Quote of the Week: Hannibal Lecter's Guide to Link Building

Quote of the Week from Eric Ward's article on so-called "best practices" in link building:

Hannibal Lecter followed a set of "best practices" when he ate a census taker's liver, and those best practices included Fava beans and a nice Chianti, but having best practices didn't make him any less insane.


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Posted by Melanie Phung

Over-optimization of a Wikipedia Article

Does an over-optimization penalty exist? And what counts as over-optimization? I came across this discussion on on the "950 penalty" on Webmaster World. They posit that too many internal links with optimized anchor text is what triggers an over-optimization penalty. And maybe they are onto something.

This week I was testing the effect of increased cross-linking on a Wikipedia page -- by finding related articles and linking back to the target, by adding the target to more relevant categories -- and I probably doubled the number of internal pages linking to the one I wanted to boost.

Instead of boosting the page in the SERPs, it appears this effort might have torpedoed the page. This morning it was nowhere to be found in the top 100 results anywhere. It's not a competitive term, and none of the other results appear to have changed dramatically, so it seems reasonable to me to assume it was something about this page, not the results in general, and that there was a causal relationship between the links and the drop.

I'm not entirely surprised that "excessive" interlinking could hurt; I'm just surprised that (what I'd consider to be) a moderate amount of interlinking could get a Wikipedia page penalized so quickly. I truly believed pages on that domain were more robust and could stand up to that strategy. (After all, there is a ton of internal linking and all internal links on Wikipedia use optimized anchor text.)

Well, time to undo some of those links and see if it comes back.

Update: March 2
I removed most, but not all, the internal links and the listing came back rather quickly, though in a lower position than before.

On an upbeat note ... I managed to get a Wikipedia page erased from Google, temporarily? Damn, how awesome is that?

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Posted by Melanie Phung

How to Buy Links That Aren't Paid Links

Funny link-building tip from our friends at SEO Black Hat: "Buying and selling links without the nofollow tag is now officially a black hat SEO practice that is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines... If you buy the entire site then you’re no longer violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by changing where it links."

That's pretty damn funny. (But don't get me started on the whole "buying a link is black hat" Ugh! This gets me mad! My opinion on that issue is much like PhilC's and a big clap clap clap to brettbum for his excellent posts.)

I totally want to throw in a TLA affiliate link right here, but stupid Blogger won't let me insert any scripts into the post. Let's see if I can work around that...)

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Posted by Melanie Phung

Paid Links Lose Value (Or: Google Says, I Told You So)

Google has been warning the SEO community it would put the smack down on paid links. The message started coming in loud and clear earlier this year with the Google guys and gals talking at conferences about how the GOOG don't like no bought links, and that sparked a lot of debate on all the forums: Just how would search engines distinguish paid links from "natural" links?

Then, in case you weren't listening, Google started a de-PageRankifying campaign that was sure to get the community talking: first it dropped the Toolbar PageRank of paid directories (presumably those that had been created for SEO purposes) and then, more dramatically, it stripped major general-interest sites like the WashingtonPost.com of their precious green Toolbar pixels.

"You listen' now, punks?" asked Google.

That, all the savvy SEOs knew, was just a shot across the bough bow, because does WaPo really care about how many green pixels it gets in the Toolbar? Does that change the economics of their business? No. But...with the holidays coming and Google having a reputation for making big, disruptive algo changes right before the big shopping season, I for one warned that sites utilizing paid linking as part of their link strategy would see the effects soon.

And in three... two ... one:




Here's are the Google rankings of one site for its top keywords and keyword phrases -- check out what happened to that site's rankings since Friday (I was out of the office on Monday, so it might have happened as recently as yesterday). [ed. I should note that none of the affected pages themselves lost any Toolbar PR, because the TBPR thing is only symbolic. It's the rankings (and therefore traffic) that actually matter.]

Just eyeballing this chart, it looks like paid links were stripped of their link juice, but not that the buyers of those links were heavily penalized. In the example above, most of the rankings dropped only a page -- that's significant, don't get me wrong, but it's not as bad as the dread Minus 30 penalty, or an outright ban. Unlike the Minus 30 penalty, there isn't going to be an opportunity to beg forgiveness. The links that were devalued can be removed, but that won't help get your rankings back up. In fact, it's entirely possible that Google isn't done with this update yet and that further drops in these sites' positions will occur.

