As I have a lot of beginners reading this please bare with me for a moment while I explain the whole business of backlinks, what they are, how to create them, what Tags are and how they are used and finally why all this matters to both Google and ultimately you.
Before starting I have posted some recent comments on this issue below and I hope to answer the questions posed by the time this post is over.
Terry said...
There's a wee problem with putting no-follow on paid reviews and that's because the likes of PayPerPost will reject a review if it doesn't use the link exactly as given and that includes using target="_blank" to stop visitors clicking away from the site.
Maybe I can add the nofollow after they have paid me for the review - that only leaves the backlink alive for about a month.
I'll try that on a couple of older posts and see if they complain about it. Can't see that they would, unless the advertiser themselves get wind of it and complain to PPP - maybe it could get my account deleted!
I can't afford to lose that too. Losing adsense was a huge blow and despite my re-applying, they haven't given me a decision yet - it's been over a week which might be good news or it might not...
We'll see
Terry :-)
Monika @ The Writers Manifesto said...
Hi Grizzly,
Congrats again for the rise in Page Rank. I also have been thinking about the "no follow" attributes as of late. Especially since I'm starting to understand, that this could affect me in the future.
I wonder about 2 things mainly:
1) is there a way that I can style my code so ALL outgoing links have a "no follow" except the comments.
2) would it be beneficial for future updates to steer away from the do follow movement?
Monika
How to create a Backlink
For the benefit of the beginners, backlinks are simply text that you find that are usually highlighted and underlined and when clicked will take you to a new page or website. The process of creating a link is quite simple and is called hypertexting.
If I want to create a link to Monika's blog I simply type out her blog's name;
The Writer's Manifesto
Now to add the link I can either add code manually or if using Blogger or Wordpress I can use the software included in the program to do it for me.
Note: The following Images can be enlarged by clicking on the image.
The same is done using Wordpress
And here is the finished product - if you click the link below you will be taken to Monika's website. ( Do it later as she has a great site but stay with me for now )
The Writer's Manifesto
Ok that is a backlink. I've received a number of emails from beginners wondering what a backlink is and more importantly why do you use them and why you need others to give you backlinks.
There are two answers to this.
You give backlinks to other sites primarily because you want to direct your readers to information that you think will be useful to them. You will normally send readers to sites or pages that are on topic - ie. they relate to your subject matter. This is important and I will discuss it in depth shortly.
Another reason for backlinks is to direct readers to something they can purchase or join and you use a special backlink for this - it's called an affiliate link which has extra info stored in the link to enable you to earn a commission or credit from your readers action. Essentially the seller is told that you sent the buyer or new member and you get a commission or credit from the seller. I won't say anything more about this type of link in this post.
Pagerank.
Most of you know what pagerank is but again bare with me as I sometimes forget that a lot of my readers are brand new to Internet Marketing and a quick recap is needed.
Pagerank is simply a measure of how important Google thinks your site or blog is. You can rank anywhere from N/R (no ranking) to a PR0 (lowest) all the way up to a PR10 (highest).
The higher your ranking the better as pagerank or PR is one of the factors involved in how well Google indexes or lists your pages on it's search results (SERP's - Search Engine Results Pages). Generally the higher PR sites are listed better in the SERP's but there are other factors that contribute to this as well. Your goal is to be listed on the first page of any search query related to your subject matter also known as your keywords.
Keywords
If you have a blog on Dog Training then "DOG", "Training", "Dog Training", "German Sheppards", "Black Labs" etc would all be considered your keywords as they all relate to your site's topic. Some keywords are more relevant than others - "Training" is relevant but you could be listed on page 1 for this term and have people come to your site looking for info on "Flight Training" instead of what you offer. These types of keywords are too general to be of much use so always use terms that are specific to what you offer.
Now back to pagerank and how backlinks contribute to your pagerank. The more backlinks you have coming from other sites on the web will in general increase your pagerank although there are several conditions that these links must meet.
