Google and giving out links
Posted on 22. Apr, 2010 by Franz in Marketing, Web Marketing
If I would talk about this, it’ll be some 6 or 7 years ago. But no, I didn’t speak of this in public until today.
Because this tactic is such an old one, I’d like to point some things out to newbies and also; hopefully remind the pros. If you do not know what I mean or want to know more about what the hell I’m talking about, read more below.
To a number of marketers out there, it could be a brilliant tactic to gather attention. Attention of which is still a baby, and you need to nurture them out. Bear in mind that you’re in ultimate control of the topics you can talk about, and how you can still hook this person up with any of your motives.
This is what a lot of people don’t do: Engage.
A responsible linker?
When you throw a link out there, many marketers make the same mistake: They don’t follow up, they don’t take responsibility of the link they publish and worst of all, they don’t engage the “linkee”. To a certain extent, you can argue that the linked-to webmaster or owner of the website is not replying: But you can do what marketers do best on the Internet – Perform research, dig him out and be a friend!
To Google and many search engines out there, I believe, throwing a link out to another website is a good indication of the publisher trying to make a point or a statement about another website, or in this case, a person or an organization. Let’s ignore spam in this case and talk about natural linking out practices.
Google is very well known around the Internet world for being the ‘discipline teacher’. It’s not like they will penalize you for your irresponsible linking practices: But you’re going to keep them guessing and not give a good indication of what’s going on – Leaving Google skeptical of your intentions and therefore, marking you as a potential spammer.
By looking at this ginormous search engine alone, you could come out with a hypothesis saying that: “Whenever Google first discovers your website, it could be listed in the ‘more skeptical’ zone under the ‘could be spam’ section”. The reason for this is simple: They are so hard up with spammers; fed up with boys trying to kill their search quality (or in other words, their cake) that they decided to be a girl and be skeptical about a stranger approaching them, wanting to be their friend.
That’s why back then in 2007 all the way up until 2009 (those are the days where I study online search deeply), there have been indications of this hypothesis. I’m not saying that this actually happen in large, but it could be. But how could this relate to whatever we’re talking here?
Links. Because links are one of the most important factors in how Google ranks, sees and rates you, it boils back to thousands of points to how you use links: Giving, taking, providing, styling and so forth.
That’s why I often call for responsibility when it comes to links, whenever you’re targeting Google for search. Craft your links to benefit, tell a good story to your audience, engage the person you’re linking to and if you can work together to do something awesome online – Then do it!
It’s just the matter of time before you notice that instead of using search engines for targeting, you’re using auxiliary sites such as social media sites or news publishing sites with different demographics to gain valuable visits and conversions.
Then search engines would probably just be your publicist; and viewers’ discovery channel. The real value actually comes from you and the business itself.
Make your link-tos’ worth it
Engage. Make a point. Shout something out loud. Take your case to the court. Say things that mark your intentions clearly and concisely. Give value to others for their credibility and work.
It seems so simple to understand.
And for Google…
In whatever we do online, as long as you’re making search robots discover your site (by allowing web robots to crawl or discover your website), they would try and understand your behaviors and probably even guess out your intentions, motives and so forth.
When you’re trying to market a website, you need to communicate with these robots or give them indications of your intentions, instead of just leave them guessing. And one strong indicator (in my opinion) of how Google actually values your website is termed ’site authority’.
Site authority isn’t just how awesome your content is, or how many visitors visit your site, how beautiful your site is or… whatever your wild imaginations could take you to. It’s a combination of probably everything; links being one of the highest factors in determining your site authority.
Let me give you a very, very short list of my “Google Factor” suspects:
- Linkage behaviors (amount of links in/out, authority of site linking to/from, content of link versus topic-level content, placement of links, emphasis of links, choice of text on links, indicators and directions of links, etc.)
- Contents of your ‘content’ (how related words match under a topic/in an article, usage of certain keywords and its matching content, how strong is your content is vs. a trust-able source [probably why they have Google Knol and supported Wiki so much] under the same category, how you structure your keywords and its placement, breakdown of related keywords in a topic [e.g. Aviation repair services | aeroplane maintenance | taking care of your wind brakes and flaps… you get the drill.)
- Flow of content (this has just been introduced not long ago.. I suspect). The way you paragraph your content, how you deliver your content, the structure and general flow of thought, display of content, ease of use, etc. I’ve no evidence to support my statement on ‘Google can now read, understand and will give certain valuation by scanning through your website structure’ but I’ve experienced some of this to be true.
- Selection of auxiliary services and choices of coding technology. This could be false, seeing that Yahoo was once very inclined to give more value to those who are with their partners, their technology and product implementations. This may happen because of technical issues; totally not looking suspicious. Although this is a widely debated topic, don’t take small little things like this for granted: It could be one of their trade secrets… or once was.