But not everyone loses out in this latest rankings shuffle, obviously. Some sites -- those that didn't participate in detectable paid linking -- get to move up a couple of spots. (Well la-dee-da, lil' Goody Two Shoes.)

But, you knew the "buy yourself top organic rankings" strategy wouldn't last in the long run.

Or maybe I speak to soon... also possible that this was a one time index clean-up and not a permanent change to the algorithm, in which case you could continue to discreetly buy links on other sites that haven't been outted yet. hmmm.... I'm not saying that paid links are the best value for your money right now, but people tend to overreact to changes in the search engine landscape. I really wouldn't advise you to pull the plug on every paid link you have out there; knee-jerk reactions to an algo shift aren't going to help. There's no way that Google figured out every single link that's been paid for on the entire Internet ... point of the hyperbole: some of those paid links might still be worth quite a bit. The trick is knowing which ones.

I also want to know how this is going to effect business of the big text link brokers. Are people going to stop buying text links now? I for one still think there's plenty of opportunity there, as long as sites selling links stop being so frickin obvious about it. Like the WashingtonPost - they put the same block of paid link on ALL of their tens of thousands of pages. Of course that was going to be detected!

How 'bout you? Are you changing your strategy? And how do you hope to make up for the lost rankings now that the paid links aren't boosting your position (assuming you paid for links, that is)?

Updated December 7: May I Have This Google Dance?
Less than 2 weeks after I published the post above, a funny thing happened. All the rankings came back to what they were before and have been holding steady since. I think they listened to me when I said "good things come to those who don't panic." (Paid links are dead! Long live paid links?)

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Posted by Melanie Phung

Pretty Quiet on the Blogging Front

It's the end of the month and I realized I've barely posted at all in the last few weeks. There are at least half a dozen posts started but never finished just sitting in the queue, but a heck of a lot of good that does anyone.

So, yeah, I've been pretty busy. Lotsa stuff going on at work. I can't really talk about it (shhhh) but I'll mention that I had to lay off two of my staff, which was really hard to do. I'm also spending more time on brand management (again) and product merchandising, the latter of which generates a greater sense of urgency going into the holiday season than SEO projects do. (Xmas SEO? Puh-leeze, we took care of that back in July. J/K)

Obviously the big SEO chatter this month was about the contentious paid links debate and the related issue of several major sites (like the WashingtonPost.com, for example) losing a lot of PageRank. Bruce Clay does a nice job of rounding up relevant posts on the subject here and here. If you haven't been following the debate, you might want to start with Rand's roundup of the links session at SES San Jose.

Other news some of you may find interesting is that Google seems to be changing the way it displays sitelinks (at least intermittently). Here's an example of the new 8-link layout I'm seeing a lot in Google's sitelinks:

PBS sitelinks


I'm hopeful that I'll be able to start blogging again more regularly soon, once the work drama subsides (assuming it does).

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Posted by Melanie Phung

Reasons to Have a Blogroll

My analytics show that someone found this blog at some point searching on something related to why you should blogroll. There isn't anything on the site to answer that question, and I thought it was a good one, so I thought I'd take a shot at it. So here are 5 reasons to have a blogroll on your blog:

  1. Because your readers are interested in what you're reading, what inspires you, to put your work into more context.

  2. Because your readers want more good content; why not be the one to help them find it?

  3. Because the third "W" in WWW stands for "Web"... as in a network. That's the whole point of the intar-web now, ain't it?

  4. Because bloggers like showing up in blogrolls and maybe (just maybe) they'll link back to you and send you some new readers.

  5. Because outbound links can help search engines figure out what your pages are about.

So why don't I have a blogroll? Another good question. Where would I put it? My site isn't really designed for more links in the template. I could get rid of my "What Am I Reading" list, but I think that serves a very similar purpose -- to provide up-to-date, related content.

