PageRank Mania - Is it getting out of hand?
by Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com
I'm sad, I'm mad and disillusioned a tad. (Do I smell a hit country song
on the horizon?) I thought the search engine optimization community had
changed. Silly me. I guess I was fooled by the discussions on the importance
of good content cropping up all over the place. I actually believed that
people had finally come 'round to performing SEO with integrity and honesty,
and were abandoning tricks and manipulation. I feel so dumb. I should
have known that as long as there was a possibility of tricking or manipulating
the search engines, SEOs around the globe would figure out how, and not
be afraid to do it.
Let me back up here a bit, so you can understand what has me so hot and
bothered.
Why do you link to sites? Is it because they're useful and informative
and might be worthwhile to your site visitors? Or is it because you hope
you'll get a reciprocal link, which just might boost your link popularity
and/or PageRank? Perhaps it's some combination of these things, or other
reasons all together.
Everyone likes having links to their site; that seems to be a given.
When they're from appropriate sites, inbound links often bring a lot of
high quality traffic. In fact, the Web was founded on the practice of
linking, which is why it's called the "Web." Without linking,
I guess it would be just a list. Welcome to the World Wide List. Blech.
As soon as people realized that search engines such as Google were placing
an emphasis on who's linking to whom in their ranking algorithms, all
hell broke loose as far as I'm concerned. I'll never forget the feeling
of dread I felt when I read the first post in I-Search many years ago
that went something like, "Hey...I've got a great idea! Since the
search engines are counting the number of links to sites in their ranking
algorithms, why don't we all link our sites to each other?" Whoohoo!
Witness the birth of the link farm.
It didn't take "savvy" Webmasters long to realize that they
could create whole bunches of sites for one company, and link them all
together to *artificially* inflate their link popularity. If there's a
way to trick the engines, you betcha plenty of people will figure out
how to do it. But this is old news.
In the past six months or so, Google has been doing its best to put a
stop to this sort of manipulation. Many sites that were "optimized"
in this fashion have seen their PageRank scores vanish. When this happens,
their backward links don't exist as far as Google is concerned. Without
backward links, rankings in the search results are basically nonexistent.
Oh what a cryin' shame. NOT! I say, "You go, Google Girl!" If
Webmasters and SEOs have the need to vandalize Google's PageRank function,
then they shouldn't cry when they get sent to their rooms without any
supper.
Because of the Google crackdown, SEOs and Webmasters are facing other
issues. Suddenly, there's a mad scramble to try and figure out "safe"
linking procedures. Everyone is scared to link or get linked to, because
they may get the dreaded "PageRank penalty." More and more people
are asking what the criteria are to safely link sites together. The answer
is simple - don't build bunches of sites for the sole purpose of linking
them together in order to increase your link popularity or PageRank. Just
don't do it. Don't, don't, don't. Can I make this any clearer? That said,
if you own multiple sites (that weren't created for the purpose of link
popularity), is it safe to link them to each other? My answer to that
is if it makes sense to do so, then sure, link them together. If it adds
value to the user to have a link from one site to the other, of course
you should do it. That's what linking is all about.
I refuse to believe that Google or any other search engine is looking
for ways to make fewer sites show up in their search results. They're
not interested in banning sites that provide great information. They *are*
interested in maintaining the integrity of their search results, however.
Therefore, I suggest you don't ruin an otherwise great site by attempting
to trick the search engines. You may not get caught today; you may not
even get caught tomorrow. Heck, you may never get caught. But if you do,
you'll have to start over from scratch in order to redeem yourself.
Another facet to all this PageRank mania is Webmasters who purposely
"hoard" their PageRank. That is, they refuse to link out to
any other sites because they want to keep all of their PageRank within
their own site. Sure, if you add a reciprocal link to their site, they
might link out to yours. But is this what we've degraded to? Doesn't seem
to matter that there might be a great page out there that could be extremely
useful to their site visitors. This no longer enters the equation. It's
all about containing PageRank. (To read more about how PageRank works,
see this
issue of Rank Write.) Which brings me back to why I'm sad, mad and
disillusioned. It appears that PageRank is beginning to drive how people
link to each other, and that is just plain wrong. When an informational
site or a forum refuses to link to another site or discussion because
it might take their visitors away, and/or take away some PageRank, then
we've got a huge problem. To me, links are not a commodity to be bought,
sold and traded. I link to other sites and discussions when it's appropriate
to do so, and not with the caveat that I get a link back. If it's helpful,
it's helpful whether or not they link back to my site. As much as I like
to think I know it all, in reality I don't (you didn't hear that from
me!). Linking to other sites can fill the gaps in my knowledge, and that's
important to my site visitors. Like I always say, search engine optimization
is all about making your site the best it can be. When we become so consumed
by what sites we can and can't link to, or even whether we can link at
all, then we're not making our site the best it can be. We're letting
other factors dictate our site content, and that's just not right.
Author Jill Whalen is the owner of HighRankings.com
and moderator of the free weekly email newsletter, the High
Rankings' Advisor. She is also known for her moderation of the critically
acclaimed, Rank Write Roundtable.
Jill specializes in search engine optimization, directory submissions,
SEO consultations and workshops. She has obtained hundreds of number 1
and 2 spots for her vast array of clients throughout the years. Clients
include multi-million dollar companies, major universities, real estate
agencies, attorneys, surgeons, dentists, and small-medium sized businesses.
Contact Jill at jill@highrankings.com.
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