This blog is about "Making Money Online for Beginners". I have about 1000 backlinks pointing to me from other sites give or take. For pagerank purposes only a small minority of them are useful although all of them help me in that they can potentially send traffic my way.
Google sees all the links and decides that only the links coming from sites related to mine will be used to determine my pagerank. I have a lot of links coming from sites that I helped their owners set up or optimize but these are sites that have nothing to do with "Making Money Online". Google basically ignores these links but doesn't penalize me for them either. Google will penalize me for links coming from link farms or sites in bad neighborhoods. (Spam sites, porn, malicious software etc).
Don't worry too much about being penalized for incoming links as Google understands that we can't really control who links to us - it's only when it becomes apparent that we are actively involved in obtaining such links that you need worry - link farms are the most obvious example. This is when you create hundreds or thousands of spammy sites for the purpose of sending links back to your real sites in hopes of obtaining a higher pagerank. Don't do it.
This type of activity is done to game the system or in simple terms you are trying to fool Google into giving you a higher pagerank than you deserve. Google hates this as it produces poor quality results in their SERP's.
Of the 1000 or so links pointing to my blog I know that about 30 of them count toward my pagerank. These are links that all come from quality sites related to my niche or topic. In reality I have several hundred links that are related to my blog but the majority are from poor quality sites or have N/R pagerank themselves. From Google's point of view these are ignored.
Your pagerank is determined by the quality and pagerank of the related sites linking to you. If all 30 of the links Google uses to determine my pagerank came from sites with low PR ( PR0 - PR2 ) then I would probably end up with a PR2 myself. If a few are PR4 sites then I might get a PR3. If a few sites linking to me have a PR5 then I might be a PR4 and so on. The higher the PR of the sites linking to you the higher your PR will become. I am currently a PR5 and this is due to the fact that I have some PR6, PR7 and PR8 sites linking to me.
In general you only increase your PR if you get links from higher PR sites but there are exceptions; you could have millions of backlinks from low PR sites and this could get you a very high PR simply because of the volume. Statcounter.com is a good example of this. This site provides a free stats program that you can install on your site to keep track of your traffic. They have millions of sites using their program and every site with it installed sends a backlink back to Statcounter.com. They were a PR10 until recently - not sure why Google demoted them back down to a PR6.
This should answer your questions on why you want backlinks.
Now let's talk about the other side of the equation. Giving out backlinks.
When you give a backlink or in reality it is just a Link, you are in effect voting for the site you are giving the link to. (They are receiving a backlink from you). You are telling Google that you think the other site is a quality site that you are happy sending your readers to. If you are a high PR site then Google views you as an authority on your topic or niche and counts your vote for the other site as having some weight to it. You are telling Google that the other site is worthy of your respect and that they deserve a higher PR as well.
This is all well and good and in a perfect world this should work like a charm for Google in properly ranking sites on the web.
It's not a perfect world though as there have been many systems devised to manipulate Google's pagerank algorithm all for the purpose of artificially inflating people's true rank. The goal as always is money. Higher PR means higher SERP listings which means more visitors to your site which means more dollars in your pocket - assuming you have monetized your site in some way.
Anchor Text
When you give someone a link the words used in the actual hypertext is called anchor text.
Let's use Monika's example again.
The Writer's Manifesto
In this case the anchor text is the phrase "The Writer's Manifesto"
Besides giving her site a vote from my site I am also telling Google to rank Monika's site for the phrase or term or keyword (same meaning)- "The Writer's Manifesto".
This means that when someone searches for "writer" or "Manifesto" then her site stands a good chance of being listed for those terms and a great chance of being listed very high in the SERP's for the whole phrase "Writer's Manifesto" especially as she has a PR5 backlink for these terms. (mine)
I couldn't find her for the terms "writers" and "manifesto" but she was up against a lot of competition. She will be indexed but farther back in the SERP's for those terms.
I mention anchor text because this is extremely important for getting indexed for the terms that are relevant to your site. I have a lot of links pointing to me using the term "Grizzly's Blog" in the anchor text.