If you read this blog and think "this blog is fabulous, but would be so much better with a blogroll!" let me know. If you're a reader of this blog and think "this is the worst SEO blog ever!" ... well, I've got a 3-point rebuttal: 1) shows what you know -- that honor is already claimed by this blog. 2) Why do you read it if you think it sucks? That's not very smart. 3) Keep it to yourself. I don't like to hear from not-smart haterz.

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Posted by Melanie Phung

Google Bomb Algorithm Separate From Ranking Algorithm

One of the interesting tidbits from this morning's discussion with Google's Matt Cutts has to do with how Google diffuses a "Google bomb" (such as the ones that Stephen Colbert recently pulled off with "greatest living American" and "giant brass balls").

The reason they crop up and then disappear suddenly (as opposed to never succeeding in the first place) does not include any editorial intervention -- however suspicious it may look. That's consistent with what they've always said, even when the "miserable failure" results had President Bush's bio page at the top forever.

Apparently the algorithm that sniffs out Google bombs is not built into the regular ranking algorithm; it's run separately and only once every couple of months.

Another (valuable?) insight from this conference: Vanessa Fox is a big Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. (Updated June 15: Vanessa Fox is leaving Google!)


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Posted by Melanie Phung

Sponsored Post: SponsoredReviews.com

SponsoredReviews.com launched in beta today and of course I went and signed up right away. (Damn, that's one more site I need to include in my review of paid blogging services, which I said I'd do last month and still haven't gotten around to.)

Right off the bat, the thing I already like (from an advertiser's perspective) is that the system more closely resembles an RFP system; that is to say, you post an opportunity (here SponsoredReviews.com uses the same language as PayPerPost) and bloggers can submit bids to do the reviews for you. You can accept a blogger's bid, haggle over the price or reject the bid outright (if the blog is off-topic, of poor quality, too expensive, etc.) None of the other paid blogging services allow you to reject specific bloggers.

Within 30 minutes of posting an opportunity to see how well SponsoredReviews.com worked, I had 2 bloggers bid on it -- which seemed decent for a service that just launched earlier that morning. After about 2 hours I had about two dozen bids.

Like ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews.com allows you to actively approach specific bloggers with your opportunities, which they can then choose to take on if they wish. The mechanism by which to search for relevant blogs to approach is similar to ReviewMe; advertisers can browse by keywords the bloggers have chosen to describe their sites.

As far as the service goes from a blogger's point of view, I haven't had much time to play around with it, but I like that I can pursue specific opportunities (like PayPerPost) and that the payouts tend to be higher (like ReviewMe, except the likelihood of actually getting to do a review are much higher. I have yet to be approached by an advertiser through ReviewMe since I signed up).

If you'd like me to review and link to your site, you can do so from my SponsoredReviews.com profile page. But I'd caution you to read the paid reviews I've done of other sites first (read: if your site sucks, I won't hesitate to lambaste you).

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Posted by Melanie Phung

PayPerPost Segmentation Benefits Advertisers, Bloggers

I'm still working on that (unpaid) review of the various pay per blog services, but in the meantime, PayPerPost is really trying to get the word out about the upgrades they've made to their blog marketing service.

The most important update allowed for segmentation -- that is to say, for advertisers to narrow down which bloggers could take an ad "opportunity" according to blog topic, Alexa rankings, Google Toolbar PageRank and other criteria.

Unfortunately, the interface was really buggy the first few days after the new release, which is never a good way to launch an upgrade. Advertisers were unable to increase the number of blogs they wanted to recruit for any given ad campaign; bloggers found that their Alexa rankings and Google PR were not adequately reflected in their accounts, so they were excluded from participating in ad campaigns they should have been eligible for.

Luckily nearly all of the major bugs appear to have been ironed out now. And that distraction aside, the upgrade was a good one. Because advertisers now have more control over the quality of sites their "ads" run on, they are willing to pay more for those links. There are some campaigns paying as much as $1,000 per post ... if you happen to have an on-topic blog with PR7 or higher.

These higher payouts make paid blogging more attractive to serious bloggers and is probably attracting bigger, more reputable sites that might not have considered PayPerPost as a revenue opportunity (not when they could get $200 at ReviewMe, and the usual payout for PayPerPost pre-segmentation was less than $6).

