'PageRank Mania - Is it getting out of
hand?'
by Jill Whalen of
HighRankings.com
I'm sad, I'm mad and
disillusioned a tad. (Do I smell a hit country song on the
horizon?) I thought the search engine optimization community
had changed. Silly me. I guess I was fooled by the
discussions on the importance of good content cropping up
all over the place. I actually believed that people had
finally come 'round to performing SEO with integrity and
honesty, and were abandoning tricks and manipulation. I feel
so dumb. I should have known that as long as there was a
possibility of tricking or manipulating the search engines,
SEOs around the globe would figure out how, and not be
afraid to do it.
Let me back up here a bit, so you can understand what has me
so hot and bothered.
Why do you link to sites? Is it because they're useful and
informative and might be worthwhile to your site visitors?
Or is it because you hope you'll get a reciprocal link,
which just might boost your link popularity and/or PageRank?
Perhaps it's some combination of these things, or other
reasons all together.
Everyone likes having links to their site; that seems to be
a given. When they're from appropriate sites, inbound links
often bring a lot of high quality traffic. In fact, the Web
was founded on the practice of linking, which is why it's
called the "Web." Without linking, I guess it would be just
a list. Welcome to the World Wide List. Blech.
As soon as people realized that search engines such as
Google were placing an emphasis on who's linking to whom in
their ranking algorithms, all hell broke loose as far as I'm
concerned. I'll never forget the feeling of dread I felt
when I read the first post in I-Search many years ago that
went something like, "Hey...I've got a great idea! Since the
search engines are counting the number of links to sites in
their ranking algorithms, why don't we all link our sites to
each other?" Whoohoo! Witness the birth of the link farm.
It didn't take "savvy" Webmasters long to realize that they
could create whole bunches of sites for one company, and
link them all together to *artificially* inflate their link
popularity. If there's a way to trick the engines, you
betcha plenty of people will figure out how to do it. But
this is old news.
In the past six months or so, Google has been doing its best
to put a stop to this sort of manipulation. Many sites that
were "optimized" in this fashion have seen their PageRank
scores vanish. When this happens, their backward links don't
exist as far as Google is concerned. Without backward links,
rankings in the search results are basically nonexistent. Oh
what a cryin' shame. NOT! I say, "You go, Google Girl!" If
Webmasters and SEOs have the need to vandalize Google's
PageRank function, then they shouldn't cry when they get
sent to their rooms without any supper.
Because of the Google crackdown, SEOs and Webmasters are
facing other issues. Suddenly, there's a mad scramble to try
and figure out "safe" linking procedures. Everyone is scared
to link or get linked to, because they may get the dreaded "PageRank
penalty." More and more people are asking what the criteria
are to safely link sites together. The answer is simple -
don't build bunches of sites for the sole purpose of linking
them together in order to increase your link popularity or
PageRank. Just don't do it. Don't, don't, don't. Can I make
this any clearer? That said, if you own multiple sites (that
weren't created for the purpose of link popularity), is it
safe to link them to each other? My answer to that is if it
makes sense to do so, then sure, link them together. If it
adds value to the user to have a link from one site to the
other, of course you should do it. That's what linking is
all about.
I refuse to believe that Google or any other search engine
is looking for ways to make fewer sites show up in their
search results. They're not interested in banning sites that
provide great information. They *are* interested in
maintaining the integrity of their search results, however.
Therefore, I suggest you don't ruin an otherwise great site
by attempting to trick the search engines. You may not get
caught today; you may not even get caught tomorrow. Heck,
you may never get caught. But if you do, you'll have to
start over from scratch in order to redeem yourself.
Another facet to all this PageRank mania is Webmasters who
purposely "hoard" their PageRank. That is, they refuse to
link out to any other sites because they want to keep all of
their PageRank within their own site. Sure, if you add a
reciprocal link to their site, they might link out to yours.
But is this what we've degraded to? Doesn't seem to matter
that there might be a great page out there that could be
extremely useful to their site visitors. This no longer
enters the equation. It's all about containing PageRank. (To
read more about how PageRank works, see
this issue of Rank Write.) Which brings me back to why
I'm sad, mad and disillusioned. It appears that PageRank is
beginning to drive how people link to each other, and that
is just plain wrong. When an informational site or a forum
refuses to link to another site or discussion because it
might take their visitors away, and/or take away some
PageRank, then we've got a huge problem. To me, links are
not a commodity to be bought, sold and traded. I link to
other sites and discussions when it's appropriate to do so,
and not with the caveat that I get a link back. If it's
helpful, it's helpful whether or not they link back to my
site. As much as I like to think I know it all, in reality I
don't (you didn't hear that from me!). Linking to other
sites can fill the gaps in my knowledge, and that's
important to my site visitors. Like I always say, search
engine optimization is all about making your site the best
it can be. When we become so consumed by what sites we can
and can't link to, or even whether we can link at all, then
we're not making our site the best it can be. We're letting
other factors dictate our site content, and that's just not
right.
Author Jill Whalen is the owner of
HighRankings.com
and moderator of the free weekly email newsletter,
the High
Rankings' Advisor. She is also known for her moderation
of the critically acclaimed,
Rank Write Roundtable.
Jill specializes in search engine optimization, directory
submissions, SEO consultations and workshops. She has
obtained hundreds of number 1 and 2 spots for her vast array
of clients throughout the years. Clients include
multi-million dollar companies, major universities, real
estate agencies, attorneys, surgeons, dentists, and
small-medium sized businesses. Contact Jill at
jill@highrankings.com.