This is fine if people already know me and don't remember my Blog's title then typing in Grizzly's Blog will get them to either of my two blogs. ( Why they haven't bookmarked me is a mystery... um HINT!)
However this is not the anchor text I want people to use as it is not relevant to my niche other than to my name. I want terms used like "make money", "make money online", "making money with blogs" etc. The reason is because I want to rank high for these terms so that I will get traffic searching for this kind of information. You will only rank high for terms used in the anchor text of your backlinks. On page content will also help but you need relevant backlinks to make it to the top of the SERP's.
Because of this many people have circumvented Google's system and have simply gone out and bought backlinks from high PR sites with their optimum anchor text used. In essence a spam blog with no quality content can go out and purchase a few hundred backlinks from high PR sites willing to sell the links. The purchaser gets the seller to use the anchor text that they want to be ranked for and suddenly Google find itself ranking crappy sites high in the listings. Needless to say Google is not happy with this and they have taken measures to combat this practice.
The No-Follow Tag
The no-follow tag is just a piece of code that is inserted into the hypertext link that tells Google not to convey any link juice on the site that is being linked to.
This may be confusing but let me show you an example.
I added a link above to statcounter.com. You can click on it and it will take you to the site. When Google's Bot crawls my page it will see the link but basically ignore it as I am not voting for statcounter.com. When it sees Monika's link it will index it as a vote for her site. The difference is that I used a no-follow tag on the statcounter link and not on Monika's.
Let me show you the difference.
Click images to enlarge.
Why you Should use No-Follow
Google has asked that everyone include the no-follow tag on all paid links. They have stated that if you sell links and don't use the no-follow tag then you will be penalized in the form of lower pagerank.
This has the Internet Marketing community in a bit of an uproar as it means a huge loss of income to a lot of people.
There are several programs that broker the selling and buying of links - some overtly and some disguise it as advertising and promotion. Text-Link-Ads is the most overt program as it exists solely for passing PR from sellers to buyers. If I wanted to make some fast cash I need only approach them and say that I am willing to sell links on my site. With a PR5 I wouldn't have any problem finding people to pay me. A PR5 link is fairly well coveted.
In the recent Google pagerank update a lot of high PR sites were decimated as Google lowered their rankings quite severely. Several PR7 sites are now PR4. While it is only speculation the most proposed reason for this is that these sites were selling links and not using the no-follow tag. The other reason seems to be that most of these sites belonged to large networks which were inter-linked with each other. Essentially a more sophisticated type of link farm.
While Google is keeping silent as to the reasons for this slaughter I believe these are the two main reasons. They have been warning people for some time now that they would put a stop to paid links and I think they just did. (See Matt Cutts) When the big boys get taken out all of us small players had better pay attention - next time Google will likely target everyone. It appears that they went after the big guns only this round as they new it would get the message out to everyone else. It has.
There are several other programs, most notably ReviewMe and PayPerPost that are also on Google's radar. These programs feign to be brokers for people who want to advertise their sites on other sites. They are willing to pay others to write a review of themselves with a backlink included. Google has no problem with people paying others for advertising - as long as the link has a no-follow tag in it. The purpose of advertising is to get traffic to your site and a no-follow tag doesn't stop people from clicking the link and being directed to the site in question.
The problem is that these programs don't allow you to change the link as Terry mentioned in his comment above. This shows PayPerPost's real intention with their program. They aren't brokering ads, they are simply selling backlinks that allow PR to flow through to the buyer. The FTC has already stated that paid ads must be disclosed so that the reader knows that the review or ad is paid for.
From the WashPost
"The Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships."
From Calcanis.com
As I mentioned in my non-stop ridding of PayPerScamPost and their evil plan to "let the market work out" their deception issues, the FTC is stepping in. This, a day after Google said they would ding blogs from their index who participated in such schemes.
