The Long Dark Linktime Of The Web

Not every link counts.

One of the most poorly understood principles of search engine optimization is that gluttonous linking will always destroy its own value. In most competitive queries, links don’t make nearly as much difference as SEOs today believe. You can look at how search engines evaluate pages in a very simplistic way:

1. Do I (the search engine) know and trust the host of this page?
2. Do other hosts (whom I, the search engine, know and trust) express knowledge of and trust toward this page?
3. Is this page relevant to the query I am resolving?
4. Is the link anchor text pointing to this page relevant to the query I am resolving?

Item 2 could be sub-divided into hosts the search engines trust a lot, hosts they trust a little, and hosts that may have some sort of probationary trust (I suspect “a lot” and “a little” pretty much cover the whole spectrum). Hosts labelled as spam or otherwise unsearch-friendly won’t be trusted at all.

Is trust the most important factor in determining search results rankings? I would have said “No” even as recently as two years ago. Today, I think it does matter a great deal even though many MFA and low-quality content sites like Wikipedia continue to dominate search results for numerous queries.

Links have never been expressions of trust or value. Treating links as expressions of value and trust is like saying U.S. Highway 41 is a more valuable road than Peachtree Street ni Atlanta because more cities connect to U.S. Highway 41. That’s like saying U.S. Highway 41 is more important than Interstate Highway 75 because you can stop at more places along U.S. Highway 41 than along Interstate Highway 75.

Links are connectors between Web pages, nothing more. People who feel their pages look insubstantial will dress them up with links so those pages seem more interesting. That practice has gone on since 1993 or thereabouts, long before linking algorithms were adopted by search engines. But just because someone puts a link on his page doesn’t mean he values the content you’ll find at the end of the link. A lot of people link to content they object to or disagree with.

In a medium created for people, not search engines, the rules of links are simple: point people to places you want them to go in order to establish your own credibility. Credibility could mean you are a reliable source of information (you back up what you say with references) or it could mean that you are an extensive resource (you help people find content). In the pre-linksearch Web links were all about credibility, visibility, and helping people.

Maybe you were just helping your Mom get some attention to her Web site. Maybe you were helping your best friend from school promote his business idea. You added links to your site that you didn’t necessarily want to be treated as expressions of opinion. Your endorsements were nothing more than, “I want to help this person become more visible”. That was the norm.

In today’s search engine-dominated Web, the search engines are telling us that providing “helpful” links is not acceptable. They don’t want those kinds of links in their databases, and if they catch you promoting other sites they will do mean things to you, like penalize or delist your pages.

The search engines want only what they consider to be “quality” links, “good” links, links worthy of trust. In some cases, the posturing and belligerence is truly beneficial. Who among us wants to promote sites that sneak malware onto your PC? Who among us wants to promote sites that rip you off, steal your identity, or advocate criminal activity? Most people would not want to link to such content.

But then there is the content that the search engines are responsible for, the content created specifically for the search engines. These are the spam pages, the doorways intended to gain high rankings. These are the MFAs, the AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network pages that really only exist to help send people to paying advertisers. A lot of these sites use autogenerated, scraped content,

That the search engines themselves create autogenerated and scraped content, populate their autogenerated pages with advertising, and generally don’t offer anything of unique value to the surfing community — who only want to click through to other sites — gives one the impression that a double standard is being applied to the Web.

The search engines give the impression that they have appointed themselves the Guardians of Trusted Linkage and the sole Authorized Aggregators of the Web. While this perception has not become a public relations nightmare, it points out the ethical questions that many Web marketers have asked through the years: if the search engines can flout their own rules, then why cannot I?

The mystique of search engine control is derived mostly from the ignorance of a poorly trained SEO community. Because there are always new people joining the community, and because there are always people leaving the community (Crash! Come back!), the average skill-level and knowledge-level in the community will never be very high. You have a small cadre of very experienced people, but even there specialization ensures that experience, skill, and knowledge are not evenly distributed.

Hence, by the standard of statistical evaluation we are in general a poorly trained industry. In practice, it turns out that most SEOs with six months’ or more experience are well-trained in the Dark Arts of Link Mongering, and those who follow the Dark Path are doomed to ranking by linkage. And as they become successful in the Dark Arts, they help to indoctrinate more new SEOs in the Way of Link Mongering.

The problem with this self-reinforcng trend is that it ultimately leads to conflict with the search engines. As search engines place more trust in certain kinds of links, the perceived value of those links increases among the practitioners of the Dark Arts. The Link Mongers suffer from an unquentiable thirst for new links. And the more links they acquire, the more the search engines distrust the followers of the Way of Darkness.

