SEO questions

[puahawaii]

got a nice 4/10 PR upgrade to by hawaii blog recently.

yaro always tells us blog newbies to connect with fellow bloggers but my hawaii vacation blog is kind of a niche market, taken over by big corporations.

i still have to build strong incoming links for the blog. finally i found a 5/10 PR blog - but not travel or vacation related!! - which is willing to trade links with me but blog owner mentioned that she heard that google penalyses exchanges between non-content related blogs?

probloggers, what's your opinion??? thanks a million. pua

[westloh]

Good point. We'd need a polished blogger to answer that question. The way google is headed though I wouldn't be surprised... but I don't think it would hurt you badly... it just might not have the massive effect that it used to!

[MikeR]

Here is the catch....

When a site provides a link to yours, search engines like Yahoo pretty much just count it as a backlink. However, Google is believed to be a little more sophisticated. The consensus within the SEO community is that Google checks the relevancy of the page the link appears on (in this case - the PR5 site) and compares it to the relevancy of your site. If Google can correlate keywords like travel and Hawaii between the two sites, then you'd receive the full benefit of having an inbound "relevant" link which would pass some of that extra authority associated with the PR5 on to you. However, if there is no relevancy and Google figures that out, most likely it just won't be counted. If Google believes it to be a "paid link" you might even be penalized.

What you really need are links from authoritative travel oriented blogs, travel agencies and those kind of websites. If these sites have a section devoted to Hawaii and it directly links to your site - then you will likely gain the full benefit. From the user standpoint, this is really the most desired scenario, Why settle for just an unused link for a little authority when you could be getting links with both authority and the potential to drive some traffic that are interested in your niche. (I know - easier said than done.) I guess my point is to try and find relevant sites to link to and worry less about their PR.

For example, inbound links from 4 lower PR rated sites that are travel related will score you more points than 1 unrelated link from a high PR site in most cases. Well, that is the theory anyways though I'm not sure anyone has solid proof because relevancy is a difficult thing to determine through mathematics but most believe Google is taking a stab at it.

Mike

Originally Posted by puahawaii

i still have to build strong incoming links for the blog. finally i found a 5/10 PR blog - but not travel or vacation related!! - which is willing to trade links with me but blog owner mentioned that she heard that google penalyses exchanges between non-content related blogs?

[eranm]

Hi Pua,

There's just an element of truth in that statement to make it sound legit, but it's not the WHOLE truth...

When it comes to link exchanges, they definitely are not as attractive/desireable to Google when it comes to giving you a pr bump...

HOWEVER, the key is the manner in which it is done, and I think this is where most people go wrong.

They just charge out there & get links from anyone who will agree to give them one in exchange for giving a link back.

This tends to see viagra sites linking to golf sites, which link to travel sites which link to god knows what! :-)

Yes, a link exchange between 2 sites that discuss similar topics IS a good thing, but even if the other site doesn't discuss the same topic as you, doesn't mean you can't effectively swap links.

So, the BEST way to do it is via a post on each other's blog pointing at a particular page in the other person's site, discussing a particular subject and having a good reason for having a link in there.

Make sure you both don't link to the other's home page. Instead, aim to link to a specific post/page article deep inside their site. In the SEO world, we call this deep linking.

Also, make sure there is a GOOD reason for writing a post that includes that link. For example, your PR 5 site owner could write about his/her recent trip to Hawaii and include a link to your site as a resource they used to research places to go & things to do while there.

Then, you write your own post telling about the subject this person focusses on, and include a deep link to one of their pages as a resource, etc.

Here's a real world example. On my own blog, I write about my travels in the SEO & Adwords world (since that's what I do professionally), but just recently, I posted an article about the Red Bull Air Race that was just held in my home city of Perth, Western Australia.

Totally off topic for my blog...BUT, (i) it's my blog and I can write what I want to on it :-) and (ii) I included several outbound deep links to pages of relevence to the topic.

Now, Google is not going to penalise me just because I haven't written about this topic on my blog before (after all, aren't blogs MEANT to be all about writing about your thoughts and musings?) JUST because I discussed the air race instead of SEO, AdWords, etc.

More importantly, those sites I linked to are not going to get penalised by Google just because I don't normally write about the air race.

Instead, Google will look at the content of the entire article and take that into context, AND examine where the links go & what they are about. You can quickly see that all links are relevent and on topic, so my link will benefit their site, even though my blog is not about that topic as a rule.

You can see the exact article here as an example:

Red Bull Air Race Perth | EranMalloch.com

Yes, link exchanges are not as good as one-way incoming links, BUT if done properly and everything is in context, they will help, not hinder.

Also, Google does not indiscriminently penalise a site for the links that come into them. Otherwise it would be easy for one person/company to cause their competition to be penalised by setting up a pile of trashy links to them. However, they will look at where you link to and as long as its a genuine legit site, they won't see that as bad.

They CAN minimize the value of a link if they deem it suspicious, but it doesn't make sense for them to PENALIZE your site for the incoming links.

After all, how can you - as a site owner - totally control who links to you and how & why???

Just be more aware that a great link works BEST when there is context surrounding it, rather than just an isolated link pointing to someone's site, with no accommpanying text to justify it.

OK Pua, I hope this helped? Feel free to ask more questions if you need to and you can use my red bull post as an example (to the other site owner) of how to do it right.

All the best.


Eran Malloch
http://EranMalloch.com

[gosfgiants]

While non-related links aren't as good as related links, I'm of the opinion ALL links are good. Just some are better than others.

[SEO_Promotion]

Originally Posted by puahawaii

got a nice 4/10 PR upgrade to by hawaii blog recently.

yaro always tells us blog newbies to connect with fellow bloggers but my hawaii vacation blog is kind of a niche market, taken over by big corporations.

i still have to build strong incoming links for the blog. finally i found a 5/10 PR blog - but not travel or vacation related!! - which is willing to trade links with me but blog owner mentioned that she heard that google penalyses exchanges between non-content related blogs?

probloggers, what's your opinion??? thanks a million. pua

Google will raise red flag if your blog talks about charity, and you exchange links with Strip Poker site.

You need to remain within your niche , if you really plan to score higher rankings on search engines.

Moreover Page Rank has no significance from the perspective of actual SEO rankings. You should concentrate on increasing your rankings, and not Page Rank.

Page Rank depends upon number of back links, however your actual ranking depends upon quality of back links

[erikko]

if you really want to develop powerful links, link your site within your niche

[varybarry21]

I agree erikko. I think that it is necessary to establish powerful niche links.

[SEO_Promotion]

Google does take into account the business theme of websites connected or backlinking to your domain.

If your site is about Web Design, you should concentrate on getting back links / link exchange from your niche sites i.e

Web Promotion
Web Development
Web Marketing
Internet Marketing
Web Design and Development
Software Development ( Web development can be termed as software development for large portal sites)
Ecommerce
Flash Design
Search engine promotion

etc etc.....

Getting links from your niche will help you gain higher rankings on search engines.

[despatcher]

It is unlikey you will get any notable PR boost by exchanging links. If it is a high-traffic blog you can exchange links with a NoFollow attribute - it will just give you traffic.

Anyway, I haven't seen G penalizing sites for having irrelevant backlinks. The most important thing is not to link out to bad neighbourhood.

If you are interested in a deeper research into Page Rank, you are welcome to visit my blog (in the signature).