Web Development and Promotion: September 2006

In today's world of sophisticated search engines there are good links and
bad links—what we call *natural* and *artificial* incoming link structures.
Building a network of good links, the natural ones, will reward your pages
with ranking favor. Yielding to the siren song of the bad links, the
artificial ones, can sentence your pages to languish in dungeons of
obscurity.

The important question you should be asking is: *How do you tell the
difference?* Glad you asked.

For starters, it's important to understand that most types of links don't
fall neatly into black and white boxes—neither do the penalties associated
with the so-called *bad links*. If you have a lot of good links, then you
can often be quite alright with having some bad ones. Clearly, one does not
need to go on a witch-hunt to eradicate every bad link that's pointing to
their website.

What's *much* more important is to avoid acquiring so many bad links that
your site's link structure begins to trip the *artificial link* triggers
that Google has in place to determine when a webpage or site warrants a
smack down in the rankings.

So, without further adieu, I present to you the triggers that Google
uses to
determine if your site's overall link structure looks like a *good guy*
or a
*bad guy* from the search engine point of view.

*And The Dirty Dozen are...*
[image: bullet] *1. Link Farms*

This one's obvious, right? Not really. Every SEO and their brother will
tell
you to avoid link farms—the problem is that most so-called experts can't
tell you exactly *what a link farm actually is* or how to recognize one
when
you see it.

Link farms are a strategy used by many less-than-reputable SEO firms to
quickly build links to their clients. Here are some telltale signs:

1.

Most link farms are set up to look like a directory. They may even be
similar in layout to reputable sites like the Yahoo Directory or DMOZ.
2.

Whenever a new client is signed up, the SEO firm that owns the link
farm adds the client's site to this "directory."
3.

The often-unsuspecting client is then asked to host a copy of the
directory on their site. The strategy is to link that client's website to
every other site in the directory.
4.

Because the client's website is also listed in the directory, every
other site that hosts a copy is also linking back to the client.
5.

Thus, the SEO firm has created a "link farm" network which links all
of their clients together. And, whenever a new client comes aboard, the SEO
firm folds them into the "directory" which instantly gives that new
client's
website hundreds of (dubious quality) links.

The problem is that Google finds this strategy about as acceptable as a
crack-house in an upscale neighborhood. And it's just about as obvious too.
Since all of the links typically point to each other's sites, every site
within a link farm is extremely easy for Google to find and therefore
penalize. Frankly, if your site is participating in a link farm then you
should be as nervous as a naked guy cooking bacon on an open stovetop!

So how do you identify and steer clear of link farms? Here are some red
flags that should alert you to danger...

-

If you sign up with a new SEO firm and they want your site to host a
directory, run!
-

Before getting what may seem like *an easy link*, be sure to check to
see if they're hosting anything on their site that looks like a directory.
One good way to easily see all the pages on a site is to do a site:
http://www.theirdomain.com search in Google.

For instance, if you wanted a list of all the Google pages listed on
Google.com, simply search for
site:http://www.google.com/

.
-

If you do spot a directory, copy the description from one of its
listings and search for that description (surrounded by quotes) in
Google.

For example, "Zane's Flowers offers a dazzling array of arrangements
and bouquets for your wedding or other
occasion".

If that same listing comes up on lots of other sites, then you're
probably looking at a link farm. Try searching for a few other listings. If
you find that many other sites are hosting a directory identical to this
one, then it's a good idea to avoid linking to that site since it's likely
to be on Google's link farm hit-list before long.

[image: bullet] *2. Mini-Net Links*

Back in the early days of Google, link building used to be so easy.
Computer
algorithms for determining link quality were still very crude and it wasn't
hard to fake your link popularity. It didn't really matter where your links
came from—just as long as you had *a lot* of them.

One of the fairly common strategies used to boost a site's incoming link
count was the *mini-net*. This method of faking link popularity hinged on
creating your own network of sites and then linking them back to your main
site. It actually worked well for surprisingly many years. In fact, you can
still see some of the more sophisticated mini-net models working quite well
even today.

