linkback contest

[bigblock]

Interesting concept from "This is True".

Do you have a web site? We'd appreciate a link from you! Please link to our home page.

To make it more interesting and fun, here's what we'll do in return: each month we'll randomly pick one of the links that were registered below, then check our access logs to see if we got any hits from that link. If so, and the link is still on your page, you get a free autographed This is True book or a one-year Premium True subscription -- your choice. And -- probably best of all -- your site will be mentioned in This is True as a LinkUs winner, potentially driving tens of thousands of hits to you. Previous winners are listed below.

Full page is here:

http://www.thisistrue.com/linkus.html

Certainly not the best way to get a linkback, and probably only works if you have a monstrous subscriber list, as "This is True" does. Cool, though.

[Dan0]

I got a site banned by Google for offering a linking incentive... this is a little risky. It was ranked in the top ten when this happened.

-- Dan0

[ihelpyou]

Yep. It would be just a matter of time. Anything you do linking wise that is unnatural, will come back to bite you in the ass sooner or later.

[WebSavvy]

Hmmm... that's odd to get banned for something like that, as it's a CONTEST.

Allan Gardyne, from associateprograms.com has been running a contest for free advertising for a number of years without having suffered for it.

He offers webmasters who place a link to his site, the chance to win free advertising for a month on his site, in return for their having placed the link to his site on theirs.

The "Link To Us and Win" info is on the index page right hand side about half way down the page.

[ihelpyou]

That's right, and it's not natual. This is what Google watches for. Just because something has worked does not mean it will forever. If you play with fire you can/will get burnt.

[WebSavvy]

I find this reasoning very odd. If it were standard procedure in SE's to ban ALL sites who do link incentives, then why would associateprograms.com rank #1 in Google with query associate programs and have more than 700 pages indexed and have 4260 references to associateprogram.com in Google between backwards links and sites that contain the term associateprograms.com?

Allan has been doing this for at least 5 years that I know of.

There are also tons of graphic sites who offer graphics for free known as linkware, whereby in order to use their FREE graphics you need to provide a link back to the graphic site on the same page which you are using their graphics on. There are more than 30 that I know of that are in the top 10 for relative terms on many major SE's and have been practicing this method for many years.

Why aren't they banned, if it is what is common procedure?

[Dan0]

If you use the Google toolbar, go to http://www.websitepromotioncentral.com, look at the PageRank (0), and search for backward links - you will find no links.

This site is in the Open Directory. It was, at the time they banned it, ranked in the top ten for "website promotion" on Google. Now, it's banned from Google, so even a Directory search on Google will not show this site.

The linking program is the reason I was given for this. They called the links "loose affiliation links" which apparently means "irrelevant links you're setting up to fool us."

Since then, I take no chances, and put nothing on my site that might offend the mighty Google relevance police.

Now that Google is taking over the world, I'm about ready to shut this particular site down completely.

I think "linkware" is a different subject, really. It was the incentive offered for linking that cheesed them off.

-- Dan

[WebSavvy]

Gee that's too bad Dan. All I was getting at is, I find the (search engine) logic behind this, odd.

It's like they can arbitrarily choose at their own whim as to whom they'll punish, and whom they'll let slide by.

If a search engine is to have outlined procedures and standardized guidelines and expects all of us to abide by their TOS, then why aren't the playing fields more level?

It would seem to me, that in fair business practices the same guidelines, as well as rules and standards, must be the same for all if it is to be considered uniform.

I would think that this type of arbitrary discrimination would somehow be addressable in a court on the issue of accountability. If a search engine can be dragged into court for "selling trademark keywords for placement" they should also be accountable for reasons as to why some businesses are punished for the very thing other "unpunished businesses" have been openly doing for any given number of years.

[Dan0]

Google is famous for arbitrary discrimination. Since their standards are so vague, it's hard to argue with them on any determination they make. Not that they listen. :ignore:

For most of the folks they've gone after, it's hardly worth the cost of taking them to court. I'd be broke before I even saw a judge. Much less trouble to buy another domain name, move my content, and email my link partners with the change of address. Perhaps 10-20 hours work, and I can be back in the top ten in a few months.

