There is no such thing as a bad incoming link. The worst that can a link can do is nothing at all. It only gets better from there. If this wasn't true your competitors could ruin you by linking to you with crappy sites.
And it should be very easy to tell if a link is good or bad. Look at the site/page it is on. Is the site any good? Or does it suck? Does it rank well? Or not? It really is easy to tell.
stymiee
He's No Good To Me Dead
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high quality link is determined by the page rank and the number of the outbound links.
That's not correct. You limited your definition to cover exclusively PageRank which is a mistake. PR is just one of hundreds of factors in determining a page's rank and has virtually no influence on link quality. If a page has high PR but is offtopic that link is virtually worthless.
A high quality link is from a page that has content related to yours, uses the anchor text you hope to rank well for, ranks well for the terms you hope to rank well for, and has a high PageRank.
stymiee
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The page rank affect the quality of the backlinks. and there are many difference to get a link from a web page with PR=7 than a web page that have PR=0.
page rank is the first thing for people to determine the quality because we have not the exact formula used by google and we have not tools to do this job.
- anchor text is not related to backlinks quality when you will link to another web site.
Completely untrue. PageRank only indicates a page's link popularity. It does not indicate the quality of the page or the quality of the links on the page. Relevancy plays a much larger factor then PageRank as does anchor text. A link from a PR7 page that is off-topic is worthless then a link from a PR1 page that is on topic every time.
The reason why people consider PageRank the most important is because they don't know any better. That's why those same people start threads here saying, "My PageRank is so high but I don't rank well for my search terms". It's because they were after the wrong thing. They clearly don't understand PageRank and what it really means.
And anchor text matters a lot for inbound links. It's effect is huge. And it plays a role in your outbound linking as well. That anchor text is on your page and affects how your pages are viewed by Google. If your anchor text contains words you want to rank well for it is better then if it contains terms that are unrelated to your website. That's one reason why linking to unrelated sites is bad for SEO.
stymiee
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I've never said links don't matter. They very clearly do. I just said PR is not an indicator of link quality.
Not all links are created equal. Using PR to determine link quality is an inaccurate system to do so. The other factors I mentioned above is what someone should be using instead.
stymiee
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There is no such thing as a bad incoming link. The worst that can a link can do is nothing at all...
Better let Google know this ...
Google : ... Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links ...
canadafred
SEO Consultant
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Better let Google know this ...
Google : ... Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links ...
Linking to other sites is anoutgoing link. When someone links to you then it is an incoming link. When you link to a bad neighborhood your are implicitly a part of it and will suffer its fate. But if one links to you and you don't link back the worst that can happen to you is nothing at all.
stymiee
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Linking to other sites is an outgoing link. When someone links to you then it is an incoming link. When you link to a bad neighborhood your are implicitly a part of it and will suffer its fate. But if one links to you and you don't link back the worst that can happen to you is nothing at all.
You just don't get it, do you.
If a web site has incoming links from spammy sources, it will suffer from losing authenticity and credibility with the major search engines, whether it is the SEO's fault or not.
One of the responsibilities an ethical SEO has when working on a web site is to extract the web site from the clutches of an unsavoury linking past and to avoid the temptation of gaining inbound links using a haphazardly approach or with a careless attitude. The obsession to gain incoming links is driven by a common SEO misunderstanding. Any attempt to artificially increase a web site's importance by acquiring unearned links to the web site is an attempt at search engine manipulation.
Search engine optimizers, web site designers and website developers should concentrate on crafting the highest caliber, uniquely important content possible rather than chasing links. There is a huge difference in skill needed between being and SEO and being a linking strategist. Most link strategists think they are performing SEO when they chase links, but they are not.
canadafred
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My personal belief is that a site will not suffer if every so often a bad neighborhood links to them, especially if the number of "bad" links is far outweighed by the number of high quality backlinks. As a site becomes more well known and mainstream, it can only be expected that a wide array of quality and non-quality sites link to them.
