Google's Promises to Punish for Selling Backlinks - Myth?

Today the whole community of webmasters is buzzing about Google's promises to change their policy and fight more effectively the tactics of selling backlinks.

I am not going to dispute about the morality of purchasing backlinks for SEO purposes, because this is a subject for another discussion. But let's try to answer a simple question...

Is Google Really Capable of Stopping Backlink Selling?

And this is a very good question. What Google offers to do right now is to report sites that are selling backlinks and they will find out some algo to fight it. Google is not saying how exactly they will penalize, but I think the wisest idea would be to simply not count backlinks (in terms of rank calculation) if the site is reported for backlink selling. This should make the purchase of links not interesting for webmasters and break the whole trend of buying links for the sake of SEO.

BUT...

How exactly can Google tell good links (real links) from bad links (paid links made for the sake of SEO)?

I personally know many super reputable webmasters' forums that sell backlinks. Even on home page. (!) Intermingled with real backlinks (!). And Google will not be able to invent some algo that will tell good links from the bad links for all sites if the good and bad links are coming together. Because all links look super natural.

So, if it's impossible to invent this algo, this means sites that sell backlinks in a wise way are out of threat. And Google will be catching only stupid link farms and greedy average sites that create piles of backlinks.

Most probably Google will make a big public punishment for some minors - and that's it. Big sites will be still selling the backlinks. And webmasters will be still buying the backlinks.

All this makes me think that it's highly possible that Google creates the buzz trying to threat naive webmasters and scare them away from buying links.

But there have been many examples when Google's promises have been to far from what they have managed to do in real life.

P.S. And, by the way, don't you think that all this fuss about purchasing backlinks is a good proof that Google can still be manipulated with backlinks? :)

Link Exchange and Yahoo Pipes - Going Step by Step

This is step-by-step guide to successful combination of link exchange with Yahoo Pipes technology.

As promised in the previous article published on this blog here "Link Exchange and Yahoo Pipes" today I am going to show step by step how you can use Yahoo Pipes technology to get better effect from the link building.

I have recently made a test and created special Yahoo pipe (more details on this link exchange Yahoo pipe blog) which had three aims:
- get better Yahoo exposure/indexing;
- get more traffic from visitors of Yahoo Pipes;
- get more potential link exchange partners.

Today I am going to explain how exactly I made it.

I created a special Yahoo pipe where I submitted the RSS feeds on my sites that had link building directories. The beauty of Yahoo Pipes technology is that other people, who liked the way this or that pipe can simply click 'Clone' link and get this pipe ready for their editing.

Why Editing?

Because when you clone any pipe, you get the access to edit it any way you wish. And this is where the spin-off effect starts. People see my pipe, see from having my RSS feeds inside it I can really succeed with my aims (indexing, traffic and more link partners). They want to have the same, so they clone the pipe and ... add their own RSS feeds of link directories. Now all others who see this pipe will see MY directories plus THEIR directories. And then it becomes a snowball, with more and more people adding their feeds to the base.

The results of this strategy can be amazing!

First of all, the more people clone this pipe, the more popular it is in the eyes of Yahoo - hence, the faster is Yahoo indexing to all new pages in the link directories that submitted their feeds to the pipe. And deep indexing of all directory pages by Yahoo is a great victory.

Secondly, the more popular is any pipe, the more people see it. Hence, any site has more potential traffic.

And the third advantage - the more people see the directories, the more chances that you will catch 'some extra' good link partners for the sites, because people like joining winners.

How to Create Yahoo Pipe - Step by Step.

(1) Register Yahoo Account.

(2) Go to http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ and click 'create a new pipe' button. This will send you to graphical interface where you can play with feeds any way you like: sort them, make them searchable for keywords, filter for unnecessary elements, etc.

BUT, before you start doing it yourself, better pick a good pipe and clone it. Because thus you will get a ready made pipe that you can experiment with and see the guts of this technology.

(3) Once your pipe is made, publish it, and Yahoo will do the rest. Yahoo promotes pipes and sends people there, Yahoo indexes the sites that submitted their feeds, because Yahoo wants to push this technology, hence it is quite logical that they help a little in indexing. So this is a great chance to use this opportunity.

Yahoo Pipes technology will help not only link exchange. You can make your articles more visible by submitting their RSS feed to the pipe. Or you can make your site network more visible. Anything that has RSS feed can give you extra help in Yahoo. Use Yahoo Pipes, and you will see that they really help.

Link Exchange and Yahoo Pipes

Link exchange and Yahoo pipes have a really great potential to be combined. And I am going to prove it in this post.

What are Yahoo Pipes?

According to the quote from Yahoo web site pipe is 'interactive feed aggregator and manipulator; using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.' But behind this shy definition stands new potential.

Imagine that now you can gather RSS feeds from different web sites and make then searchable under different parameters in a very simple visible form. With the help of visual constructor you can create your simple (but not primitive) search engines that will be focused to the feeds that you choose. And you don't need having big programming talents to make it work. You save it as your own Yahoo pipe and now every visitor of this pipe can submit necessary data and get result from the feeds of this pipe.

How Can this Help My Link Exchange?

Keep in your mind that Yahoo pipe is kind of search engine that searches the feeds that you need. Now this is real case example of how you can get extra boost to your link exchange directories with new Yahoo technology.

• Grab all RSS feeds URLs of your link exchange directories. If your directories don't have RSS feeds, than you are still in the 20th century. Today it is almost a must to have it, and there are many link exchange scripts and tools (even free link exchange scripts) that have RSS feed which is automatically updated with every new link in the directory.
  