The thing that's appalling is that a massive effort to fool the Google algorithm (Webseed's 20,000 domain link farm) got the perpetrators the digital equivalent of a slap on the wrist, while a lot of small sites have gotten the "Google death penalty."

We've interviewed several participants from "Links To You," whose members are systematically banned by Google - in every case, the links they acquired from LTY were driving traffic to their site, and they weren't even aware that it might "artificially inflate their link popularity" (this is how Google describes it).

Google's 'search quality police' decide what your intent is, without asking you to explain what you're doing, then they act on that belief. No warnings, no appeals.


-- Dan0

[Alan Perkins]

Hi Dan0

What kind of links were you promoting back to your site? Visible or invisible? If possible, please post an example of a page that links to www.websitepromotioncentral.com in the way that got you penalised.

[Alan Perkins]

Ah, I found one using AltaVista.

http://abtechnical.com/00business09.htm

The concept is very different from the one posted by bigblock. In bb's example, thousands of people who were already aware of a site and the content it contained were asked to link to that site. In response, that site would link back to just one of those thousands, presumably having carefully reviewed it.

[Advisor]

It's like they can arbitrarily choose at their own whim as to whom they'll punish, and whom they'll let slide by. Since no site has a god-given right to be listed in Google, I would have to say that they can do whatever they want in this respect.

I remember reading on WMW, (where GoogleGuy happens to post a lot), something about Google not trying to go against the average joe schmoe Webmaster, or mom and pop website. The sites they're targeting for penalties have for the most part attempted some sort of artificial inflation of link building in order to subvert their rankings in Google. Apparently, there was a while there when some "regular" sites got caught up in that by mistake. However, it seems that they've done a much better job lately of punishing only the true offenders.

This is why average site owners do have to be careful who they hire to help them with their rankings, as Doug likes to point out a lot.

Jill

[Dan0]

Hey Alan...

I don't know if any of them are still out there, I was pretty active about getting them removed, but they were visible links. Nothing "spammy" about them, but the sites that put them up were not necessarily about website promotion. The text of the link was something like "free search engine submission service provided by website promotion central."

The incentive for linking was adding their domain to my check & submit database, which is offline now, but it did a weekly check for all of our domains to see if they were included in the 7 major SE databases (there used to be even more than that...) and resubmitted any that had dropped out, using a random proxy and a scripted posting technique that looked like a manual submission.

Jill is absolutely right, too - it's their search engine and they can do what they want.

-- Dan0

[Alan Perkins]

Hi Dan0

Here's the AV search if you're interested in finding out who still links to you:

http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/web?q=+link:www.websitepromotioncentral.com+-host:www.websitepromotioncentral.com&pg=q&avkw=tgz&kl=XX

Note that it's usually your links to others that damages you, not others' links to you.

Alan

[Dan0]

Thanks, I hadn't tried Altavista - here's one of the offending links:

http://www.no-smoke.org/about.html - down at the bottom of the page where it says "Free monthly search engine submission provided by Website Promotion Central."

-- Dan0

[WebSavvy]

LOL! I didn't mean it as "they have a right to be listed" I meant it as, it's unfortunate that some sites get away with offering link incentive while others do not. It would be "fair" to either list all, or ban all, but treat "all" equally. :)

Yes, I've learned a lot from all of you about what types of links can get you in to trouble. And yes, these days you really have to look at what type of work your SEO has done and does do.

Originally posted by Advisor
Since no site has a god-given right to be listed in Google, I would have to say that they can do whatever they want in this respect.

I remember reading on WMW, (where GoogleGuy happens to post a lot), something about Google not trying to go against the average joe schmoe Webmaster, or mom and pop website. The sites they're targeting for penalties have for the most part attempted some sort of artificial inflation of link building in order to subvert their rankings in Google. Apparently, there was a while there when some "regular" sites got caught up in that by mistake. However, it seems that they've done a much better job lately of punishing only the true offenders.

This is why average site owners do have to be careful who they hire to help them with their rankings, as Doug likes to point out a lot.

Jill

[WebSavvy]

Hey, Dan0

Were you offering them a "free submission" if they placed a link to you? Doug does this with his freemoneyservices site. User gets a free submission to 200 SE's in exchange for a link, but the link must be there and verified by Doug before he'll do the submission.

