In October of last year, Google made some major adjustments to PageRank because of paid links, then in November, Google noted that buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and asked for webmasters to report them. I have heard, since this time, from a few sources, that this may not be the case consistently, but I was unable to validate these any of these.
Recently, while doing research, a friend inquired about some link behaviors that appeared to be purchased links, however with a little bit of searching he found that these links appeared to pass an ample amount of value to the site. This was not for a low volume search term:
- Search Term - “engagement rings“
- Daily Search Volume
KeywordDiscovery - 1,682
WordZe - 1,498
WordTracker - 5,432
Google Trends “engagement rings”
OK, I know what many of you might be thinking, “this is probably under the radar,” right? Not so much…
This website, along with others are clients of a SEO, design and marketing service, here, with a list of clients that utilize a site-wide block of links that are consistent on most of these websites without the “no follow” tags or any reference that they are sponsored. Many of these also engage in exchanging links to non-relevant websites. This also led to finding another grouping of a link exchange network, that state “PageRank boosts benefit both sides and is a win-win situation for all.”
Back to the action…
Doing a quick analysis of the website in question, www.mysolitaire.com, also gives insight into other concerns with the relevance of search results.
Links
Google - 309 (predominately from link exchanges and site-wide blocks)
Yahoo - 13,810 (same as Google plus lots of blog links and pages of only links)
On Page
28 instances of “engagement rings”
2 - title
3 - meta keywords
2 - meta description
3 - content (included in “h” tags at bottom of page)
10 - alt tags (many in spacer or non-ring images)
4 - text links
4 - table summary
So, what does this all mean? The question is whether Google is concerned with paid links, site-wide links that are passing PageRank, irrelevant sites linking to move websites to the top?
Is this blackhat behavior? In my opinion, this is as gray as it comes?
Is this a valid reason for reporting to Google?
Does this fit within the Google Webmaster Guidelines as a “link scheme?”
Examples of link schemes can include:
- Links intended to manipulate PageRank
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (”Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
What are your thoughts?
Post from: SEOpittfall.com