Drew said:
"Recip linking is not necessarily the cure-all to get top rankings".
Hi Drew,
Thanks for sharing your own experience. I do need to clarify, again.
This is a long post, but I hope it goes a long way toward shedding
some light on the whole link popularity discussion in a way that is
rarely, if ever, put forward publicly by anyone in the SEO business.
As I have always said, consistently, for many years, on every forum
that I have ever participated in, I wholeheartedly agree with you
that recip linking is not *necessary*. I can name a lot of agent
sites that rank well without it. I can also name a lot of agent sites
that rank well because of it, and that includes the large,
competitive markets. We've told our clients, for years, to get as
many valid links as they can get, using whatever means work. We're
just a piece of the puzzle.
I'd also mention that blogroll link exchange and comment swapping is
also a form of reciprocation. In most cases, it's really just another
"You link to me, I link to you" arrangement. The mechanism is
slightly different, but the motivation of both parties toward
enhancing link popularity in the eyes of the search engines is often
at the forefront of a lot of it.
And why not? I have zero problem with it, or the motivation. The Web
is all about links. It's a mutual enhancement for two parties that
take the time to do it. Those who don't do it don't get the benefit.
Please see my recent post..."Successful Blogrolling and & SEO" here:
http://blog.domaindrivers.com/2009/01/08/successful-blogrolling-and-seo/
I'd like to take this discussion in another direction, if we could.
All valid links take some form of effort to get them. Some link
building methods are so time-intensive that very few agents can
really afford to "outsource" it.
Let's REALLY dig into the discussion, in a very detailed way, in
order to bring the whole link building discussion into some new
perspective....I hope that it will be valuable information for those
of us who do care about links.
One example of getting links is from local community-related sites,
local charities, and local related vendors. Finding them and
arranging to get links from them is a real "man-hours" task, if you
are going to be thorough. Yet those are certainly among the BEST
links that an agent can get. Because some of those links just might
deliver some great direct traffic on their own merit, and that
traffic is wholly independent of Google, or any engine. Now, that's a
link.
An out-sourced project to arrange that on behalf of an agent would
have a stunning "sticker shock", with virtually no guarantee of any
measurable success. A service vendor doing it would have no idea what
is possible to achieve in any particular market. Yet, it would most
likely be a very valid link investment. So, any agent who gets these
links usually gets them from their own sweat equity, and they'd
prefer to not assign a "dollar value" toward the cost of getting
them. They'd certainly not hire someone to do it and pay an
equivalent, professional value.
Another remarkably time-intensive method of getting links is the
"great content" approach. Again, it has been proven to work. In some
cases, remarkably well. It takes time to write something that is
worth citing, but then you also have to "promote it" somewhere,
somehow, in order to get someone else to link to it. Once again, the
sweat equity is ignored in the cost analysis, and few, if any, agents
would or could outsource it, for that reason.
All links can be assigned an "accessibility" value and a "method of
acquisition" (or methodology) profile. That is, if you run a link
back analysis on some well-ranking agent sites (something we've done,
hundreds of times, in a lot of markets), each and every link can be
assigned an accessibility value, and it came about from some type of
placement method (paid, content citation, swap, etc). You have to
ask, is that link accessible and available to other site owners? If
it's not, then it is merely a curiosity. A site owner can use it as
an example of what mechanism worked to get it, but you can't
"duplicate" that specific link.
So, any agent embarking on a link building program, consciously or
not, will immediately encounter the accessibility issue, the
methodology issue, and the full cost of acquisition issue (either
sweat equity or direct cost). We all know that links do not
materialize out of thin air.
That's one reason that Google is a multi-billion dollar company, with
their AdWords PPC program. They offer instant accessibility to their
traffic stream, for a defined cost, and a very straightforward
method. Start getting traffic within ten minutes.
Directory-to-directory reciprocation is high on the accessibility
scale, and modest on the cost scale, with a method that is not easy,
but at least manageable for most. So some people decide apply it to
their own site, after they see it working for other site owners. A
logical decision. There is also a high degree of anchor text and
landing page control with reciprocation.