Originally posted by Dan0
Thanks, I hadn't tried Altavista - here's one of the offending links:

http://www.no-smoke.org/about.html - down at the bottom of the page where it says "Free monthly search engine submission provided by Website Promotion Central."

-- Dan0

[Dan0]

Deborah:

That's *exactly* what I was doing, except not to 200 SE's, only the major US databases - I think there were 9 of them when I started, but Infoseek, Northern Light, Excite, Lycos, etc. all stopped crawling.

If I were still doing it, it would be Altavista, AllTheWeb, Google, Inktomi, and Wisenut. Well, maybe not Alta because of the ransom note font, and maybe not Inktomi if they're gonna get rid of all the free submits.

But yes, that was the deal - they put up a link to my site that included the words "free," "search engine submission" and "website promotion"; in return for which I submitted to any major search engine that didn't already have them indexed.

-- Dan

[Advisor]

Were you offering them a "free submission" if they placed a link to you? Doug does this with his freemoneyservices site. User gets a free submission to 200 SE's in exchange for a link, but the link must be there and verified by Doug before he'll do the submission. So much for "natural" linking methods.

Jill

[WebSavvy]

So, if Allan Gardyne's method of link incentive in exchange for free advertising in the form of a monthly contest, is considered "risky" therefore, offering link incentive for a free submission is considered "risky" as well, obviously.

I don't understand why the link farms are so prevalent. It seems these should be drying up and going away with more webmasters becoming aware that using these are nothing but bad news. Instead, it's just the opposite. More and more of them spring up over night.

I am wondering then, if top sites lists would fall into this, somehow? Top sites put your link up once you've sent X-amount of traffic to the main site, you get in the list. But, it also sends traffic back to you.

I'm just trying to understand what is and what isn't allowed here, given this new information, as I have quite a few clients who use link incentive and top sites (they are design clients of mine, not submission clients) oh ... and I am not the one who set them up with link incentive or top sites.

[Alan Perkins]

Dan0

IMO this page is the kind Google doesn't like:

http://abtechnical.com/00business09.htm

That page contains a link to you. Did you once have a similar page on your site with a reciprocal link back to abtechnical.com?

Here's the page you pointed out:

http://www.no-smoke.org/about.html

IMO Google wouldn't have a problem with that. But compare it to the page I pointed out. It's a bit different. :)

Alan

[Advisor]

I think there's a fine line between what would be considered a "directory" of sorts, and what would be considered a link farm.

Kinda hard to distinguish them really. Any link farm could simply just claim, I'm a directory like Yahoo or DMOZ.

Very difficult to say what the difference is. Obviously there's the "intent" as the SEs like to say, however, if the intent isn't made clear anywhere on the sites, there's no way to really know for sure.

It's certainly a gray area right now. The best advice I can give on this subject is to know your own intentions. If your intention is to have a directory, then go for it. If your intention is to "artificially" build link popularity, then you know what you're doing and you will possibly be subject to scrutiny and banning.

It's the same as these forums and the sigs. But we've already been through that before...!

Jill

[Dan0]

Alan:

I've already been through this with Google. They won't tell you what you did to violate their TOS, but when I asked *where* the violation was, they sent me the URL of my page on the linking incentive. It's all in how the person at the other end interprets your intent.

My intent was to get more traffic and better SE rankings by having more links, with my targeted keywords in the text of the link.

-- Dan

[ihelpyou]

LOL. At least you are honest about it.

[Captain Hook]

Why do you advise against doing something that you so obviously do yourself? Is this good, or wise SEO practice? Why do you think it's acceptable for you to practice one thing and preach another? Isn't this being two-faced and deceptive?

Originally posted by ihelpyou
That's right, and it's not natual. This is what Google watches for. Just because something has worked does not mean it will forever. If you play with fire you can/will get burnt.

...Doug does this with his freemoneyservices site. User gets a free submission to 200 SE's in exchange for a link, but the link must be there and verified by Doug before he'll do the submission.

