During
that time EVERYONE has noticed the value of inbound
links to their web sites. This has lead many agressive
webmasters to buy up hundreds of keyword focused domain
names, slap up a few weak and repetitive content pages
over dozens of domain names in an attempt to build their
own little empire.
MINI-WEBS BECOME ROAD KILL IN TRAFFIC GENERATION SCHEMES
This
misguided strategy has littered the web with garbage
that nobody wants to clean up. Outdated sites that no
longer reflect the businesses that created them, with
broken images, broken links and broken promises to
visitors are everywhere. Their owners don't maintain
them, update them, and sometimes don't even pay to host
them as duplicated domains are strewn across free
hosting services and are forgotten for years.
WHO
IS TO BLAME FOR PAGERANK OBSESSION?
I'm
reluctant to place the blame for this on Google, but I'm
afraid I must. Google made PageRank the holy grail for
the web and everyone simply set out in search of the
holy grail. For those of you NOT obsessed with PageRank,
it is only a small part of a complex set of factors
Google uses to decide how important a site is based on
how many other sites link to it. Linking is important,
but many have become obsessed with it to the point of
linking insanity.
There
are linking clubs, reciprocal linking services, link
building software, link popularity software, and now
even link brokerages that purchase links on your behalf!
Search engine optimization firms have now begun to
establish and position domains solely for the purpose of
selling links in multiple categories. Those same SEO
firms fill their fully optimized pages with Google
Adsense Ads to earn income from that portion of visitors
not interested in pages of links.
ADSENSE PROVIDES ESCAPE FOR VISITORS TRAPPED IN LINK
FARMS
Those
visitors click away on the Adsense ads simply to find
escape from the contentless link farm that they've found
while looking for information. The SEO firm has made
money both selling links and now from Adsense
clickthroughs, but provides no useful information. This
is litter generated along the road to traffic generation
and link popularity!
Another
phenomenon created by linking insanity is the self-
referential linking scheme, where webmasters link ALL
their sites from the footer of EVERY page on EVERY site
to gain link popularity increases. If they've also
created mini-webs of repetitive content strewn across
hundreds of domains, they will inevitably link every
domain to every other domain they own, sometimes from
the bottom of every page on every single mini-web site -
even their main domains!
SELF
REFERENTIAL LINKING OF MINI-WEBS IS LINKING PSYCHOSIS
Often
the owners of these linking fiefdoms will refrain from
using every page of their site to link out to their many
tiny domains, but will create "index" or "sitemap" or
"search" or "resources" pages that essentially do the
same linking, but with keyword focused anchor text
encompassing every possible search phrase that might be
used to find their business site.
Those
afflicted with linking psychosis have entirely lost
contact with reality in favor of the fantasy of
PageRankLand. The missing ingredient for these lost
souls is the "Authority" site concept. They link from
every page or domain TO every page or domain randomly
and this confers no prominence of "Authority" to any one
domain. They might actually succeed in their attempt to
rank well if they weren't so unclear on this single
concept.
A
PARTIAL TREATMENT FOR AFFLICTED LINK PSYCHOTICS
A
single link from each domain - from ONE page - back to
the "Authority" site will increase link popularity of
the main site. Those mini-web sites SHOULD link to each
other, but only once and only in one direction, in a
daisy chain fashion to confer authority to the main site
and lead the search engines to the next domain that does
the same thing - it in turn confers authority to the
main site and leads the spiders to the next mini-site,
etc.
The
mini-web site psychosis isn't cured with this treatment.
They STILL offer no substantial, original, useful
content and the visitor gains nothing except being lead
to the main site where they might find the product or
service they set out to find in the beginning. A total
cure comes only when real content of unique value is
added to those individual mini-sites. Then they become
self-actualized and they matter.
I've
rescued many client mini-webs from linking psychosis by
filling mini domains with useful, relevant and
interestingly unique content. Those sites become
destinations themselves, gain rank and status of their
own and then link to the main business site, conferring
even more relevance upon the single authority site they
link to.
A
treatment is available, the cure is substantial,
relevant, unique text content. There is hope for linking
psychosis.
