thanks for the post
maybe having more than a hundred links will fall under excessive linking. as much as possible daw kasi, whatever link you have on your site shoud give “added value” for your readers. that’s why it’s better if the links are related to your blog’s topic/subjects so that the readers who want to read more about the subjects you discussed on your blog, will find additional resources from your links.
another lesson learn na naman with your blog sis..
thanks for this! though hindi naman talaga ako basta nag-a-add links..
glad to hear that sis… 🙂