[Dan0]

Everyone else doing this has the same intent. My mistake, apparently, was being honest about it - "the more links I get, the more traffic I get, from your site and the search engines." :D

That site still gets well over 100 visitors a day, without any help from Google (it's rated #2 at DirectHit), and without me doing any real work to promote it for the past 18 months.

I'd just hate to see the same thing happen to anyone else, if they can avoid it, which is why I try to warn against taking the risk.

It's not that hard to get links without an incentive, and you can target your campaign better.

The really screwy thing is that these strategies attract a bunch of links from sites with a PR of 2, which don't do much for your Google rankings anyway. I wasn't trying to fool Google (my site was ranked #3 at the time I started the campaign), I was trying to fool Altavista and Excite!:p

-- Dan Thies

[Captain Hook]

I am more interested to hear what Mr. Heil has to say on the subject. He's so very quick to point out that someone else is being deceptive, and using unnatural linking processes and will get "burned in the ass" as he stated.

All of this proclamation, while in contrast he practices the very same thing. Quite the master of contradiction.

[Advisor]

Perhaps he's simply willing to take that risk with his own site, which is his right to do so.

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Excuse me?

That form for that submission thing has been DISABLEd for months now!

Months.

I quit it knowing that it could be construed as a bad thing a LONG time ago.

Sheesh.

That's for stopping by to simply attack me. I know what the heck is bad and what is not bad. That is why I disabled the darn form along time ago.

And yes, Unnatural linking is going to get your penalized. Keep doing what you are doing and you will certainly find out.

[ihelpyou]

Oh, btw, Jill is right. I can do as I damn well please with my own site and so can you. I am simply pointing out that if you try to deceive in any way, it can BITE you in the ass. That has nothing to do with how I do things. I am just telling you the truth.

BUT, that submission form has been down for months and I have no plans to get it working again anytime soon.

[Advisor]

Doug, I don't think Captain Hook came here looking to attack you. It was Savvy who mentioned your deal about doing the submissions in return for a link. Captain Hook was just commenting on what she had said.

That said, I know that as an SEO, I often do many things with my own sites that I would not do with a client's site. It's how you learn what works and what doesn't, and just how far you can push the envelope. If you get a penalty, you're only hurting yourself, and you learned something. (Haven't been penalized as far as I know, however!)

J

[WebSavvy]

All I did was ask Dan0 if he was doing free submissions in exchange for a link and that Doug also did this with his site, so I couldn't understand why he'd get banned, and Doug isn't...so there must be some other reason for getting banned besides offering free submissions for a return link.

Was I wrong to ask Dan0 if that's what he was doing?

[Advisor]

Was I wrong to ask Dan0 if that's what he was doing? Nope.

J

[ihelpyou]

No. Not wrong at all but that ain't the point. The point is I will do anything I choose to do with my own site but that is not to say I will not warn others that it may cause them to get penalized.

How does anyone know that I do not have the "okay" from the main man to do what I use to do? Just because I do something does not mean anyone else will get away with the same thing. I only point out stuff that I feel might be/could be detrimental to a site. The question was asked about how/why does Google penalize sites for linking. That is a question that cannot be answered easily. You link at your own risk. Period. Whatever you do could be construed by Google as bad. Period. There is no rhyme nor reason to who/what/why Google may penalize one way over another way.

Someone said it best.... Google owes NONE of us Nothing at all. She will do as she pleases. If you are penalized, well, you are penalized. I will continue to warn people of the bad ways and ways that could be penalized. That is all I can do. Whether or not I did something with my site in the past is VERY irrelevant. I state the facts as I see them.

And the fact is, whenever you do linking stuff that is/could be construed as unnatural, you run the risk of being penalized. NOW, that's a fact. :)

[WebSavvy]

Doug, do top sites lists fall within this scope too, I wonder?

Also, somewhere I read, that you cannot be punished for sites that link to you, just for whom you yourself link to. So, if that is true, then if you yourself are not seeking links in exchange for anything and someone links to you, and a major SE doesn't like it and sees "intent" can you get banned for that too?

I have very specific reasons for asking these questions. A client of mine had a site that ranked very well in the SE's and at the time was not listed in DMOZ because the editor for that category was a competitor and wouldn't list the site even after trying to get listed there for over 2 years.