However, Google's algorithms are vastly improved and most of the mini-net
sites have fallen hard as Google has learned to identify and penalize their
link networks. Here are some of the clues Google uses to identify mini-net
sites;

-

*Whois info* — It's easy for anyone to see who owns a site by viewing
that site's whois ("Who is") information. For example, you can use a
site like domaintools.com to see who
Google.comis registered to.
Registrant:
Google Inc. (DOM-258879)
Please contact: contact-admin@google.com
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043 US

As you may already know, Google is also a domain registrar. This means
they have unfettered access to the huge database of public (but not
private) *whois* records—enabling them to easily connect owner
information to the websites they index.

Although it's easy to hide this information from Google by registering
your whois info as private—domain registrars offer this option for just a
few dollars per domain—most people simply don't choose to do so. This
leaves
their ownership info available for the looking. There's also reason to
believe that Google views with suspicion domains that make use of this
privacy option. (After all, what have you got to hide, right?)
-

*Class C blocks* - This refers to part of your site's IP address. It's
not uncommon for webmasters to "stack" several domains on the same IP. It's
then easy to spot all the sites belonging to that webmaster by using
Reverse
IP lookup.

*Note:* Sometimes web hosts will also stack multiple customer's
domains on the same IP. In this case the sites may not all belong to the
same owner. However, it's common for websites that are sharing IPs to have
the same owner.

Even if the sites aren't all on the same IP, they may be on the same
server—in which case they share just part of the IP address known as the C
block. This is still enough for search engines to determine that one person
owns all the sites.

In order to disconnect the ownership of sites, the IP Address of each
site should be located on *different* Class C blocks of IP addresses.

Here's a key to identifying IP address designations...
255.255.255.*YYY* *Y*'s identify last octet
sometimes referred to as the host 255.255.*XXX*.YYY *X*'s identifies
the class-C subnet 255.*XXX*.XXX.YYY *X*'s identify the class-B
subnet *XXX*.XXX.XXX.YYY *X*'s identify the Class A subnet

Mini-nets with all of their sites located on the same Class C block
are easy for search engines to spot. This can be avoided by hosting each
site within the mini-net in a different web-host location.
-

*Tell-tale linking patterns* — Many mini-nets are set up to link only
to other sites within the same mini-net. This results in an isolated
network
of sites that are easily detected by search engines. Such sites are
referred
to as *isolated nodes* because they appear to be popular only within
their own node of sites, but ignored by the rest of the entire
world-wide-web.

Today's sophisticated mini-nets do everything possible to obtain
legitimate links from outside their mini-net to avoid being identified
as an
isolated node.
-

*Similar Templates* — Mini-net sites will often show similar layouts,
logos, or artwork from site to site, making it easy for search engines to
determine that all of the sites have the same owner. Today's sophisticated
mini-nets are careful to use different artwork, logos, and layouts to give
the appearance of unrelated sites.

As you can see, it can be a lot of work to camouflage a mini-net from the
autobotic scrutiny of today's sophisticated search engines. What's more,
Google's algorithms are now much more focused on link quality then they are
on sheer link numbers. This means that today's sophisticated mini-net must
also work on building legitimate links that originate from outside the
mini-net to each and every site within the mini-net.

It should be pointed out that there's nothing wrong with having multiple
sites and linking them together *provided that* each site can stand on its
own merit as a unique and valuable resource, and the links make sense in
terms of pointing your users to useful related content. And you should be
careful not to overdo the cross-linking between them. A few links between
sites you own is fine, but if you've got hundreds of links flying back and
forth, Google will view it with suspicion.

By the way, the various applications of the mini-net are explained in great
detail in our *Unfair Advantage Book*. See Chapter 10—The Top SEO Mistakes.
[image: bullet] *3. Reciprocal Links*

Reciprocal links, in themselves, are not bad—however, *too many* reciprocal
links or the wrong kinds of reciprocal links can hurt your site's rankings.