Even Link Baiting is a discipline in the Dark Arts because it is founded upon the flawed belief that any collection of “natural” links is beneficial for your search engine results. Truth be told, I outrank Link Baiters on many competitive queries every day. I eat Link Baiters for breakfast. I shine the Light of True SEO in their search results and find that the Dark Arts cannot compete.

That is, when you don’t control who links to you or where the links come from, you are trusting to blind, random luck to help with your search engine results. That’s not white hat, that’s just plain stupid. If you’re in the business of search engine optimization, you’re in the business of achieving high rankings in search results. Now, ideally, you start with on-page content and therefore reduce the overall number of links you need.

But most practitioners of the Dark Arts neither know very much nor understand very much the value of true search engine optimozation. After all, for several years all people had to do was submit articles to free distribution services, write press releases, and get as many free directory listings as possible. A few blog links would help, too. True SEO was never necessary because we could link bomb our way to the top.

As the search engines began filtering out those kinds of links, people began to suffer dramatic downturns in search engine referrals. They lost business. They lost money. They lost faith in the search engines, but they never lost faith in the Dark Way. In fact, they eventually rebounded and found new ways to build or acquire links.

The links are key to SEO success because they are key to SEO failure.

That is, practitioners of the Dark Arts don’t understand that it’s not all about links. Instead, they believe that links are all that matter. They may pay lip service to on-page content (”Be sure to set your title and meta tags within these parameters!”) but they are intently focused on creating 750,000 out of 1,000,000 DIGG accounts to boost their own popularity.

Where Wizards of the Dark Arts have led themselves and others astray is by failing to recognize the true meaning and value of social networking. Technorati, DIGG, and Del.ic.io.us (among others) all gave individuals reasons to share links that were truly meaningful and valuable with other people. This was the first time in the history of the Web that such value-based sharing could actually occur. After all, anyone can create a Web site. But telling people about really interesting stuff is less mechanical, more personally involved.

Those who practice the Evil of Dark Linking, however, perverted the social media sites to their own uses. By corrupting these services into commercial promotion channels, the Dark Wizards have spread a horrifically poisonous cloud across the Web unlike any pestilence seen since PageRank first appeared.

PageRank and Social Media Linking are, in fact, the first two of the Four Horsemen of the Web Apocalypse. Now, apocalypse is all about change. Ultimately, out of the painful process of change we can look for something good. But the shakeout period will become a little bumpy.

But what does all that mean?

It means that search engine optimization too easily becomes the goal of people who don’t understand what it’s all about. It’s not about search engine results rankings. They can help a Web business but there is something wrong if search engines are the only source of traffic you get. A good indicator of the success of your SEO efforts is how much traffic you get from non-search referrers.

That is, if we assume for the sake of discussion that the search engines truly only want to provide listings for good, valuable content, then it follows that truly valuable content is linked to, trusted by, and endorsed by sources other than search engines. You use the search engines to help build your visibility to get those endorsements, but you won’t be free of dependence upon algorithms until you have enough non-search traffic that you can say, “I don’t need the search engines to survive.”

If you never reach that point, all your link baiting and link building are for nought. You are a complete and total SEO failure. No one knows who you are, no one cares about you, no one values what you do. Search engine optimization won’t change that.

True SEO, pure SEO, focuses on developing the optimial structure for content such that the structure supports the content in search engine results. The majority of good structure is internal to a Web site. External links are not a significant part of that structure.

Most SEOs today would disagree with that statement, but that is where they demonstrate their inability to understand the most fundamental concept of search engine optimization: the chosen method of implementation is not the algorithm.

Just because you improve your rankings through linkage does not mean links are the only or even the best way to improve your rankings. The vast majority of SEOs struggle with this principle. The advanced SEOs have embraced it and they live it every day.

We’ll never have true equality between the search engines and the Web. The search engines cannot exist without the Web. They are wholly dependent upon it. But they are largely irrelevant to the Web because they were never part of the original vision. When you reach the point in your search engine optimization where search engines are no longer critical to your Web marketing success, you’ll begin to understand that search engines are of secondary importance.

In Web marketing, your first priority should be to build qualified, convertable traffic. If you only do that through search engines, you’re not doing your job.

In search engine optimization, your first priority should be to enhance your Web marketing efforts. If you only think you need to get links, you don’t understand what your job entails.

Let me sum it up like this: until you see the true value in a link, you’ll never practice effective SEO. Links — even links that search engines ignore — can empower you. Learn how that works, and why it works.

It will make you a better SEO. It’s not a Dark Art. It’s just pure, fundamental search engine optimization theory.