Beyond the Value of the links

It’s a sad irony that you can probably judge the value of an SEO by how often he or she refers to (Toolbar) PR — as if it means something — more than you can judge the value of any page in Google’s index by its Toolbar PR value. Toolbar PR is dead. Long will it live to trouble those of us who are serious about search engine optimization.

I probably bemused the people at SEO Refuguee’s Forum Community yesterday when I suggested that it would be more profitable to look at links by more reliable criteria than PR. Since I’m now under non-disclosure, I have to be a little conservative about what I say. I have been looking at ways to evaluate links without any reference to the Toolbar for quite a while now, but I’m not free to disclose everything I’ve been doing.

So that puts me in the bad position of having found the Entwives. A few years ago, someone using the screen name of Teleporno visited the Minas Tirith forums and started a thread called I found the Entwives!. What ensued, and has continued through the years, is one of the funniest long-term discussions of a forum troll topic I have ever seen. Teleporno came back to tease people a few times and then vanished.

In the ensuing madness, people have proposed all manner of possible explanations for the inexplicable claim. The Entwives are described in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Only described, never encountered. They have long since vanished by the time of the story. When asked about them in correspondence, Tolkien only suggested in reply that they had probably been killed off. Nonetheless, fans have kept hope alive for the Entwives for years, and Teleporno did his part to fan the fanatacism of true Entwifery.

So what should people think of me or anyone else if we step forward briefly and say, “I think there is another way to determine value, but I’m not at liberty to say”? Are we not being a little too coy? I regret making the comment but I cannot take it back. Done is done and I’m stuck to provide a satisfying answer to the inquiries, both public and private, that have come my way.

All I can say is that if you want to find what I have found, you have to assume for the sake of your research that there is no Toolbar. If there is no Toolbar, there is no misleading value of 0 to 10 to make you think any given page has a certain value. So you must devise your own way of assigning value to any page.

One of SEORefugee’s members has made an effort to determine value but I won’t say if it even comes close or remains afar from what I’m not at liberty to say. I don’t think value can be quantified very easily, if at all. Maybe I have a number to play with, maybe not. No one should assume that I have a number or something else.

Instead, what I think would benefit most Webmasters in the wake of Google’s Thanksgiving 2006 update is an honest, open dialog about how pages can be valued without using the forbidden words “PageRank”, “PR”, and “Toolbar”. And I’ll be frank enough to admit that I’m talking about page value from a search engine optimization perspective, not from a conceptual marketing perspective.

Like everyone else, when I launch a new site, I need to help it along with some links. The question is, where should I look for such links as will actually help? I have some ideas. Other people have their own ideas. Of course in our wildest dreams we all want links from the front pages of Yahoo!, CNN, Google, DIGG, and Amazon.com.

And that isn’t about to happen.

But there is far more to search engine optimization than links and value. You need visibility and while links can give you visibility there are other ways to obtain it. For example, I create visibility for my own new content on the Xenite.Org network by running banner ads at the top of my pages. Banner ads still drive traffic, but they probably have more branding power than anything else. People want to shoot the monkey after they have seen it scamper across their screens enough time.

Monkey shoots are not shark jumps. You can paint monkeys on banners more than once, but you can only jump the shark one time. GEICO has proven that it can generate tons of interest and new customers by constantly flattening our television screens with crazy, silly commercials. The concept is so awesome a cave man would love it.

Visibility doesn’t have to come in the form of banner ads, though. Much to some people’s chagrin, for example, I invade forums and blogs and pontificate endlessly about the evil ways of link lovers. I preach the value of optimizing content first and relying on links second. I slam the “idiot” SEOs who have misinterpreted PageRank with their pompous explanations and tutorials. I rebuke people for starting their forum posts with, “I have a PR 6 Web site, good backlinks, and great content. Can anyone tell me why I’ve lost my rankings?”

Even people who hate me know my name.

But how valuable do you think a PR 6 page really is, if it’s not even listed in the search engine and cannot rank for its own name? PR devotees are quick to point out, of course, that in just 3-4 months that PR 6 could drop to a 0. You just wait for the next PR update and see! Oh, and by the way, check out my great PR tool at site XXX.YYY.

Someone once asked in a forum “why would anyone want a link from a PR 1 site?” Savvy people all but fell all over each other in their rush to say, “Because if you’re judging pages by their Toolbar PR, then getting a link from a PR 1 page today is easier than getting a link from a PR 6 — so why not get in while the getting is good?”