However, if only bad neighborhoods link to a particular site, or the majority of backlinks a site has are from hundreds of free-for-all link pages, then it could be assumed by the SEs that this site travels in the wrong circles.
cscgal
The Queen of DaniWeb
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You just don't get it, do you.
If a web site has incoming links from spammy sources, it will suffer from losing authenticity and credibility with the major search engines, whether it is the SEO's fault or not.
You don't understand how the Internet works, huh? That statement is 100% incorrect and it is easy to understand why.
1) Youcan't stop people from linking to you. It's impossible.
2) Why would Google penalize a site for what someone else does? That the site owner has absolutely no control over? Seriously. Have you even thought about that for a minute? If Google did that then everyone would be out to sabotage their competitors and they would all succeed. The search results would be a mess and irrelevant (and only showing people who haven't yet been attacked). That's why the worst thing an incoming link can do is nothing. That's why all links are not created equal.
3) That's why outbound linking can be harmful because the webmaster controls that. By linking to a bad site (the reason why the site is "bad" is irrelevant) the website owner is acknowledging their participation in it and thus is is fair and right to punish them.
stymiee
He's No Good To Me Dead
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Linking to other sites is an outgoing link. When someone links to you then it is an incoming link. When you link to a bad neighborhood your are implicitly a part of it and will suffer its fate. But if one links to you and you don't link back the worst that can happen to you is nothing at all.
I certainly would not test that theory on any web project that I am working on.
canadafred
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You don't have to. It's been proven over and over again. The only people who need to worry are those who actively participate in such schemes. But they never succeed anyway.
stymiee
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I still believe that if the vast majority of sites that link to you are just bad neighborhoods, it could have an ill effect on your rankings. One reason: Because if the site was legitimate, there would at least be SOME real backlinks in the mix, or enough to make the site known to competitors who want to sabotage it. If all backlinks are spammy, that means that the site has no real backlinks at all, and no content worthy of backlinks (and competitors probably don't know about the site to care to sabotage it), meaning it was most likely the site owner who got their own site involved in bad neighborhoods. Just my take on it.
cscgal
The Queen of DaniWeb
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Even then it wouldn't matter. If you only have crappy sites linking back to your site you won't rank well for anything anyway. So there is no need to apply a penalty. Plus if that were true then a competitor can bring down a website simply through sheer quantity of bad links. Once, again, that is completely beyond the control of the webmaster and cannot be held against them.
stymiee
He's No Good To Me Dead
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... Once, again, that is completely beyond the control of the webmaster and cannot be held against them.
... cannot be held against them ...
Man, you are living in a fairy tale world. I don't care how wonderfully optimized a web site is, if it has a significant amount of incoming links from unreliable or pre-determined bad linking neighbourhoods, it will suffer. It doesn't matter whose fault it is.
One of the first things to do when removing penalties from a web site is to shake off as many of these bad incoming links as possible. Ever try that? Not fun but well worth the rewards.
canadafred
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Sorry, forgot to mention this.
Google :
" Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query. "
www google com/technology/index html
canadafred
SEO Consultant
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... cannot be held against them ...
Man, you are living in a fairy tale world. I don't care how wonderfully optimized a web site is, if it has a significant amount of incoming links from unreliable or pre-determined bad linking neighbourhoods, it will suffer. It doesn't matter whose fault it is.
One of the first things to do when removing penalties from a web site is to shake off as many of these bad incoming links as possible. Ever try that? Not fun but well worth the rewards.
You're not using common sense and that is all you need to grasp the concept. If this was true what would stop people from using this to sabotage their competition? I expect an answer.Sorry, forgot to mention this.
Google :
" Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query. "
www google com/technology/index html
Congratulations. You just figured out that Google uses incoming links and other off site factors to rank web pages. Now you're not 10 years behind every one else.
stymiee
He's No Good To Me Dead
3,360 posts since May 2006
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