Do site-wide links help?

Posted by multippt

When it comes to links, it is known that the more links there are, the merrier. What about site-wide links? All it takes is to add a link to every page, and you’ll get plenty of links. Site-wide links comes in all flavors: External ones, internal ones. Internal site-wide links are easy: put a link to your main page on every other page, and presto, a site-wide link. Depending on the size of the site, you can get several links, to hundreds.

Do they really help?

They may help. PageRank is one visible proof. But, each of those links appear to weigh lesser than several links scattered about. Sure, you have hundreds of links that can compensate for that, but it’s worth noting that even internal pages with the most exposure to site-wide links (e.g. archives in blogs) get a much lower PageRank than other pages that are linked less often (e.g. tag pages). Strange behavior?

On the other hand, site-wide links do add on to PageRank, but at the same time reduce PageRank (for the pages with the link). So, having many site-wide links on a site will result it in having more pages getting the juice, but it also results more pages having the same PageRank.

External Site-wide links?

Site-wide external links give a varying amount of link juice. If they are one-way ones, they pack a punch, unlike reciprocal ones that do not influence much. However, save your links, it’s probably much better to get several links from a site than getting site-wide links.

Another problem newly introduced by Google regarding external links, is that Google is weakening their strength, and penalizing certain links (usually site-wide ones) that it would consider “paid” or “sponsored”.

Weakened site-wide links?

Strangely, Google treats sitewide links unpredictably. Sometimes it credits them (particularly in pages you least expect them), sometimes it doesn’t. There is also a problem of links that come from only 1 site. Which is better? 1000 links from different sites, or 1000 links from one site? Google probably credits the former more than the latter in terms of PageRank.

Outbound links in a page

Within this site itself lies pages with varying PageRank. The main index page has most of the external links, so all other internal pages would have to get their link juice from the main page. Categories pages for example, have much lesser PageRank compared to some lesser tag pages, even though they appear almost everywhere in the site.

RSS pages on the other hand appears to get the most benefit out of PageRank. Seems like they are trapping the PageRank. After all, the amount of PageRank is determined by the amount of back-links and outgoing links (RSS feeds have much fewer than any other pages). The more back-links you have, and the fewer outgoing links you have, you get a page with a high PageRank. Quite a nice theory ain’t it?

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On any case, it’s up to the webmaster to control who shall and how to link to their site.

Getting links as a commentator

Posted by multippt

Commenting on blogs has never been more easier: Type in your name, email, website, and your opinion. All that should take only 5 minutes. However, not all blogs will give you a link worthy as a backlink - in fact most blogs will give you nothing much other than a platform to express your opinion. Despite this, there are some blogs that do give link favor in return for your activity, a fair trade ain’t it.

What blogs can be used?

Not all blogs will give links to their commentators; most blogs will not return link favor now that Google is encouraging the nofollow movement. There are some that do though, which brings us to Dofollow blogs.

Dofollow blogs

Unlike nofollow blogs, dofollow blogs do not implement the nofollow portion of links. Most blogs prior to 2001 were dofollow - because nofollow was not invented. Today’s a little different, nofollow is now everywhere. Fortunately, there are some who decided to remove nofollow from the comments - so, every comment with a link in it gets some nice juice, pretty neat eh? Let’s hope nofollow doesn’t reach forums any time soon.

Dofollow blogs consist of 1% of all blogs. The small number of them is a result of the nofollow movement supported by Google/Blogger (of course) and Wordpress as well. There are D-Lists that shows a list of such blogs, one such list is available at Courtney Tuttle. Don’t worry if none of the dofollow blogs fancy you, there are nofollow blogs as well which do fetch traffic.

The small amount of blogs participating in dofollow is probably because it results in link juice leakage, but it does off a nice incentive for commentators to stay and comment on your blog. The original intent of nofollow is to reduce spam - which apparently is not successful on most blogs. Well, at least Google doesn’t forbid removing nofollow from comments.

Your blog can participate in the dofollow movement with a handy plugin known as the Dofollow plugin (it wasn’t too hard to guess right? :) ).

The commentator contest

If dofollow blogs are good, blogs with commentator contests are probably better. This contest is Generally, all one needs to do is to remain at the top of the pile - and will get a link throughout the entire blog (usually) as long as they comment regularly. More popular blogs tend to employ this (including nofollow ones), giving it a nicer effect than new blogs employing dofollow. A magnet for long-term commentators if your blog has incredible popularity.

Your blog can participate in it using this nice plugin - The top commentator widget. Don’t forget to display the widget somewhere in your blog, otherwise it’s pointless.

Quality of links?

Sadly, links coming from dofollow blogs are not of the highest quality: your are isolated to a few pages. This is unlike the commentator contest, which gives a higher value, especially if it appears on every single page, most notably the main page. But, winning links in a commentator contest is much difficult than getting a link on a dofollow blog, which could be a consideration considering activity and the lifespan of a link. Well, at least links obtained from commenting are much better than links obtained in an exchange.

Win-win for commentator and blog-owner?

The idea of giving link juice to users in exchange for activity is quite a nice concept. Yes, it is a win-win situation for both, despite your site having a link juice leakage. Giving out links to commentators is a way of keeping blog commentators, and perhaps invite the normally quiet community.

Blackholing as SEO?

Posted by multippt

Of course, Google have explicitly mentioned that backlinks will add to a site’s PageRank. However, through experience it is found that outbound links have an opposite effect to backlinks. So, before you add that link to your site, think again. Similarly, internal pages act as outbound links, except that you have more control over them. This is based on the assumption that links act as the path where the highly fluid link juice can flow. Thus, the theory might be useful in search engine optimisation (SEO).

Blackholing?

The idea of a blackhole is that it traps everything inside, letting little stuff come out. Link blackholing employs the same idea. Some backlinks, few outbound links. Of course, don’t forget internal pages - these links pass PageRank too. So, for ideal blackholing, you should have some backlinks, few internal links, few outbound links. Thus, it traps some link juice in your site.

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Link black-holes you should watch out for

Posted by multippt

If you studied quantum physics, you probably know about black holes. Even if you didn’t, you probably heard of it right? A link blackhole is like a blackhole - it eats links, but gives back few links that are taken into account by search engines in ranking. Generally, if they get popular enough, they would become a authority site - if many link to it. However, it may not generously give back the favors (but if you do manage to get a link from one of those link black-holes, they are considered incredibly high quality).

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Google makes it clear it disallows paid links

Posted by multippt

One can say that the whole idea of link selling has almost vanished even since Google began conducting serious checks across the board. From day one, Google forbid webmasters from selling links. However at that time, not many really bothered about it. This is until when Google grew prominant enough to put a plug to link monetization.

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Rectifying paid links where they don’t exist

Posted by multippt

Sometimes, in the process of building links, your links may end up in places where you may not really expect. These very places can result in a penalty. The problem is, Google expects webmasters to know that they have a problem with their websites, and they should do something about it, even if they don’t know what hit them.

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Getting valuable links as a developer

Posted by multippt

If you happen to be on these jobs and have websites, you have the opportunity to grab some high quality (non no-follow) links the white-hat way.

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