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Linking Psychosis, PageRank, Adsense
First Published: Sep 2004
Last Update: Sep 2004
Author: Mike Banks Valentine
Linking Psychosis is Treatable
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 Outdated sites that no longer reflect the businesses that created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.
Check your own Link Popularity with a free Software download:
http://website101.com/download/link-popularity-software.html
About the Author
Mike Valentine is SEO at
http://OrangeCounty-re-helpcenter.org
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.
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