I'm pretty bullish on PayPerPost (which has nothing to do with this being a paid post - Scout's Honor!), and if they keep innovating (and keep aggressively reminding participants that disclosure is mandatory) I think the service will continue to attract new bloggers and advertisers.



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Posted by Melanie Phung

SEO/SEM Firms Using Paid Blogging ...

... for themselves.

It seems there's an inordinate number of search marketing firms using paid blogging services like PayPerPost and Blogsvertise to build links to their own sites. Apogee Search, for example, is using PPP to advertise its services for helping small businesses get Top Google Rankings (what seems like it would be a very competitive phrase, but the results for that search don't seem very authoritative). I don't know why exactly, but this strikes me very much like when personal injury attorneys advertise on late night TV -- I guess it's kosher, but it strikes me as déclassé.

Here's an interesting quote from Apogee's site: "Remember there is only 5% of the SEM industry that is worth trusting" (which I'd rewrite: Remember, only 5% of the SEM industry is worth trusting... except I think that's awfully pessimistic.) And another one: "Starting with SEO instead of PPC is a red-flag of common industry malpractice." Say what?

I really don't think fostering mistrust in search engine optimization firms is a great strategy for promoting your own search marketing firm, but there seems to be an awful lot of that going around.

This has been a paid post (filed under Blatant Advertising) via PayPerPost.

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Posted by Melanie Phung

Text-Link-Ads.com Script Doesn't Work on Custom Blogger Templates

Title pretty much says it all. According to Text Link Ads you need to be upgraded to the new version of Blogger for the script to work, but that's actually not quite true -- you need to use the new version of Blogger and use one of their standard templates. If you have an older custom template that you migrated to the new (then-beta) Blogger, you don't have the option of adding widgets. And the way the script is set up to display the text link ads, you need to add an XML feed to your template via a widget.

I've tried creating a separate blog, setting up the ads, and then copying the code into the template for this one; but that doesn't work because when a widget is created it's specific to a particular blog id... and I haven't even been able to find out what the blog id for All About Content is (did old Blogger sites get blog ids?).

It's probably not that hard, but as a non-programmer, non-coder I've hacked this about as much as I can without having to actually rebuild this blog with a new template (and I don't want to do that!). A reply to my emailed question to the company basically says, "it doesn't work" (or rather: we don't support that).

Okay, so I'm done for now. Never mind that idea.

Update: Just discovered some Blogger help pages that might help me hack this thing some more. It's probable that the old template won't let me use the widget builder (which is a bit like a WYSIWIG) but that I could somehow write the necessary code snippet by hand. That reminds me of some other adjustments I've been wanting to make. Will report back later.


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Posted by Melanie Phung

Google AdSense versus Text Link Ads

For advertisers, there is a significant difference between contextual ads and (non-ad-served) text link ads. Contextual ads, like the Sponsored Results you see on the side of search engine results pages are all about ROI; whereas text link ads are primarily about (c'mon now let's be honest) buying relevant inbound links that are intended to drive up rankings.

But for publishers, one concern looms larger than all others: show me the money!

After doing some investigating into the whole industry of purchasing text links (not to be confused with paid content or paid blog postings), I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I should migrate away from Google's AdSense system in favor of a text link broker like Text Link Ads, or the equally creatively named Text Link Brokers (both terribly generic company names that serve as ultra-relevant anchor text anytime someone links to them).

So here's the thing, it took me a whole year to get my first Google AdSense check. I look to be on track for another year of the same. Don't get me wrong, I have no real complaints about the program. So why am I thinking of walking away with money left on the table?

Reasons Why Text Links Are Better Than AdSense

  1. Google's minimum for actually cutting you a check is higher than most other services, but until the money is in your bank account you haven't actually earned anything yet.
  2. With contextual ads you only get paid when someone clicks, while the simple act of publishing the text links is all it takes to earn money under the other model. And depending on the default level you set for editorial oversight, text link ads can run themselves as easily as the AdSense script.
  3. While one could argue that visitors to the site might actually be interested in contextual ads and that text links, by comparison, are simply link spam --i.e., that I'd be doing my readers a disservice by switching to text ads -- the truth is that I don't think any regular readers of this blog are too interested in the cheesy contextual ads that get displayed alongside my posts currently.
  4. Because text link ads don't require anyone to actually click through, there's less pressure to pimp out a site with ads in very prominent locations. (Google advises advertisers to pay attention to eye tracking and heat map studies to make decisions on where to place ads.)

    and finally...

