Are "resources" Still Good To Have?, - Confused in Switzerland Options

[JohnMu]

I was just surfing around, wasting a perfectly good glass of wine staring into my computer ... and happened upon a modern web design, internet marketing and website promotion agency ... and wondered "these guys look like they know what they're doing" and decided to click on some of their current projects (or at least some of those shown + listed in the news-section).

Something surprised me and I don't know if it's because I missed something or because they're "behind" or the clients unreasonably demanded it or ... ?

Most of the sites they work on either have "resource" sections with some link-exchange tool or show fairly unrelated links in the footer of the pages (eg a jewlery shop listing hot tubs, leasing, home improvement sites, etc). The sites all seem to create in-bred link-patterns for the most part as well.

Is that still a valid SEO technique? Isn't Google cracking down on things like that? I thought it would be pretty risky to do, especially if it's for a client. Or are they hoping that Google will at worst ignore those links and the other engines will still count them? The sites in question weren't that small either, so if Google were to ban them for a short time, I imagine they would take quite a hit in terms of revenue. Is that a risk that can be taken - is the risk of being banned (or just getting a small penalty) acceptable for an otherwise good ROI on the rankings gained from it?

I'm slightly confused here .

John

PS The MSN/Live "linkfromdomain:" operator is really neat for confirming these kinds of things!

[SEOigloo]

Hi John,
I guess you'd need to know when those sites were built. It may be that they are old, and have never been updated....this often happens. We've had clients who simply were not committed to keeping up-to-date. In fact, at present, many of the sites we've worked on in the past have old-school links pages on them. We've told old clients they really need to let us get rid of these, and the smart ones say, "Oh, I get it. That's not being done any more". But, others are either too busy or not committed to making changes over time. So, it could just be a case like this.

I guess that's why we're still able to find work...what was cool in SEO 3 years ago is now not.

Just a thought!
Miriam

[JohnMu]

From what I've seen, they're not that old ... I was wondering about that as well, but I think if the SEO was really against that (and was able to prove that they were "not good") then it would be strange for the client to demand that they remain. If the client thinks they know better, why hire an expensive professional agency? I know, that happens every day ... but why would so many of the sites listed share similar elements like that?

So what you're saying is that you as a professional SEO would not do things like that any more? (and slightly off topic: where would you risk a possible penalty for short-term gains?)

John

[Cath]

Most of the sites they work on either have "resource" sections with some link-exchange tool or show fairly unrelated links in the footer of the pages (eg a jewlery shop listing hot tubs, leasing, home improvement sites, etc). The sites all seem to create in-bred link-patterns for the most part as well.

ooh thats a coincidence, last week I was looking at a jewellery site and remember thinking what on earth is an ad for a hot tub doing at the bottom of the page, of course my limited internet skills didn't lead to the words, resources, seo and google penaties springing to mind I just thought it was odd and went on my merry way. I didn't have a glass of wine either

Cath

[JohnMu]

I think you hit the same site, Cath . Of course you might be able to find a connection between hot tubs and jewellery if you tried hard enough .

The funny thing is that they link to Google's page on links to explain the resources-pages . I think they probably wanted to link to info on PR (PigeonRank).

John

[Cath]

I think we must have. As for the connection, it's far too late to be trying hard, I'll leave that to you

The pigeon rank page is very funny, thanks for that link.

Cath

[A.N.Onym]

For the sake of the topic, it is a good idea to have useful resources (in a general sense) in terms of articles, a blog or other value-oriented material.

Links page (or commonly named "Resources") is a pretty useless and sometimes harmful practice for any site, wishing to establish any trust with their customers and the search engines.

I, too, often check recent projects of some web design/development/promotion companies (which I thought are credible enough) only to find out they use tables, spam meta tags, have the same title on all pages and the site copy is written for the company owners or the search engines at best.

I'd guess it is safest to rely on referrals, when choosing a web services provider, unless you don't know the company in person well enough.

[JohnMu]

Hmm, and I thought I knew something about the people behind the agency - or perhaps they were just made by someone new (or are just for testing?)...

I don't mind tables, spamming meta tags, bad copy, bad titles, etc -- they all, at worst, just don't count. The SEO isn't doing anything really good in that case, but they're not working against the site either. What surprised me was that I thought these kinds ot things could actually count against the site in question. They're also all linking directly to the SEO/Web-designer with a common anchor-text. It's a very simple to recognize pattern of interlinking...

Strange

John

[A.N.Onym]

Well, any cheating removes the value, sooner or later.

