Given that the SE’s define what is “natural” – by definition – it is them “creating natural” which makes it totally unnatural – and therefore a farce.

In my book – the engines have made it “natural” to sometimes HAVE TO purchase links – therefore any attempt to thwart purchased links is unnatural.

The days when truly natural linking are gone for now.

Do whatever it takes – which may or may not include purchasing or bribing for links.

One things for certain – the knob twitchers will twitch their knobs again soon enough no matter what happens….

For example, take a look at this url: discovermainstreet.com/directory.php

The page, needless to say, is a directory. The website is a touristy site about Main Street, Sarasota. I’m looking at why this URL is linking to michaelsaunders.com. The reason is obvious: the Michael Saunders & Co. is located on Main Street.

How would I get myself on that page? Move to Florida?

Another example: truliablog.com/?p=147

Obviously, that’s a blog. Why is it linking to michaelsaunders.com? Because she just joined Trulia’s Board of Advisors. How do I get myself on board? Bribe Trulia?

Finally: zillowblog.com/real-estate-connect-day-1/2006/07/

Again, zillowblog is a real estate blog. And the reason for the link? Did someone pay Zillow $600 to write a rosy review of michaelsaunders.com? Nope. She was nominated for Inman’s Most Innovative Brokerage award. So I guess to get that link I’d have to bribe Inman?

There’s a big difference between those kinds of links and Text Link Ads in a blog’s sidebar. And the difference has nothing to do with anchor text, domain authority, domain age, or PageRank.

Ok – are you saying that the strengths of internal linking structures of a given site can be used to identify the linking structures which should be created between sites?

It’s a high-level point of view. It’s not about looking at links and finding a diagram you can apply to other sites.

How the heckers do I get ask.com to tell me
“which page on your site it thinks is most relevant to “home”. Then ask Ask which page on your site is most relevant to your site’s name.”

Play with it. Try different queries. Ask yourself why a particular type of query shows you the results it does. Searching your own site is easier to learn from than searching the Web or other people’s sites because you know what your site is trying to do.

Im a programmer – so I can roll my own – Im just short of a “spec” (when did I ever get a real “spec” anyway…

I’m not going to hand out any specifications, but if this week’s series of articles does their job, people will be able to see where they can improve their link analyses considerably.

Keep in mind that if you build a better link analysis tool and make it available for everyone else to use, you’ll get some links but you’ll ruin the tool for everyone.

Ok – are you saying that the strengths of internal linking structures of a given site can be used to identify the linking structures which should be created between sites?

So if I have a page on my site which is doing really well for its phrase on my site, I should analyze the INTERNAL links to and from that page in order to establish / create similar patterns between pages on different domains?

Ok – scratching my head.

How the heckers do I get ask.com to tell me
“which page on your site it thinks is most relevant to “home”. Then ask Ask which page on your site is most relevant to your site’s name.”
Is there a command to do that? Im not familiar with ask – but as a “student” wanting to become a master seo over the next 27 years before I retire, I want to understand EXACTLY what you are saying here.

It fits in nicely with what you said the other day about there being no link tool out there anymore, and it also fits in with a post you made about “rolling your own tools”.

Im a programmer – so I can roll my own – Im just short of a “spec” (when did I ever get a real “spec” anyway