  5. Even if I only sold 1 link a month with Text-Link-Ads.com, I'd still be earning more money than I do with AdSense currently.


Whether you think text link ads are "black hat SEO" doesn't really matter if you're the publisher, not the advertiser. Even if there's a possibility that the search engines start discounting your links by virtue of being lower quality, the only reason this should matter to you as a site owner is if the ability to pass PageRank is part of your sales proposition (which means, de facto, that you were already trying to pull one over on the algorithms).

If you're a very large site, text link ads look pretty tacky, so I certainly don't think revenue should be the only consideration when deciding between AdSense and paid links; but on the other hand, AdSense would detract from how seriously I would take a large, would-be authoritative site as well.

If you're interested in selling ad space on your site as well, visit Text-Link-Ads.com.

Text Link Ads

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Posted by Melanie Phung

Link Building is Haaard...

I recently asked the g00gl3r at g00gl3r.com to add me to his (or her?) blogroll. And he/she agreed in exchange for a post where I link to him/her. A blogroll link for a single post? Oh yeah, baby, the g00gl3r must have been impressed with my PR5 homepage. [ed. Apparently it didn't come across that I was trying to be a little ironic. I think Toolbar PR is silly and is actually fairly meaningless.]

Okay, done. Now let's see if my link gets added to another SEO blogroll. Now you're probably asking, "Is that all it takes? Isn't that too easy? Why don't you just do that a few dozen times with a bunch of obscure blogs and then you'll have hundreds if not thousands of inbound links?"

And that would be a very insightful question/comment on your part. The truth is that it wouldn't be worth the work. Back in the bad old days before Google (and cohorts) got wise to link spam farms that was one of the first and easiest SEO strategies to address, but the data show that sheer number of IBLs is not as important anymore.

Quality, Not Quantity, of Links Counts
A recent case study by Fortune Interactive shows that the quality of inbound links, not quantity, is the most important factor in SEO.

In fact, the report says, "IBL Quantity is of least relative importance among the off-page factors across the board."

WebProNews explains:

For Google, it's not about how many people you know or how many people seem to like you. It's about, mostly, who points to you and says "there's a person worth visiting." Fortune Interactive's reverse engineering to decode how search algorithms work suggests that one weighty somebody is worth more than a multitude of nobodies. ...

Though each engine weighted IBL quality differently, Fortune Interactive determined with its proprietary SEMLogic technology that what happens off the webpage is more important that what happens on the webpage. In fact, IBL reputation was more important than even IBL relevance.

The fact that link building is important in SEO efforts is hardly breaking news, but now that reputation counts über alles, there really is very little you can do cheaply and easily to manipulate your link juice significantly. The only sure-fire strategy: Write killer content and get important people to link to you. If you write killer content consistently then you might get added to a "worthwhile" blogroll. Or, even better, get slashdotted.

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Posted by Melanie Phung

Washington Post Partners with Del.icio.us

My little local paper, the Washington Post, which has always pushed the envelope when it comes to trying new technologies and new ways of interacting with its readers, recently signed a partnership with del.icio.us.

Registered del.icio.us users can bookmark washingtonpost.com articles right from the page. Each article includes links for tagging del.icio.us, as well as Technorati trackbacks.

This is a good example of an old media outlet "getting" the Web. Instead of getting defensive (like European publishers, or the NY Times, which started restricting access to some articles to non-paying users), the Washington Post is embracing new ways to leverage the Internet for its own advantage.

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Posted by Melanie Phung

Paid Links and the Church of rel=nofollow

The story broke earlier this month that Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny sells links on his personal blog without using nofollow attributes. Matt Cutts of Google, on the other hand, has for month been championing nofollow tags on all paid links.

The story that's playing out is that Zawodny was "caught" doing this, as if underhandedly, with bad intentions, polluting the sacred ground that is the World Wide Web. But it's not like he pulled a Wordpress stunt by hiding the ads.