It's not uncommon for sites to link to each other. Friends link to each
other, business partners link to each other, blogs are constantly linking
back and forth. It's a natural part of the Internet for people who know
each
other to be linking. Search engines like *natural* links. They hate *
artificial* links.

And what looks artificial to the engines, especially Google, are:

-

*Links pages* — Way back in the early days of the Internet, links
pages were just ways for people to keep lists of sites they liked. Then
Google came along with their link-based ranking algorithm and everyone went
link-crazy. All of a sudden *Links Pages* became a place where sites
could easily swap links for the sole purpose of building link popularity.

Eventually, pages that were nothing but a big list of unrelated links
with the words links or resources at the top started getting filtered
by Google. At this point, it's safe to assume that such *links-page
links*, while easy to get, are useless from a ranking-boost
perspective.
-

*Link farms* — These are another form of reciprocal linking, albeit a
highly organized form. As mentioned above, link farms are where every site
in the farm links to every other site in the farm.
-

*Directories that require links* — It's not uncommon for low-quality
directories to require that you link back to them in exchange for a
listing.
Any directory that requires this is generally not a good place to list your
site.

Make no mistake, people are still swapping links like mad. Just do a search
for add your link, add url, suggest your site or any other related term and
you'll see what we mean. Unfortunately for the link swappers, in terms of
Google rankings, most of these link swaps are a complete waste of time.

Link exchange requests sent out by email suffer from the same problem. If
all you can get is a cheesy links-page link tucked away in some dusty
corner
of a website, it's hardly worth the hassle of sending out the email (hint:
shoot for a presell
pageinstead)Also,

unless you mention money
*early* in the email, most of these request are just going to be deleted
anyway.

However, if you have an article on your site that happens to link to
another
site mentioned as a valuable resource, and they have another article on *
their* site that links to you as a valuable resource, such reciprocal
linking is completely natural from a search engine's point of view (it's
even encouraged). These links are within context and pointing readers to
useful information, not just packed into a list of links to various
marginally related sites.

However, if you *do* decide to go after cheesy links-page links, as with
any
other kind of questionable link strategy, make sure they don't comprise
more
than 10% or so of your total links. And don't be disappointed when you
learn
for yourself they don't have much of a positive impact on your rankings.
[image: bullet] *4. Paid Links*

Like reciprocal links, paid links are not, in themselves, bad. In fact,
paid
links form the backbone linking strategy of many top-ranking sites.

What *is* bad is links that are *obviously* paid for. Paid links can
definitely be a rank-boosting asset—but only if they look *natural*.
Otherwise, Google tends to discount them entirely. Therefore, when buying
links you must see to it that the hosting site understands that your link
should *NOT* be...

-

*...tucked away in a little sidebar* called Sponsored Links or Featured
Advertisers or any other designation that separates your link from the
actual page content. The problem is that search engines have the ability to
detect and neutralize the effect these sponsored links would otherwise have
on link popularity.
-

*...run-of-site*. This would mean that you get a link from every
single page on the site. This is like waving a big red flag at Google. It
isn't *natural* for any site to link another page from ALL of their
pages unless there's some artificial relationship going on. Google assumes
such pages are either under the ownership of the linking site or else the
link is purchased. In either instance, it's *artificial* from the
search engine point of view and Google feels justified in discounting it.
-

*...sold by link brokers.* If you've ever logged into a link broker's
site and browsed the sites that are selling links there, then you know how
easy it is for anybody, *especially Google*, to learn which sites are
participating in the link sales. Although some of the so-called SEO experts
will tell you this is a really great way to get a bunch of links in a
hurry,
we think it's dumber than a sack of potatoes! You might as well paint a
giant bulls-eye over your site's homepage.

While it's true that buying links through link brokers is an easy way
to get links fast, and possibly even a good way to attract site visitors,
Google is working very hard to make sure these links do not contribute to
search engine rankings. Personally, if we were buying links through link
brokers, we'd be as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking
chairs worrying about the next Google-update.

