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Ethical Search Engine Optimisation and SEO Spam Mass
By Farhad Divecha
Link development & Spam mass
Four extremely intelligent Californians, Zoltan Gyongyi, Pavel
Berkhin, Hector Garcia-Molina, and Jan Pedersen, released a whitepaper discussing
a possible method to identify links from spam domains. Their method sheds
light on some very interesting ideas on how Google might judge the quality
of inbound links.
Good links Vs Bad links
Since the Jagger update, Google seems to be emphasizing link relevance
and link quality a lot more. While relevance is pretty straight forward
to understand, quality of an inbound link may be a foreign subject to those
not involved in search engine marketing as part of their daily lives. So
let's first discuss good links versus bad links. Not all links are equal.
Links from popular sites carry more weight than links from virtually unknown
sites.
It is a well-known fact that Google's initial success lay in their ability
to find websites and rank them based on links from other websites. As Google's
popularity grew, some webmasters tried to outsmart the Google algorithm
by falsely inflating the importance of their website with unnatural inbound
link development. Links that are developed in such a way, with the mere
intention of fooling Google's algorithm to gain higher rankings are considered
to be bad links.
What is Spam Mass?
The research team from California devised a term - spam mass - to denote
the ratio of good links to bad links for any website. Simplisticly speaking,
if 60% of the inbound links to a website originate from spam domains - domains
identified to be built solely for the purpose of artifically inflating a
website's popularity - then the spam mass of the site would be 60%
Ranking is not that simple, though, and variables such as PageRank, relevance,
age etc creep in to complicate such a calculation. However, the idea bears
a lot of potential from which further ideas can be developed.
Applying Spam Mass to Search Engine Marketing
- Why reciprocal link exchanges can pull down your site rank
When optimising a site for better search engine ranking, most webmasters
and search engine optimisers will actively seek inbound links from third
party websites to their site. A very simple way to get these inbound links,
in the past, was to exchange links with other site owners. The problem arises
when most of your inbound links are from sites whose own PageRank is also
influenced by link exchanges.
Google is getting better at recognizing when search engine optimisation
relies on spammy link development to improve rank. The principles Google
uses to do so, are likely to be based on concepts similar to spam mass.
For example the Google system can differentiate links from good domains
and spam domains. If the PageRank of your site is mostly due to links from
spam sites, Google will accordingly devalue your PageRank, discount any
effect from inbound links from the spam domains and, in extreme cases, label
your domain as a spam domain too! All of this can lead to a reduction in
your site's rank on the search results.
How to avoid Google penalties for spam links
The easy answer to this is always "build your site for people, not
for search engines". That doesn't mean you do not carry out the necessary
search engine optimisation. It just means that you should not indulge in
unnatural practices to artificially influence rank. Ideally, let your site
and rank grow as if it were a natural progression.
Do not indulge in reciprocal link exchanges with spam type domains
Stay away from link farms
Exchange links with your suppliers and customers
Get links from trade bodies, governing organisations
Exchange links with competitors, other related sites
Provide links to relevant authority sites
Strive to obtain as many high PageRank relevant inbound links as possible
Other articles to read:
About the Author Farhad Divecha
Director,Accuracast,
Before founding AccuraCast, Farhad worked for and provided consulting services to a number of large and medium sized enterprises in the UK and USA including 3Com, Proctor & Gamble and Household (HFC, HSBC). He has over 7 years of experience marketing products and services online and offline.
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