At issue, to simplify it for those of you who don't know, is that the current generation of search engines, starting with the invention of Google, count links to a site as "votes" of sorts in their algorithm and that paid links are basically fake votes. A while back, at the urging of the industry, the engines said they'd obey a "nofollow" tag, which webmasters can apply to an entire page or just one link at a time. Those links would then not be weighted in the PageRank (or equivalent) calculaton. Hence the call to put nofollow tags on "unnatural" links.

Just to be contrarian and for the sake of debate: I find it strange that Google's algorithm is now dictating how the Web should be structured. Paid ad links existed long before any algorithms were created that factored them in.

I guess I just don't see how it's my responsibility to keep search engine results relevant (by their definition) by catering to their algorithms - that's their job. If they think advertising shouldn't count as part of their equations - well bully for them. Advertising goes way back - it's part of how commerce work. And the Internet, like nearly everything else, is governed by economics. If the engines don't like paid links, they should, can, and for the most part have, figured out ways to discount those links.

Basically what we have is a great example of the tragedy of the commons. And I'm just not inclined to blame the individual herder for adding more cattle to the field as long as there aren't any rules against it. And for now at least, there aren't. As easy as it is to forget these days: Google is not the Web.

Get background on this nofollow debate. Check it out, even if only for the Link Condom parody site.

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Posted by Melanie Phung

Introduction to Google PageRank

Back to SEO basics: What is PageRank and why do SEOs talk about it?

The PageRank system was developed by Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to help determine a page's relevance or importance. This method of counting links to a page as votes of popularity set the Google search engine (then called "BackRub") apart from the previous generation of search engines.

Naturally people tried to take advantage of this by artificially inflating the number of inbound links (IBLs), so Google explains that its PR algorithm "looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.'"

But still, people try to make up in quantity what they lack in quality by engaging in artificial linkbuilding schemes (the linkbuilding is artificial, the schemes are real). And with each successive algorithm update Google seems to be discounting volume more and more. The latest Jagger update, word has it, really went back to focusing on votes from "important" pages and discounting votes from pages that themselves don't have many IBLs, as well as votes from pages that are not related to the topic of the page.

Contrary to popular belief, and despite how logical it seems, PageRank is not named thus because it ranks pages. PageRank is a value that's part of a much larger equation that's calculated whenever someone does a search on Google. PageRank is named after Larry Page.

Read more about PageRank and methods used to exploit it for higher rankings.


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Posted by Melanie Phung

Google Bowling? I Don't Think So

So WebPro News asks, are you paying attention to the practice of Google Bowling, where competitors sabotage your organic rankings by involving your website in unsavory SEO practices to get Google to penalize you? Sounds scary. The problem: That's nonsense.

Questionable inbound links generally do not carry any link value. But there's no evidence that Google penalizes a site for its inbound links. I don't believe they'd do that for precisely the reason the author gives: it's too easy (and too obvious) a way to game the engines and hurt your competitors.

The only reason Google will actively penalize you for the types of links coming into your site is if you are involved in a shady linking scheme. For example, a lot of spammers use triangle linking: Site A links to B; Site B links to C; and Site C links back to Site A. This way there's no "reciprocal linking" which has long caused inbound links to lose value.

Still, the search engines have enough data to easily sniff out these A-B-C schemes and considers them "bad neighborhoods." It can tell that there is an unnatural pattern because all the links only go to each other and because there are no links coming into the bad neighborhood from the rest of the web.

It's close to impossible to get someone else's website (over which you have no control) involved in this kind of scheme without the webmaster's knowledge (since it involves putting links to other bad neighborhood sites on the site).

So if you're a webmaster, don't fall for any "Pay $9.99 for thousands of links instantly" come ons. And don't link to sites that you don't think are of value to your customers.

How one goes about soliciting legitimate and valuable inbound links, well that's a different topic. Probably one of the hardest SEO things to do. But as for the search results being manipulated by malicious competitors - you can rest easy that it just doesn't work like that.

Updated Nov. 24:
There some related discussion on the subject of whether competitors can hurt your site's rankings on a Oct. 12 SearchEngineWatch discussion thread. One of the posters tells of some experiments he has run to test the theory.

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Posted by Melanie Phung

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