Blog comment links are quite accessible, low cost, and they require
a very easy methodology. Just go do it. Which explains the explosion
in comment spam, and the subsequent "nofollow" policies and spam
prevention tools like Akismet. So, the net result is that one hundred
blog comment links with nofollow tags assigned to them might have
very little influence on Google, specifically. That's something that
we're analyzing right now.
And getting "DoFollow" links from DoFollow blogs is not as easy at it
first appears. Many DoFollow blog owners will remove the nofollow tag
only for reliable, repeat participants, using a tool called LinkyLove
to do it. So dofollow blog comment links are far less "accessible"
and take more work to get than nofollow links. And they are very
limited in quantity.
Blogroll links are not nearly accessible as blog comment links.
You have to either arrange to get them with an offer of exchange, or
else make yourself worthy enough to get them gratuitously. Our blog
comment tool mentioned above can help an agent get both blog comment
links, and blogroll links. But it does take effort.
Social networking links are emerging as a source of accessible links,
but getting them (and getting them indexed, so they affect rankings)
in any meaningful quantity takes a very concerted, managed
methodology. A link from a Facebook and MySpace account alone will
have little influence on Google, but 100 links from 100 SocNet sites
will. If you get them indexed. So we're building a tool to help do
just that.
We could also apply our link attribute criteria (accessibility, cost,
methodology) to paid directory links (YAHOO and others), free
directory links (there are about 200 reliable ones, not 2000, as some
vendors claim), and press release links.
After that, the pickings are very, very slim, with massive
accessibility, cost, and methodology problems that most agents cannot
overcome, due to time constraints. For instance, some people just do
not want to (or are not comfortable with) writing "great" content.
What should they do to get links?
We're in the business of managing reciprocation, because it is
accessible, duplicable, proven to work,and has a defined cost. The
same applies to free directory submissions. We're also building tools
to help agents get links from other methods, enhancing the
accessibility, improving the methodology, and thus, lowering the cost
of acquisition.
As link builders, we do not fantasize about links. We analyze the
link profiles of high ranking sites, assign accessibility, cost, and
methodology attributes to the links that we find.
Drew, you're very successful at this, without even reciprocating. I
wholeheartedly applaud you. You've done the right things to get
there.
I guess the question to ask, is this: If you were advising a new
agent with a new site in a tough SEO environment like Phoenix on how
to "duplicate" your own success, what asset resources, in terms of
both direct cost and sweat equity, should they expect to assign to
the task? How many man hours per week, and how long to success? ALso,
what skills do they need to bring to the table?
That is the real crux of our discussion, I think. Drew, you don't do
what I am going to describe, but some advisors in real estate tell
agents to "go get one-way links", then they give them some casual "do
this" and "do that" advice that leaves ALL of the critical
methodology and accessibility details to be worked out by the agent.
A giant cloud of confusion is the real advice being delivered. I see
that all of the time, in ActiveRain. It's hollow advice, really.
Quite often, it is just a thinly disguised "I've got my links, good
luck getting yours" statement that leaves many of their readers more
envious than informed.
As service vendors, we can arrange for the most accessible links for
our clients or, now, we are beginning to provide tools that guide an
agent exactly where they go and what they need to do to get them.
That is instead of just talking about links that *might* exist in
some imagined, theoretical SEO scenario, we try to actually help them
GET links that do exist, are accessible, and affordable.
That's where I am coming from. I am not here to just promote
reciprocation for the sake of reciprocation. Actually, I am really
weary of that whole discussion on the merits of reciprocation. At
this point, I think that search results have proven that it should
just be another available option in the mix.
Best regards,
Dirk Johnson
Partner - Operations
DomainDrivers LLC
djohnson@domaindrivers.com
703-406-4698
http://domaindrivers.realtown.com
We're an approved RealTalk/RealTown vendor:
http://DomainDrivers.InternetCrusade.com
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