• Now - take all these feed URLs into your Yahoo pipe. This means you created your own searchable base, base of your link exchange directories.
  
• Then using specific Yahoo Pipes modules create rules for searching the base. People can search by topic of links, or title and description, etc.
  

That's it. You have your own Yahoo pipe. This innovation is being nicely promoted by Yahoo, so it's not your problem to attract people to Yahoo pipe. And when they are there - they will use your pipe form to find good partners. If you fit their demand, it means you got new link partners.

In the next post I will show you how this can be possible in real action, step by step, so make sure to have your Yahoo pipe account registered by that time to follow me.

Link Exchange Not Ruled by Relevancy.

Link exchange is reported to no longer be ruled by relevancy of links during link building. According to the tests performed by Internet marketing team of DesktopMoney LTD (within the framework of automatic reciprocal link exchange tool tesitng) Google has shifted from relying on relevancy of web sites. Even more - in many cases links can be absolutely irrelevant, but they should fit the new factor that is coming into use.

Basing on the results from link building and testing of the backlinks indexed by Google the specialists of DesktopMoney LTD have come to the conclusion that many of the officially indexed backlinks were on the web sites that were irrelevant to the topic of the site they were linking to, however these irrelevant backlinks were displayed by Google among the top results of officially indexed backlinks.

This conclusion comes very close to breaking one of the pillars of Google's philosophy about link exchange which says that in order to have no problems with building links site owners should be very carefully choosing link partners, especially pay attention to link partners being relevant to their topic.

The issue of relevancy has been highly disputed by Internet marketing community, as there are many cases when topics seem to be irrelevant for the Google's algo, but are not irrelevant in reality. For example, 'business' and 'health' are absolutely different topics for automatic algorithm, but in reality business training website can be linking to yoga site as part of the stress handling techniques that are widely used in tame stress in business. Thus, two irrelevant topics can be very relevant.

The testing results held by DesktopMoney LTD prove that in reality Google is not relying only on relevancy of links as relevancy is a very disputable issue. And testing results hint on the new factor that is highly rumored to be introduced by Google. This new factor is Trust Rank.

Google is not officially approving or rejecting the usage of this factor in their algo. But it is highly logical that Google might have given Trust Rank to a line of websites that have good Internet reputation and gained trust in their niche. Surely Google is not disclosing the websites that gained Trust Rank from it, as this can cause intense attention to getting backlinks from these sites. However it is possible to suggest that among these sites one can find reputable media websites, established article and press release services, various online communities (forums, memberships, chats, polls), reputable directories (script directories, product directories, service directories), social networks, well established niche majors and other websites of this level.

Getting a backlink from the site of this kind, even if this site is irrelevant, will not produce any problems. And testing results prove that Google is adding these backlinks to the official count.
Having taken into account the mentioned reasons, it can be stated that Internet community is on the verge of getting new set of rules for link exchange, where Trust Rank will take one of the important positions.

Target link exchange with magic Search Operator.

Many people start link exchange without real picture of how tough is their niche about link exchange. They build links, and then it turns out that all efforts are wasted, because they underestimated the niche. This search operator will help you to scale the competition level in any niche.

Before I come to details about search operators that are crucial for link exchange, I must mention one important fact - not only backlinks are needed to grab top position in search engines. You must work with content, use reasonable onpage SEO. Do everything possible for your site to become a regular spot for your visitors.

So, don't think of link exchange as some kind of magic pill that you can take and win overnight. Success is about combination of many factors.

But definitely you will need to scale the competition level.

Otherwise you are fighting with illusions.

Many people who want to get top position for their keyphrase do the following: submit "their keyphrase" to Google or other search engine, check how many sites search engine shows for it and scale the chances to success. It's the same to scaling the chances to win in lottery by tossing a coin.

Only search operators can help you to find how much links with anchor you need to build to get top positions for specific keywords or keyphrases. Definition first - search operators are specific query words that have special meaning to search engines. These words/operators modify the search in some way, or even tell search engine to do a totally different type of search.

This search operator is very important for link exchange.

This operator is allinanchor:"your keyphrase" for Google or inanchor:"your keyphrase" for MSN.

This operator shows how much web pages are linked by other site using exactly "your keyphrase" as the anchor text of links.

For example, typing into Google search allinanchor:"car loans" will show you all web pages that are linked by other sites with the phrase "car loans" used as anchor text in these links.

Why is it important for link building? Because this operator shows you how much REAL competitors you will have in the niche. Very often when analyzing the niche at first it seemed that I had to fight dozens of thousands of sites. But when checking how many sites are really linked with my future anchor, it turned out I had to fight some lousy 400-500 web sites. And it is much easier than 30,000 or 100,000 or more.

Now, before starting link exchange on any keyword or keyphrase, check the competition. I guarantee that many people just pass by golden niches, because they think it's impossible to get top position there. And my clients, friends and me personally enjoy nice positions. Just because we use search operators to see the perspective.

Link Exchange Script - Available for FREE Testdrive.

New link exchange algorithm is released for your testing.

The new algorithm bypasses old-fashioned procedure of sending beggy emails to webmasters and facing the problem of 90% of these emails being sent to trash bin.

The new algorithm is blended with advanced link exchange directory script that automatically builds directory and packs the pages with SEO-wise content.

You can test the workability of this new algorithm for free at your convenience.

Get Link Exchange Script (Software)
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