The rouge editor was finally given the boot. My client site was listed. Ranked #19 in Google for their main term. Then next update following DMOZ listing, went to #78 for their keyword term, and now almost #200 for their keyword term...and I can't figure out what the dickens is up with that.

Other than maybe, some links from sites found offensive in Google's eyes might be the problem. Links not placed outbound by my client, but rather inbound links that were not asked for.

Any ideas?

[Advisor]

Deb, does your client own any other sites that he/she may be interlinking together with each other? That appears to be the most common reason for losing rankings the way you're talking about.

Or perhaps a few domains that are all really just one site?

Those are more common reasons for getting a Google penalty.

Jill

[Dan0]

Deborah:

A few factors that may be in play here:

1. Google doesn't give the same weight to reciprocal links that they used to. Self-linking (across domains) doesn't work like it used to either.
2. Google doesn't give the same weight to DMOZ that they used to. PageRank is relative.
3. Your client may be suffering from what I call the "Google ripple effect."

When Google bans a bunch of sites, or reduces the way they weight links, this will ripple out through the whole index - if, for example, your client had a link from a PR8 site that got banned (Webseed.com, or one of their 20,000+ link sites, for example), your client's PR would suffer - this effect can even reduce the PR of a site several clicks away.

My book's site dropped in a big way in January, after the Webseed shakeout hit, because a couple of the newsletters I published articles in were hit hard by that. It took 2 months to get enough links in place to make up the gap, and it's only now, with my Yahoo! listing in place, that I see a net gain.

[WebSavvy]

Yes, Jill she does have 2 domains. Domain A links to domain B. Domain B does not link back to Domain A.

Domain B (which does not link back to Domain A) has several sub-domains, that are all individual. The main domain isn't even promoted and serves as just a gateway navigation to make it easy for users to go from one sub-domain to the next.

It's a shopping site, but each sub-domain is different. One caters to children's clothing and toys. One caters to music, books, and software. Another caters to cooking items. None of the subs have any content that is even remotely similar to the others.

She hasn't changed any content on the site to account for the drop in rank. In fact, she's picked up some links from domains with clout and these are not even listed in Google as backwards links, they are listed as "sites that contain the term www.her-domain-name.com" .... which I also find strange.

I'm just asking as many questions as I can think of to maybe discover an answer.

If it came across as I am singling someone out saying "You! Why can you do this and someone else is punished?" Not the way it's meant, OK?

I am simply trying to ferret out anything that may shed some light on this as my client has not done any of the things so far mentioned that would result in getting banned or penalized.

[edited to add]

The sub-domains on domain B do not link to one another nor do they link back to the index page of the main site. The only connection made between any of the sub-domains is on the main index page of the site that has the sub-domains listed with a text description of what shopping items are listed there.

[WebSavvy]

Originally posted by Dan0
Deborah:

A few factors that may be in play here:

1. Google doesn't give the same weight to reciprocal links that they used to. Self-linking (across domains) doesn't work like it used to either.
2. Google doesn't give the same weight to DMOZ that they used to. PageRank is relative.
3. Your client may be suffering from what I call the "Google ripple effect."

Hi Dan0,

This is odd though. She never belonged to anything like that. Her PR hasn''t changed. It's still a 5 and has been for quite a while.

I am stumped by this one.

Thanks,
-Deb

[Advisor]

Oh, if her PR hasn't changed, then it's probably not a linking thing.

Probably more of an optimization thing.

J

[WebSavvy]

Oh OK. I just am the site designer, not the SEO. She did have it optimized once before, back before the DMOZ listing (when it was #19 in Google).

The SEO only did 2 pages and then quit. So she should probably hire someone to come in and do all of it then, again, right?

[Advisor]

Well, it certainly wouldn't hurt to bring in an SEO. They could evaluate it and pinpoint the problem areas fairly easily, I would imagine.

J

[WebSavvy]

Thanks Jill. I'll let her know that. I'll also give her the link to your site. She can afford your prices, so that's not a problem for her. She's also really easy to work with too.

[ihelpyou]

hmm. Mr. Hook seems to sound very familiar? Flash from the past? :)