Hey, they are experts, no arguing here! 8)

P.S. Yes, the non-relevant footer links sure may look funny both to humans and the search engines.

[bwelford]

I would assume that search engine algorithms would behave roughly as an intelligent human might handle the same problem. If someone misguidedly has thrown in a small number of irrelevant links (say less than 50), then they're the loser because they've wasted their time since the links will have little value given everything else that goes into valuing links.

If on the other hand, someone seems to be trying to create (automatically) a huge network of links (thousands and thousands), then they're clearly trying to subvert how the algorithm will handle this. In this case, the fastest way is to label them a bad neighbourhood and apply a penality.

I guess where it is unclear is in that middle ground between the misguided and the unscrupulous.

[Ruud]

Is that still a valid SEO technique?

There has been a time when links, no matter if they were exchanged or on topic or not, gained this way made it worth your while, yes.

Has what you describe it ever been a valid SEO technique? Well, maybe in the terms of "does it work?" but not as in "do you want to do this". You simply don't want to explain to your client, a legal company, why you are linking to "Las Vegas Hot Tubs Casino Freaks - Hot & Random".

For users I still think a resource section can be invaluable. Of course it has to be completely on-topic than and the only SEO gain you'll get out of it is when your resource is so strong it starts to gather one-way inbound links all by itself.

But when it comes to link exchange or link placement, not doing the type of "resource" section you outlined is an unstated given. A link embedded in a content page simply performs so much better and is worth so much more.

Isn't Google cracking down on things like that?

Mmmm, not that I know of. When this type of thing still worked people talked about when and how Google would attack it. Because face it, penalizing this type of thing would hurt a lot of people. Geocities' builders, blogrollers, hobby sites, true resources, etc.

Oversimplified: reciprocal links fall away against each other. (Note: oversimplified because your link to the article in the New York Times about your site doesn't diminish the value of that NYT link...).

Apart from that it Google doesn't have to do a whole lot. By linking out to just about anything on the planet the site dilutes its own focus (and value) and automatically becomes less and less relevant for the sector it originally was aiming for.

I thought it would be pretty risky to do, especially if it's for a client.

It is... or can be.

The mix of bad inbound links and bad outbound links will get to you at one moment or another unless you do regular quality control.

the non-relevant footer links sure may look funny both to humans and the search engines

Footers are great places for advertisement or to link your network. They can also give credit to a sponsor, author, developer, company, deceased relative, etc. etc.

Google cannot, and so far doesn't, discard every non-relevant footer link as utter crap.

[JohnMu]

You simply don't want to explain to your client, a legal company, why you are linking to "Las Vegas Hot Tubs Casino Freaks - Hot & Random".

Exactly! I would love to be there when they explain to a Jewellery shop why linking to those unrelated sites makes sense .

Isn't Google cracking down on things like that?

Mmmm, not that I know of. When this type of thing still worked people talked about when and how Google would attack it. Because face it, penalizing this type of thing would hurt a lot of people. Geocities' builders, blogrollers, hobby sites, true resources, etc.

I'm specifically thinking of this post by Matt Cutts (yeah, it might just be spreading FUD, but from what I have seen, it seems to work)

Linking to a free ringtones site, an SEO contest, and an Omega 3 fish oil site? I think I’ve found your problem. I’d think about the quality of your links if you’d prefer to have more pages crawled. As these indexing changes have rolled out, we’ve improving how we handle reciprocal link exchanges and link buying/selling.
(...)
This time, I’m seeing links to mortgages sites, credit card sites, and exercise equipment. I think this is covered by the same guidance as above; if you were getting crawled more before and you’re trading a bunch of reciprocal links, don’t be surprised if the new crawler has different crawl priorities and doesn’t crawl as much.

I realize good related resources do make sense, but when the site has a link "links" or "resources" on the main page that goes to a link-exchange script (eg "add your URL here - only related links, please") with sections ranging from beauty to leasing/credit cards to home improvement ... I dunno . It certainly does not leave a professional impression, even if the site otherwise has a wonderful design.

That's what gets me confused. Common sense would say that you wouldn't want this kind of thing on your site (at least to me), but seeing how everything else is done so professionaly and the agency has some good people behind it makes me wonder if I'm missing something.

John

[Black_Knight]

Those 'resources' links can still work in 2 ways for most sites. The two ways being the two ways that a link goes (inbound and outbound). It is a tricky technique to use today, with a great many potential pitfalls, but if the company know exactly what they are doing, and monitor things effectively and continually, then it is a manageable risk that can still yield results on a very limited budget.