Simply put, paid links work great! ...but they cannot LOOK like paid links
and they cannot be traced back to a link broker. In the long run you will
always be better off to negotiate your link-buys quietly, in-house, and
directly with the owners of the link-hosting site. And the fewer links they
sell, the better! For more details on the best way to purchase links
online,
see our report: How to Buy Links Without Getting
Burned!

[image: bullet] *5. Link Network Links*

We've already talked about how *too many reciprocal links* are a bad thing,
and how *obviously paid for* links are a bad thing. Well, imagine what
Google might think of a bunch of *bought-and-paid-for reciprocal links from
a collection of low-quality sites!* ...all of which are known to be
violating Google's guidelines by participating in a massive link swap. Yep,
you guessed it. That's a *really* bad thing.

In essence, that's the position a site finds themselves in when they get
involved in a *link network*. The obvious problems are:

-

Google can easily see who is participating in such link schemes just
by signing up for the program. From there it's easy to penalize
participating sites or, at the very least, make sure their links don't
count.
-

Since good sites are able to get their links through more legitimate
means, it's mostly low-quality sites participating in these networks. This
means that any ranking boost that would otherwise be credited is minimal at
best because these low-quality sites are not considered by Google to be
*authoritative*.

The bottom line is that there's no upside to link networks. Using them is a
waste of time and money, not to mention risky business—as Google tends to
ban the participating sites on a fairly regular basis.
[image: bullet] *6. Directory Links*

Say whaaat? Directory links, ...*bad?* Well, they *can* be. It all depends
on *which* directories you're submitting to and how many your site is
listed
in.

We occasionally get emails asking us for the top 200 free directories to
submit a site to. While such directory lists exist, submitting your site to
that many directories isn't in your site's best interest for a variety of
reasons:

-

Most of these directories are of low quality and often participate in
*run-of-site* (*ROS*) paid links to gambling and pharmaceutical
sites—a classic example of what Google calls *a bad neighborhood!*
-

Most of these sites require that you add a reciprocal link back to
them. As you now know, too many reciprocal links can be counter-productive
to your ranking efforts.
-

Too many directory listings is the hallmark of a site that is pushing
too hard on the SEO front. There *is* such a consideration as
*overoptimization
*. And when a site begins to look over-SEO'ed, it can attract a
ranking penalty.

While a listing in all three of the primary and most trusted directories
(DMOZ,
Yahoo Directory, and MSN Small Business Directory) are extremely helpful
for
a site's ranking, having too many directory listings, *or adding them too
fast*, can make a site's incoming link structure look *artificial*.

At the most, stick to the directories on our recommended
listwhich
have each been vetted for quality. And don't add more than 2 or 3
directory listings a month. Also, make sure your directory listings don't
make up more than 10% or so of your overall incoming links.

In other words: For every 9 or so quality links added, you can safely add
another directory listing. This way you're maintaining the variety of
link-types that makes your overall incoming link-structure look *natural*.
Otherwise, an out-of-balance *directory listing* link-count can be
interpreted as *trying too hard to manipulate your search ranking*.

By the way, if you happen to chance across a new directory and are
wondering
if it's a good place to list your site, be sure to read our report: How to
Evaluate a Directory Before You Submit a
Site

.
[image: bullet] *7. Article Directory Links*

Like traditional directory links, *article directory links* are typically
good *unless* your ratio is out of balance. A few are fine, but if most of
your links are coming from article directories, then your site's link
structure starts to look contrived—over-optimized from a search engine
point
of view and, therefore, cruising for a bruising.

It's very easy to submit one article to dozens or even hundreds of article
directories. There's even software that will automate the process for you.
However, if you do this too often your incoming link structure can quickly
get out of balance.

The other problem is related to duplicate content. If you submit an
identical article to multiple sites, occasionally it will trip Google's
duplicate content filter. This means one copy of the article will rank and
count as a backlink to you while the rest will be dumped into Google's
supplemental index of backup pages. This means that these links are no
longer helping your ranking efforts.

