Link Theory

The theory of link design, link implementation, and link management discussed in detail.

Mapping link value through graphs and weights

Posted by Michael Martinez on September 15, 2008 in Link Theory, SEO Metrics

I was looking at a paper that discusses three-dimensional graphing for the World Wide Web and it occurred to me that people might find value in graphing their backlinks. Creating such graphs requires doing research and recording data, but there would be value in looking at snapshot comparisons of your links according to [...]

The Basic Principles of Peanut Butter SEO

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 21, 2008 in Link Theory

Peanut Butter SEO. I’ve used that expression quite often over the past few months because it encompasses a whole new generation of search engine optimization ideas. I have (rightly or wrongly) attributed the basic concept to Matt Cutts, who used a peanut butter metaphor at SMX Advanced 2007 to descuss PageRank.
Originally, all I [...]

The Huey Lewis Method of Link Building

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 11, 2008 in Link Theory

“I want a new drug. One that won’t make me sick. One that won’t make me crash my car — or make me feel three feet thick.”
The SEO industry needs to sing that song with just a very minor tweak in the lyrics:
“I want a new link. One that won’t make me beg. [...]

Adding value to content through promotional links

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 28, 2008 in Link Theory

Last year I wrote about the three types of links that you can embed in your content. There are navigational links, body links, and promotional liniks. I defined them this way:
Navigational Links may be found in any zone but are most often placed in anchor margins and mastheads. Navigational links connect your pages [...]

Architecting Web sites - Design from the SEO perspective

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 23, 2008 in Advanced SEO, Link Theory

Update (2008-07-25) Gary Lee took this article’s PageRank timeline and made a chart complete with appropriate and/or interesting graphics. Check it out! Thanks, Gary.
In March 2008 I wrote “You need to think in terms of sculpting Web sites, not PageRank”. Shari Thurow suggested to me that it might be better to say, [...]

Google passes second link’s anchor text

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 6, 2008 in Link Theory

Update 2008-07-09 It’s become clear from the comments on Sphinn that people are not paying attention to what I actually wrote below. I did warn you that the search results might change for a variety of reasons, AND I said I would take the links down. I also said that this was not [...]

What Kind of Web Links Work Best for SEO?

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 3, 2008 in Link Theory

“What kind of Web links work best for SEO?” might seem like an odd question but it has appeared in SEO Theory’s keyword referrals many times over the past few weeks. I have no idea of who is asking the question but they are apparently NOT finding an answer. I’ve been looking at [...]

Classifying your links to improve return on investment

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 13, 2008 in Link Theory

Although most academic papers concerned with Web search focus on PageRank computations and spam filtering, a slowly growing body of literature does explore ideas in other areas. For example, A generic lexical URL segmentation framework for counting links, colinks or URLs (that is a .DOC file) looks at differents of counting links and relationships. [...]

Rand Fishkin still doesn’t understand NoFollow

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 11, 2008 in Link Theory

UPDATE: Rand let me know he had revised his post to clear up the ambiguity about the effect of using rel=’nofollow’ in his remark.
I hate doing this but enough people follow SEOmoz that if Rand Fishkin posts something wrong, the chances are pretty good that a lot of people will start repeating the erroneous idea [...]

HTML Sitemap Design and Theory - Fundamental Basic Principles of HTML Sitemap Design

Posted by Michael Martinez on June 10, 2008 in Content Theory, Link Theory

The most important part of any large Web site is the HTML sitemap. Both search engines and people use HTML sitemaps, and even Webmasters can find uses for them as they help us keep straight just where all the content has been placed.
An HTML sitemap should have the simplest, barest, non-flashiest design of your [...]

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