It's game waaaaaaaaaay over for PayPerPost. Google is smacking them down, and the FTC is on their doorstep. They will clean up their act now, and their "let the marketplace give us our ethics" has now happened. The industry (in the form of bloggers and Google) and the government (in the form of the FTC) have told PayPerPost clearly: STOP ENABLING DECEPTION.
Deception aside it is clear that Google will be taking a harsh stance on paid links but at the moment they have a small problem. They can't quite tell the paid links from the run of the mill unpaid links and this is what has kept them from clamping down on people using PayPerPost and the like. They are asking people to tell them who is using paid links.
From Google's spokesman Matt Cutts
One thing I heard at SES London was that people wanted a way to report paid links specifically. I’d like to get a few paid link reports anyway because I’m excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms. Google may provide a special form for paid link reports at some point, but in the mean time, here’s a couple of ways that anyone can use to report paid links:
- Sign in to Google’s webmaster tools console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you’ll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight.
- Use the unauthenticated spam report form and make sure to include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report.
The problem here is that while you may get away with using these programs you are at the mercy of your competitors. Should someone decide that they want you out of the way they only need to report you to Google and you may suddenly find your pagerank lowered or gone completely. You may think - so what - as you are getting paid nicely for reviewing sites on PayPerPost - guess what, lose your pagerank and suddenly no one is interested in paying you to review them. This is because they don't want your traffic or care for your comments - they only want your passed on link juice. In this sense Google has a point to make. These programs aren't set up for advertising as they claim. They are set up to game Google and that's why they are a serious risk to anybody using them. Eventually Google will catch you.
Because the FTC requires you to disclose that you are being paid for the review it won't take long for the algorithm to search out the disclaimers used when you post your review. It will then check for the no-follow tag and if it is not there you may find your site dropped from the index. No warning and no explanation. Gone and all your hard work with it.
I sympathize with Terry as he can make a decent buck using PayPerPost but I can't help feel that it may be short lived. As a friend I would urge him to proceed cautiously and at the very least contact Google and get their opinion on the matter first hand.
In regards to Monika's question about the whole do-follow program I have mixed feelings. Google doesn't have a problem with free links as it already has a mechanism in place to discount them if they are irrelevant links between sites. The do-follow program does increase comments and increases traffic.
My problem with do-follow is more pragmatic. I want high PR first and foremost. Traffic and money will come along in due course. The formula for PR is quite complex but it boils done to this - the more links coming in is good, the more links leaving is bad. Google even states that you should keep outgoing links to a reasonable number, not more than a hundred on a page. Most links are site wide so it doesn't take long to reach a hundred outgoing links.
I have seen the benefit of keeping my outbound links sparse and only to relevant sites. The vast majority of my links use no-follow. I have noticed that most sites don't bother to add the no-follow to all the garbage links on their sites - affiliate links, banner links, promotional links like MyBlogLog or Technorati or Blogrush etc. All of these types of links do suck a portion of your link juice off and it is a waste. They don't need your link love and they should all be no-followed. Save all the juice you can. I only give link love to those who I want to help. When I do, I have more to give as I don't squander it on affiliate links and such.
Most people don't believe that this makes a difference. I do as all my sites that gained a lot of PR were sites that used mostly no-follow tags.
Monika asked if there was a way to code her entire site to use no-follow and I have to admit that I haven't done much playing around with Wordpress. I have added code to my blogger blogs that enable me to tag each widget or page element to be either no-follow or do-follow and I suspect that the same can be done on wordpress. I unfortunately am not that much of a code monkey with Wordpress to know - if anyone does know please let me know or visit Monika directly and fill her in.
Before I finish I need to add one more backlink here for my friend Terry of The Honest Way just so he doesn't think I was favoring Monika over him. They are two of my favorite people online and both offer a lot of excellent information if you are trying to earn a living online. Please pay them a visit and if you are looking for a way to promote your own site you might consider joining their shared venture bloggingweb2.0. They are looking for bloggers who would like to post articles on their site and gain some exposure as well as a nice little backlink in the process.
Thanks for reading, this was a long one even for me.
Grizzly
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