about links

Almost forgot – google has announced recently to forget about the PR toolbar… its meaningless…

The idea is that the more outside sites you link to, the less PR that is passed onto your internal pages. That indirectly reduces your PR because since your internal pages have less PR they don’t pass as much PR onto your home page.

This may be part of it, but I’m not so sure that PR has the same value it use to and myself am not worried about PR. Generally, a high PR site will likely have some authority, but its not due to the PR it’s due to other factors, and the PR is somewhat of a reflection of these things.

I think the big point here is “are all links created equal?”… I dont beleive so. If this is true, then what values are assigned to certain link types and how will these values be reflected on a site in terms of rankings.

I have done “crude” experiments with sites to test out some of these notions and it seems clear to me that there is a difference between links, even when the same link is received as a recip or one-way.

Maybe its time to do a more robust experiment where two sites (similiar in terms of on-page seo quality) receive identical links in different ways. One site does recips with the links, and the other receives all one-way links.

I’ll keep everyone posted on the results which should take a couple of months to see.

Lastly:

It’s SEO goofballism to think if the New York Times does a story about your site, and links to you, that you would be worse off if you linked back to the story.

In this very simple example point taken. But… in the real world things are not so simple. Patterns begin to emerge, and sites with 100% recips certainly make an easy pattern to spot. This is not a natural occurance and is obviously contrived. Heres a bit from google – “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.”

Arent recip link deals all about increasing ranking or PR? If so, then why would it be “goofballism” to beleive that recip deals (obvious schemes) would hold equal value to clean, one way links?

So, as much as I love the term “SEO goofballism” – I dont think the argument of one-ways vs. recips falls into “goofballism” territory.

lol… sorry for the long winded post – I really enjoy hashing out SEO ideas, conversations etc.

Cheers!

that you give up some of your PR whenever you link to another site

The idea is that the more outside sites you link to, the less PR that is passed onto your internal pages. That indirectly reduces your PR because since your internal pages have less PR they don’t pass as much PR onto your home page.

“SEO goofballism” is one of the best things I’ve heard all day! :rollover:

As for the question, I rarely link between my own sites, especially on the same IP. There are plenty of other sites out there…

One way links being perceived as more valuable than recip seems to stem from that wonky theory that you give up some of your PR whenever you link to another site. I don’t buy it…

Everybody has a pet theory or two though, but it really comes down to what Kevin11 said – do what works for you.

Good luck!

You are very welcome :bigsmile:

As you can gather even from the two responses posted, seo is not an exact science. Whether or not I agree with Classics or any other opinion that varies from mine is irrelevant. The point is to do what works for you cause God knows different people get different results from doing different things.

I agree with Classics on the link scheme opinion. Any scheme is in fact a scheme and should be avoided.

Agree on the cross-linking too many sites on the same IP. BTW – I have unique IP’s for sites that cross link. I think that the degree of crosslinking issue may be understated. 100’s of pages may be asking for trouble I.M.H.O.

Regarding which links are worth more, one ways vs. recips.. My view is all things being equal the one ways are better, not to say that you will be punished for recips, but I think the one ways are given a slight weighting advantage. For me, mix up the one ways and recips and give the site a natural link feel. Too many of one or the other and it looks unatural.

For back to basics info on SEO related matters I find the seo-guy.com/forums pretty useful.

Later!

thanks guys so much for your input.

LOL, but I’m as confused as ever only now at least I feel I’ve been pointed in the right direction to wander…

to simplify it to terms which are easy for me to understand, it sounds like I should just put in links where they make sense to be; and not worry about whether a site is cross-linked ; or not.

bet my money on the hopes that the SEs will (if not already) be able to spot links that are there for a logical reason and reward accordingly.

and make sure my link text isn’t always the same.

thanks to you both again for taking time out to answer.

and also for keeping me from having to sit down and figure out which sites to link to which etc. I was getting a headache just thinking about it.

“I like to put my links to my other sites at the bottom of my pages. is that hurting me?”

Possibly if they are on the same IP. There is a degree involved here. Doing it with dozens of pages has no risk; hundreds of pages is probably fine; tens of thousands of pages is link farming.

“and I’ve heard its better to have one way links to a site than recips;”

No advantage at all. It’s SEO goofballism to think if the New York Times does a story about your site, and links to you, that you would be worse off if you linked back to the story.

“so I’ve been thinking I should link some sites to some, others to others; and as i understand it; make sure there isn’t a loop made in the process.
does that sound like a good plan?”

It’s by far the worst thing you can do. This is a link scheme, and you’ve even said so. Search engines can and definitely should penalize such behavior.