The good news is that, *usually* this isn't a problem. However, when it
becomes one, here's a workaround:

-

Instead of depending on the articles you have listed in the article
directories themselves to provide you with incoming links, focus on the
sites which pick up and syndicate those articles. Find the best ones and
then contact them with an offer to give them unique articles *written
just for them* in exchange for links back to your site.

Most sites will jump at this opportunity—after all, they must like your
writing if they syndicated one or more of your other articles, right? And
having a direct content-provider relationship with another site is a great
way to build links using your preferred anchor text while pointing those
links at the exact pages you're looking to boost in the rankings.
[image: bullet] *8. Press Release Links*

Press release links are actually good most of the time but it's easy to get
carried away and, once again, create an out-of-balance link ratio. There
are
literally hundreds of press release distribution sites and if you're
submitting your press release to all of them, it won't be long before your
incoming link ratios start to look extremely lop-sided.

Press releases are best used as a way to generate links through secondary
sources, such as *news sites* and *blogs*. That means you should generally
reserve the press release for those times when you actually have something
truly newsworthy.

In the past, press release distribution was a fairly easy and effective way
to build links. However, too many people eventually caught on to this
strategy. If you visit most press release sites today, you'll find they are
packed with releases about some of the most mundane details imaginable
(bore-rrring!).

It's clear that many releases are not designed to distribute news, but
instead are just there to pick up an easy link from the press release site
itself. This trend has caused a gradual decline in the effectiveness of
such
links. These days, the real value is not in the link you get from the press
release itself, but from the secondary links you can generate from news
outlets.

So keep those press releases newsworthy and restrict their distribution to
the major sites like PRWeb.com . It's fine to
release
the occasional not-so-newsworthy press release just for links, but try to
keep the number of links from press release sites to under 10% of your
total
to avoid an out-of-balance incoming links ratio.
[image: bullet] *9. Hidden Links*

This one's easy. Hiding links anywhere on your pages, for any reason, using
any kind of trick, can get you banned from Google. Don't do it. Moving
on...
[image: bullet] *10. Off Topic Links*

To Google, off topic links make no sense. They look *artificial*. Think
about it; how does a link to a *mortgage broker* from a site about *golf
shoes* benefit the site visitor? Right! it doesn't...and Google can't see
any benefit either. That's why off-topic links tend to blend into the
woodwork in terms of generating any ranking boost.

On the other hand, *links from webpages that are related to your topic are
the best kinds of links to have because...*

-

they help establish your authority in the community of sites related
to yours,
-

they reinforce the overall theme of your site thereby making it easier
for Google to know what your site is about, and
-

they are especially good at improving your rankings in search engines (like
Ask, and Google to a lesser degree) that are focused on identifying
relationships in topically-related *communities*.

Does this mean off topic links will hurt you? Not necessarily. But they're
not nearly as helpful. Besides, off topic links are another hallmark of
artificial link structures such as *link-buying*, *reciprocal linking*,
*link
networks* and *link farms*.

In short,

-

too many off topic links could make Google suspicious enough of your
site that they might give you a human review!

And once they start looking, you're pretty much *dead-meat* if you're
participating in any of the aforementioned link schemes.

You should also know that *the definition of "on-topic" is pretty broad*.
For example, a bed and breakfast site could get links from a travel agent
site, a rent-a-car site and a catering site and still be fine. It isn't
hard
to show how these topics are intertwined in a related sort of way. Clearly
they all fall into the general theme of *travel and hospitality*. But,
throw
in a link from a site selling ink cartridge refills and a video game site
and the link structure starts looking more than a little bit artificial.

By the way, one of the easiest ways to determine if a site is within your
category is to use a directory like DMOZ. This can give you a quick idea of
topically-related categories. For instance, most of the subcategories of
DMOZ's
Travel section are likely to be
related, as are other top level sections such as
Hospitality
.
[image: bullet] *11. Homepage Links*

You wouldn't normally think of links to and from your homepage as a bad
kind
of link—and in most circumstances they're not. But if these are the
*only*kinds of links you have, this can make your incoming links look
a bit
fabricated.