Of course, with bigger budgets, far better and more effective techniques can be used.

It is one of those techniques where 'if you have to ask, the only safe answer is no' applies. Like cloaking, multi-domain strategies, and many other techniques, these things can carry a risk. But these things can also carry a result too.

[JohnMu]

If I understand you correctly, Ammon, then you are saying that those links work for traffic, not for search engine "value-passing", right? If so, why would they not be nofollowed? (or is that just overrated?) If they're for traffic, then yes, you could monitor the value of them and optimize them to bring semi-interested traffic to a site (eg stumbled upon a jewellery site, but not really interested, but oh: hot tubs! Let's see... -- seems like a long shot, though). But if they're for search engines, then I'm not certain how you could monitor those proactively (before hitting a bump that causes a dip in rankings / crawler priority).

I bet there are some interesting stories about these things out there . Too bad they're probably mostly private...

John

[JohnMu]

Heh heh, it looks like those kinds of links are back in the SOP of SEO .... PhpBB’s Casino Links.

I guess I did miss something, they must "work" if added to a high profile site like that (or perhaps they don't have to worry about any small Google-Penalty)... I wonder if Google adjusted their automated penalties since BigDaddy-Introduction and people are going back to those practices after a bit of testing? Interesting.

John

[JohnMu]

I like this comment to the above posting:

We detected these a while ago; those links aren't giving those sites any benefit in Google.

I wonder (I'm too nosey, I know) were they "detected" by an algorithm or manually? ... and from that comment it almost seems as if they carry no value, ie also no penalty. If so, even if Google ignores them, they are likely passing something on Yahoo and MSN/Live (what's it called now anyway?)....

no penalty, no value on G, some value on Y/M = no risk, only a potential gain.

John

[AbleReach]

no penalty, no value on G, some value on Y/M = no risk, only a potential gain

Except for that dedicated jewelry afficianado who wants to know what her aunt's potential future birthday present has to do with online pharmacies... ? Or the shopper deciding if you're worthy of his/her credit card and stumbling on a link to some other unrelated thing... or (my fave) the person who can't find the site's FAQ/policies (good FAQ & usability got left for last because they take time to develop) and thought "resources" or "links" might help...

This post has been edited by AbleReach: Nov 14 2006, 01:44 PM

[joedolson]

no penalty, no value on G, some value on Y/M = no risk, only a potential gain.

More accurately, no algorithmic risk. But, like Ablereach says, there's plenty of risk from the perspective of trust. It's more difficult to trust sites which incorporate elements which have no relevance, or which mask which pages are really valuable.

It's frustrating to be looking for information, click on "resources", and instead get a full page of worthlessly irrelevant links.

Obviously, as professionals, this may effect us more strongly than an average user: I'm not really sure. What is a logical reaction when you encounter a page filled with irrelevant links? It depends on how it's presented, I suspect. A "resources" page filled with unrelated links is probably the worst possible example: the presentation suggests a useful page, but the reality is entirely different. "Links" can be a little better: there's less implication that the links will necessarily be related to the subject of the site.

[JohnMu]

Ah, but let's think it through. Any user going to visit a "resources" or "links" page in the hope of finding good references is looking at leaving the site anyway. Is the loss really that high if the user thinks "oh well, no useful links here, I'll go ask Google"?

And of course -- who really looks at those links? I imagine less than 1% of your visitors look at the normal things (t+c, privacy policy, etc) that are linked in the footer; if 50% of those look at your resources pages and 30% of those are appalled, that's less than 0.2% of your visitors. I imagine more people turn away because of your color choices (but no, I have no idea how the real numbers are).

If the loss in terms of total user-satisfaction is less than the potential gain for SEO ....

But of course it's not that simple: the site doing the exchange is not the one gaining from exchanging links or presenting footer-links; but more often than not, if it's providing them, it's usually using those tools as well.

Personally, if there is no real penalty applied for having those SEO-links on Google, I would expect to see them on more and more sites, yet again (or did they never go away?).

John

[AbleReach]

Ah, but let's think it through. Any user going to visit a "resources" or "links" page in the hope of finding good references is looking at leaving the site anyway.

Maybe not, especially where "resources" are concerned.

Also, most people don't buy the first time they meet a vendor, and most productive relationships aren't a one shot deal.

Dubious SEO value can't possibly be worth sending visitors off with confuzzlement, she says, with an evangelical certainty.

This post has been edited by AbleReach: Nov 14 2006, 11:38 PM