The Balance of Design

You need content to be indexed and you need links to make connections between content. For many years I have pointed out to people that links themselves are content. Take Yahoo!’s directory, for example. Or the DMOZ directory. Or JoeAnt. Or GoGuides. What are they offering as content, if not links?

We have yet to see a directory that offers us something more in value than the links and their descriptions. Maybe someone will invent the WikiDirectory, where each link has an article and users can update the articles about the links.

Oh, wait. That would be About Us and, alas!, most of their pages are in the Google Supplemental Index.

Is the Web become so sophisticated and decadent that we must now create content about links? Will we one day have a directory that simply replaces the content on other Web sites?

Oh, wait. That would be Ickipedia. They no longer link out to the rest of the Web with real links — they use “rel=’nofollow’” because, in their opinion, all non-Ickipedia sites are not trustworthy.

I can see why people want to use only nofollowed links to point to Ickipedia, but I would say it’s too late. Google and Ask have decided that it is better to show their users unreliable content than to provide them a reasonable chance of finding something that may be accurate and trustworthy.

In our zeal for building more content and links we have saddled ourselves with the burden of guilt. That is, we who manipulate search engines must accept responsibility for the fact that it is we — and no others — who have broken the Web.

Sure, Google came along with crazy, unsupportable ideas about links being “votes” — clearly, Larry Page and Sergey Brin never looked at real Web sites while they were in college (and now they have thousands of little college dudes and dudettes who depend entirely upon Google for everything in their daily lives to look at Web sites).

Links are not votes, never were votes, and never shall be votes. Links are pathways, connections between documents and information. Links were designed to be pathways, not expressions of opinion. Links were intended to bring disparate points of view together as well as to show agreement.

The technology of linkage is universally unopinionated. It is content that expresses opinion, and it is through content that we cast our “votes”. But there is no true mechanism (yet) for measuring the intention of content.

The search engine optimizer must expression intention through copy and must build connections through links. But Google has perverted links to an unsuitable model. We must use links as expressions of opinion, though no link can truly ever honestly represent an opinion. Not if it is to remain a link.

We can redefine the technology, as Google has partially done, by including in the link design a mechanism which says, “I don’t trust the source”. To Google, “rel=’nofollow’” was enough. But since only Google could easily see the nofollows, someone had to go out and invent a browser plug-in — which, so far as I know, only works in Firefox.

4 out of 5 people still use Internet Explorer. Barely 1-in-6 people yet use FireFox, so it’s not likely that many people will ever know that I trust Hitslinks more than I trust Ickipedia (a site I won’t even link to with nofollow) unless they actually read what I say.

Most of you who read this blog, according to Google Analytics (which under-reports data by as much as 25-30%), use Firefox. Isn’t that ironic? I’m no fan of Firefox but the majority of my readers use it. In any event, a lot of you probably have that nofollow-enabled plug-in so you can see when I occasionally nofollow a link.

No one has ever commented on my nofollows or asked why I use it.

Nofollow contributes nothing of value to the Web. It is not an expression of opinion but rather a directive to some search engines. “Do not follow this link”, I say, but they’ll follow it anyway, “for discovery”. What they do with their discovery we don’t know, but if I am the only person to link to a page and I use nofollow does that page have any hope of being indexed? And if it is not indexed, will it ever be found and fully appreciated?

Nonetheless, we cannot simply thank the spammers and the clueless majority of so-called SEOs for the practical joke that is “rel=’nofollow’”. The solution that Google promised bloggers and forum admins only turned into a huge stick with which Google has bludgeoned Webmasters. “Thou shalt use ‘rel=’nofollow’” on your profile links or risk losing the ability to pass value through all your links.”

Well, there’s an example of the free expression of opinion, isn’t it? We are now free to NOT use links to express opinions or cast votes as we see fit.

I have often said that the search engines are free to decide which pages they will include and I am free to decide what I shall do with my pages. That is, in my opinion (which cannot be expressed through any link in any fashion), a fair and equitable exchange. Of course, I’m one of those hard-working people who doesn’t rely solely on search engines for traffic.

Google sent Xenite.Org about 22,000 referrals last month. I would barely miss the traffic, if they suddenly banned me. I’ve had worse months than if I lost 22,000 visitors. Still, I can’t complain about the traffic that Google sends me. But I don’t design my pages for Google’s convenience.

Oh, sure. I optimize my content. I do it mostly out of habit, since I rely mosty on my internal promotional network to drive traffic to new content. Search engines take too long to send me visitors. By the time the search referrals come rolling in I’ve already moved on to something else. I can’t wait two weeks for search engines to put my content at the top of their search results.

So even though I optimize my content for search, to scarf up what traffic will come trickling in after interest in a topic has peaked, I find myself in a position of making content simply for the sake of making content. And I find that being in that position makes me somewhat lazy.

I mean, I don’t have to create link bait. I don’t have to be the most compelling guy out there. If I write it people will come, not because I’m the greatest writer since sliced bread (we know I’m not) but because people still want to read something substantive. They want to see what other people’s opinions are.

I’m full of opinions, and I cannot express them through links.

Or can I? I can certainly choose not to link, and I can choose to link to site A instead of site B. And there is where Larry Page and Sergey Brin made their mistake. They assumed that the choice is an expression of opinion. It could certainly be so but in most cases the reason for embedding a link is only to provide some quick reference.

And where do most people get their references from? From search engines. So isn’t ironic that search engines expect us to be expressing our opinions through links (a concept the technology does not support) and we rely upon the search engines to give us links to pad out our Web sites and articles on the assumption that it is too much trouble to actually find some decent Web sites.

When I create what I have in the past called “elite directories” I have spent hours scouring search engine results looking for suitable Web sites. I remember cursing at Google when I tried to find good episode guides for several television shows. They have no problem showing poorly contrived, well-linked SpamAd sites that are database-driven but the actual fan sites that are built with love and filled with opinion are buried deep in the link-poor search results.

Most people would never find those sites were it not for me, for Xenite now ranks well in the queries for those episode guides. Since the links I provided didn’t do the trick (as I knew they would not), I decided to share some opinions with the links to help people understand why I chose those particular sites.

And that is what I call the balance of design. I embed my links in copy that explains why the links are (or are not) important. It is not enough to blindly use “rel=’nofollow’”. Even if I have the right browser plug-in merely seeing that a link has been nofollowed tells me nothing.

I have to read the copy. And if there is no copy, I don’t know what is so untrustworthy about the destination. And if the destination is untrustworthy, then why link to it anyway?

Where Larry and Sergey almost got it right is in the assumption that I will not link to sites I don’t trust. I may write about them. I may include their URLs in my copy. But I will not link to them.

In which case, the search engine optimizer needs to step back and think about the big picture. It’s not the links that matter. It’s the copy. Why? Because without the copy the links by themselves mean nothing.

Ironically, Google’s bludgeoning, bullying tactics may have given us all sufficient reason to pause and reconsider what we’re doing. Google cannot force Webmasters to stop linking indiscriminantly. NOr can they prevent most Webmasters from ignoring “rel=’nofollow’”. But the SEO community has already begun to return to the concept of Balance of Design.

Even with paid links the new trend is now to embed the links in copy that is relevant to the link anchor text. You cannot stop people from writing something for a dollar. Freelancers have been writing copy for pay for generations. That process isn’t about to stop just because some search engine was founded on the most stupid idea since DOS.

But if we think more about the copy and less about the links, things should work out well enough for most of us in the end. After all, people want copy, not links.

Links are just there to make connections, not to express opinions.