Trusted, authoritative sites typically have lots of links to their internal
pages in addition to the links pointing at their homepage. There's actually
a name for this: the ratio of *internal links* to *homepage links* is known
as the *deep link ratio*—and it's calculated in the following steps:

1.

Count the total number of off-site incoming links. This can easily be
done using Yahoo's Site Explorer tool. For instance, the query for
www.domaintools.comproduced

53,856 links pointing to the overall site at the time of this
writing.
2.

Then do the same calculation, but restrict it to links pointing at
DomainTools's
homepage.

That gives us 10,506 links pointing just at the homepage at the time of
this
writing.
3.

Thus, if the site has 53,856 links overall, and 10,506 of those links
are pointing at the homepage, then the remaining links must be pointing at
internal pages—pages on the site *other* than the homepage. These are
the *deep links*. (53,856 - 10,506 = 43,350).

So the site has 43,350 deep links.
4.

To complete the picture you divide the *total deep links* by the *total
links pointing to entire site*, multiplied by 100 to arrive at our *deep
link ratio*.

43350 / 53856 = 0.804

.804 * 100 = 80.4%

So, domaintools.com's *deep link ratio* is approximately 80%.

In general, most high ranking sites in Google have a deep link ratio of 40%
or higher. A high ratio of deep links indicates to Google there's a lot of
interesting and link-worthy content spread throughout the site. It also
indicates a more *natural* overall incoming link structure.
[image: bullet] *12. Identical Anchor Text Links*

Having your best keywords in the anchor, or visible, text of your incoming
links is one of the most important aspects of building a high-ranking
webpage. However, when links are acquired naturally (i.e. based on the
merit
of your site's content, not because you actively solicited them), their
anchor text tends to vary quite a bit.

A certain percentage of the webpages linking to you will use the exact
anchor text keywords you want to be found for, but most will use some
variation on your keywords. There will also be pages that use anchor text
that is of no real value keyword-wise. Examples might include *your domain
name*, *your business name*, *the URL of the page they're linking to*, or
phrases like *click here*.

Many SEOs who are aggressively acquiring links through link buying or
reciprocal linking will often focus on a small set of anchor text keywords
they find highly desirable and try to get all their incoming links to
contain those keywords. This tends to make their artificial link
manipulation stick out like a silver dollar in a stack of pennies.

When building incoming links you should make every effort to vary the
anchor
to the degree that not more than approximately 50% of your links utilize
any
specific keyword or phrase. This is particularly important if that
phrase is
a highly commercial and exceedingly competitive keyphrase.

This is where *tools that find related keywords* can be put to good use.
Here are two that we recommend:

- GoRank Related Keywords Lookup
Tool
- Google Sets

Using related keywords can actually reinforce your primary keywords and
help
you to rank better for them, as well as provide some variety in your
incoming link anchor text.

Beyond that, be sure to mix in a few click here or URL links as alluded to
above. This will help make your incoming links structure look more
*natural*.
Nothing screams out *"over-SEO'd"* more than tons of incoming links with
identical anchor text.

A while back, we wrote a very important report titled: 15 Essential
Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound
Links.

This report advocated taking the search engine's point of view when
building
links. In other words, if you were to look at your incoming links' profile,
would it look like the profile of a site which had used great content to
naturally acquire links by becoming an authority in its field? Or does it
look like a site that's trying to trick the search engines by buying and
swapping lots of links?

Many of these so-called "bad" linking techniques are only *bad* if used in
excess. A few reciprocal links here and a few press release links there are
actually quite effective when mixed into the overall link ratio. It's when
your site's link structure becomes so lopsided toward one or two types of
links that it begins to paint a penalty-target on itself.

So keep everything in moderation,
[image: Stephen]
Stephen Mahaney - President
Planet Ocean Communications

Web Development and Promotion

Monday, September 25, 2006

List of Web 2.0 Design Tutorials

Thursday, September 21, 2006

The Top 12 Link-Offenders You Should Avoid Like A Ticking Bomb! How to build a link structure that will stand the test of time. by Stephen Mahaney

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