Thing is, if you don’t carefully groom that PR 1 site, it’s going to go out and exchange links with every PR 4 site that is willing to trade and soon enough its Webmaster will be visiting a forum asking, “Why does my PR 5 site not rank for its own name?”

The holey mantra of “get more links” often works but not in the way its devotees think it should. If you go out and get a lot of links, the chances are pretty good that most of them will be worthless. They won’t send you traffic and they won’t pass value to you. They may create a little visibility for you but even that isn’t certain. Still, once in a great while you’ll get a good link. Maybe someone takes pity on you. Maybe someone makes fun of you. Maybe you just say something that so impresses someone they link to your site without checking past the one page they looked at. Whatever the reason, you get a good link.

It only takes a few good links to move sites up high in search results. But what makes a good link? The circular argument is that links from other pages make a good link. But tha’s just repeating doctrine and dogma. It doesn’t address the question of how you build SEO value in a page.

Truth be told, I’m not in a position to know exactly how the whole process works. I don’t have access to a search engine’s algorithmic manual. Maybe a real back end programmer guy could explain it to me, but I’m pretty sure that anyone who thinks they know better than me, you, or anyone else is just blowing smoke. No one in the search engine optimization community knows how it all ties together. I doubt even Matt Cutts could explain all of Google’s inner workings. In fact, I think he may have said as much on his blog.

If not, well, I just started an Internet legend.

So we’re all stuck in the same boat. We don’t know which pages hold value for the search engines or why. All we know is that if we get enough links, eventually something happens. But we also know that some links are better than others. Or, technically, some pages are better than others for linking to our pages.

It’s a kind of scary feeling, when you know you have a page that can pass value almost overnight. Knowing what that value is the way a search engine optimizer recognizes it makes you realize you have achieved something most SEOs only dream of. You know that some search engine technician, were she to look closely at your site, would be impressed enough to say, “Hm. Be careful what you do with your links. They could cost you more than you know.”

What happens in the SEO world when you lose the ability to pass value? How do you rise above the inevitable sniping and carping? How do you regain the trust not only in your pages but also in your methodologies? For if you lose value, or the ability to confer value, you are no longer the kingmaker. You can no longer stand above the crowd and say, “Listen to me! I can do this better than you!”

Maybe you get enough traffic through your inbound links that the search engines don’t really matter to you. Maybe you can sell your value to the highest bidder without concern for whether that value truly exists. I don’t know.

But I do know that I will be ruthless and select only pages with the most integrity for my links. And I will guard my own value as jealously as a father guards his daughters in a city where barbarians are running amok in the streets. I’m not going to link out to just anyone. I never have, although I have often said I “link out freely”.

When I speak of linking out freely, I just mean I don’t ask for reciprocation. I usually don’t even tell people I am linking to their sites. The links themselves provide me with value that I cannot quantify. They provide my visitors with information. They lend credence to what I say, because whatever I say needs to agree with whatever is on the other end of those links.

I have to be in rapport with the people I link to. They speak freely, oblivious to who I am and what I am doing for them, but they speak with my voice. They share my values, my ideas.

How do you quantify that? That’s the million dollar question in search engine optimization. The problem is, if you figure out how to do it, then what? Because once you start telling people what actually, really, truly works, you’ve set the clock into motion. You cannot call the ship back once it has set sail. People will pass your secret around from blog to blog, forum to forum, and they will use it, recommend it, beat it to death, and eventually they’ll figure out how to manipulate it.

And once people start to manipulate a former competitive advantage, the search engines see what is going on and they take action to end or diminish the manipulation. It’s like we’re all on a sinking ship, and instead of people working together to bail water, every time someone says, “Hey! This end of the ship is above the water!”, we all rush down there and the ship tilts the other way because of the sheer volume of weight.

Good search engine optimization keeps the ship floating and sailing smoothly, and sometimes that means you don’t let the passengers into the engine room. They may grumble and complain, but the engines are the heart of the ship. If anything happens to them, the ship stops moving forward. And when you’re stranded at sea, you’re vulnerable to the next disaster.

When you give up your competitive advantage by sharing it freely, the next time an algorithm update sweeps the Web you’re caught without a lifeboat. Disaster overtakes you.

The first rule of competitive search engine optimization is this: never share everything you know.

Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. There is true value in that rule.