Thu Jan 03 16:02:44 PST 2019

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link quality. Matt stressed that Google wants to count editorial citations, and that
the best links are usually free.
Garbage Links
While many low-quality links may still help, over time their value goes down.
Guestbooks and the like are essentially worthless. Many of the holes in blog
software that permitted heavy spamming are also being taken care of.
Some people have stated that Google is even filtering out links from pages with the
the words link or links in the filename or file path.
In a sketchy field, you may have to use many sketchy techniques to be able to
profitably compete. You don?t want to be the only site in your industry using really
sketchy techniques unless you can afford for the site to get banned or have a bad
effect on your brand. If the top site in your field has 300 links, it probably is a bad
idea to build or buy 87,000 links. Consider the risk to reward ratio and stay below
the radar. You want to blend in.
Some large, well-branded corporate sites like Expedia that spend millions on
Google AdWords will likely be able to get away with doing more shady stuff than a
new webmaster would. Companies that already have a brand built up have much
more leeway than new webmasters. When BMW was removed from Google for
spamming, Google re-indexed the BMW site about one day later.
Have a Good Idea
There are many legitimate, long-term, free link opportunities available, though they
may take a good bit of work to find.
The web is a big social network where good ideas will want to spread naturally. It
is far easier to spread an idea worth spreading than it is to push a bad idea. A link
is a vote for a site. It is a citation. It is a remark, saying ?Oh hey, I found this over
here.? By being remarkable or different, it far easier to build a linking campaign
without a large sum of money or effort.
If you act like yourself, are willing to be human, and feed into your character flaws,
sometimes those are more citation-worthy than what you think you are good at.
Plus, if you are being yourself, you are less likely to get burned out and it will be
harder for competitors to replicate what you do.
Give Something Away
One of the best ways to build link popularity is to make something useful and
valuable and give it away. PHP Bulletin Board is a free bulletin board that has a
PageRank of 9 or 10. OpenOffice is another great open source software project.
Some popular things to give away are software, games, designs, and valuable
information.