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~ Web Submission Services
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Providing
Search Engine Advertising Services
Specializing In Traffic Generating
HIGH
Search Engine Ranking Results
904-992-4341
New Linking Strategies
Making The Web A Better Place to Be
By Dawn Rowlett
Search Engine Positioning Specialist
December 1, 2003 - Web Submission Services formally
announces a change in their current linking strategies for existing
and future clients. This change is being made so that we can
contribute to the well-being and future growth of the World Wide
Web.
Over the course of the last several years, web
masters, SEO's and and site owners have experienced a massive
reciprocal link gold rush in an attempt to boost a web sites search
engine rankings for important keyword phrases. It all started
with the {excellent} theory that if a web site has a lot of links
pointing to it, it must be an important site and one that people
would want to visit, therefore, it should be placed high in search
results. Though, the theory is a fabulous one, it also needed
some tweaking as we have now found out, just a few years later, that
this has caused a hysteria of link exchanges while web sites are
becoming saturated with useless, often completely off topic,
"links".
When the new link popularity age came along, I
absolutely refused to have a standard "links" page on our own or any
of our clients web sites. I knew then as well as I know now,
that valuable, outgoing links are important to our visitors but I
also didn't like seeing all of those messy, uncategorized link
pages. Often linking to web sites that often did not remotely
relate to the subject of the web site such as "Viagra" links on a
"baby bedding" web site.
Now, why on earth, would someone think that I might
be interested in buying Viagra when I was visiting a "baby bedding"
web site?
I had it in my mind that I refused to participate in
these types of "link exchanges". I found it much more useful
to create full page articles about web sites that I felt were useful
to my visitors or to incorporate useful information about web sites
that I felt were important to my visitors, directly into the content
of my web site. This is demonstrated in some of our
past articles, written as long as two years ago.
However, my unwillingness to change my attitude
about "typical" link exchanges, didn't get us very far. Very
few sites shared or thought highly of our "article" idea's.
Client link popularity scores were not increasing but their
competitors scores were. Competing web pages, participating in
this hysteria of "standard link exchanges" and even buying text
advertisements on high quality web sites, were gaining top rankings
quickly as our client web sites were taking several months of
aggressive optimization tweaking before having a chance to compete
with top ranking results. Needless to say, clients became
frustrated as they wanted to compete for top results quicker.
Because this "idea" of aggressive reciprocal linking
definitely seemed to be working, because our clients wanted it and
because the search engines seemed to endorse this method (by proving
to everyone, month after month, that it worked without any attempt
to stop it), we finally came around. Although, we still made
every attempt to keep our "link pages" neat, clean, organized and
related to our general subject, we jumped on the typical link
exchange bandwagon and rankings began to soar much quicker.
Today, it seems the bandwagon is finally starting to
fall apart as search engines become more advanced.
As many of us know all too well, Google, the most
important search engine of all, generating the most traffic (for us
anyway), has recently undergone an extensive update, implementing
new algorithms created to improve search results for their
searchers. Google is a terrific search engine, which took a
lead over all of the other major search engines by providing the
most accurate and relevant results for any particular search query.
Striving to remain the most popular search engine, Google continues
to upgrade it's algorithms to eliminate spam, irrelevant and
deceiving results. This most recent updates proves to us all,
just how powerful one search engine can be as many web sites
completely lost their current rankings when they felt they had done
nothing wrong. In reality, they probably didn't do anything
wrong and if they are dedicated to assisting search engines to
provide the best possible search results, their web sites could
quite possibly, achieve top rankings again, in the future.
Many web masters are still very angry and many web
sites have taken a hard profit loss, just as the holiday season
began. Unfortunately, this was definitely a hard hit for many.
However, while it was hard for some, the update has been extremely
positive for others who have increased their positions and for
searchers who will continue to receive the most accurate results for
their searches. Personally, I feel that this change has been
needed for a long time now.
No one knows just yet, with absolute certainty,
exactly what changes were made to the algorithms. There is
still a lot of guessing and theories going around. Researching
for several hours over the last few weeks, I have found very few
guesses or theories that I agree with after extensive analyzing.
However, there are some that I do agree with and some that I feel I
can back up after extensive analyzing.
One popular theory takes me back to two years ago
with my resistance at participating in "standard" link exchanges.
Some are saying that Google is beginning to place a lower level of
importance on web sites that exchange links, just to exchange links.
Google wants to provide information, not pages of useless links.
This makes perfect sense to me, as I also, want to provide the best
possible information to my visitors.
As of December 1, 2003, we will revert back to our
old ways. Links will be provided to our visitors because they
contain good, solid information, products and / or services. Links
will be contained within a directory organized by specific topics
relating to the main theme of the web site. Links will contain
solid information about a web site, company, products and services.
Even if this theory has nothing at all to do
with the changes that Google has made, we feel that making some
adjustments to a few of our strategies, including our linking
strategies, will help to contribute to making the Web the best that
it can be and encourage others to do the same.
If you are interested in being featured in our
directory of recommended business listings, please proceed to our
directory submission guidelines.
Thank you for helping to make the Web a better place
to be!
Related Articles:
This article, entitled "New
Linking Strategy - Making The Web A Better Place To Be" was
written by Dawn Rowlett of Web Submission Services to announce our
new linking strategies. Please visit Web Submission Services
Search Engine Marketing service and information center for more
information on the proper steps to take when preparing your web site
for
Search Engine Advertising with ethical
search engine optimization practices.
A NOTE TO WEBMASTERS:
FREE CONTENT FOR YOUR WEB SITE:
This article is intended to
inform web site owners of the importance of avoiding spam techniques
and how to recognize them when preparing for a successful search
engine marketing campaign. Special permissions may be granted to
use the content of this page in it's entirety for a variety of
intentions. If you would like re-print rights on this article, you
MUST send
Dawn Rowlett an e-mail requesting special permission. You
MUST include your web site URL. |
