Linking Psychosis is Treatable
by Mike Banks Valentine © September 21, 2004
Search Engine Optimization has become inextricably linked with
linking schemes over the last couple of years. During that time
EVERYONE has noticed the value of inbound links to their web sites.
This has lead many agressive webmasters to buy up hundreds of
keyword focused domain names, slap up a few weak and repetitive
content pages over dozens of domain names in an attempt to build
their own little empire.
MINI-WEBS BECOME ROAD
KILL IN TRAFFIC GENERATION SCHEMES
This misguided strategy has littered the web with garbage that
nobody wants to clean up. Outdated sites that no longer reflect
the businesses that created them, with broken images, broken links
and broken promises to visitors are everywhere. Their owners don't
maintain them, update them, and sometimes don't even pay to host
them as duplicated domains are strewn across free hosting services
and are forgotten for years.
WHO IS TO BLAME FOR PAGERANK OBSESSION?
I'm reluctant to place the blame for this on Google, but I'm
afraid I must. Google made PageRank the holy grail for the web
and everyone simply set out in search of the holy grail. For those
of you NOT obsessed with PageRank, it is only a small part of
a complex set of factors Google uses to decide how important a
site is based on how many other sites link to it. Linking is important,
but many have become obsessed with it to the point of linking
insanity.
There are linking clubs, reciprocal linking services, link
building software,
link popularity software, and now even text
link brokerages that purchase links on your behalf! Search
engine optimization firms have now begun to establish and position
domains solely for the purpose of selling links in multiple categories.
Those same SEO firms fill their fully optimized pages with Google
Adsense Ads to earn income from that portion of visitors not interested
in pages of links.
ADSENSE PROVIDES ESCAPE
FOR VISITORS TRAPPED IN LINK FARMS
Those visitors click away on the Adsense ads simply to find
escape from the contentless link farm that they've found while
looking for information. The SEO firm has made money both selling
links and now from Adsense clickthroughs, but provides no useful
information. This is litter generated along the road to traffic
generation and link popularity!
Another phenomenon created by linking insanity is the self-
referential linking scheme, where webmasters link ALL their sites
from the footer of EVERY page on EVERY site to gain link popularity
increases. If they've also created mini-webs of repetitive content
strewn across hundreds of domains, they will inevitably link every
domain to every other domain they own, sometimes from the bottom
of every page on every single mini-web site - even their main
domains!
SELF REFERENTIAL LINKING
OF MINI-WEBS IS LINKING PSYCHOSIS
Often the owners of these linking fiefdoms will refrain from
using every page of their site to link out to their many tiny
domains, but will create "index" or "sitemap" or "search" or "resources"
pages that essentially do the same linking, but with keyword focused
anchor text encompassing every possible search phrase that might
be used to find their business site.
Those afflicted with linking psychosis have entirely lost contact
with reality in favor of the fantasy of PageRankLand. The missing
ingredient for these lost souls is the "Authority" site concept.
They link from every page or domain TO every page or domain randomly
and this confers no prominence of "Authority" to any one domain.
They might actually succeed in their attempt to rank well if they
weren't so unclear on this single concept.
A PARTIAL TREATMENT
FOR AFFLICTED LINK PSYCHOTICS
A single link from each domain - from ONE page - back to the
"Authority" site will increase link popularity of the main site.
Those mini-web sites SHOULD link to each other, but only once
and only in one direction, in a daisy chain fashion to confer
authority to the main site and lead the search engines to the
next domain that does the same thing - it in turn confers authority
to the main site and leads the spiders to the next mini-site,
etc.
The mini-web site psychosis isn't cured with this treatment.
They STILL offer no substantial, original, useful content and
the visitor gains nothing except being lead to the main site where
they might find the product or service they set out to find in
the beginning. A total cure comes only when real content of unique
value is added to those individual mini-sites. Then they become
self-actualized and they matter.
I've rescued many client mini-webs from linking psychosis by
filling mini domains with useful, relevant and interestingly unique
content. Those sites become destinations themselves, gain rank
and status of their own and then link to the main business site,
conferring even more relevance upon the single authority site
they link to.
A treatment is available, the cure is substantial, relevant,
unique text content. There is hope for linking psychosis.
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Check your own Link Popularity with a free Software download:
http://website101.com/download/link-popularity-software.html
Mike Valentine is SEO at http://RealEstateDirectory411.com
Where he's treating their self-referential linking psychosis by
offering outside links to those sites from relevant real-estate
centered sites that will get them crawled, indexed and ranked
- not relegated to their own little fiefdom.
