So those who have used Wikipedia in the past to build links will be dissapointed to learn that they will now us using the “nofollow” tag on outbound links.  To quote the people over at Wikipedia: 

“At Jimbo Wales’ directive, all external links within the English language Wikipedia are now coded “nofollow” — this should help cut spamming immensely once word gets out in the SEO community.”

Wikipedia was one of the sites where you could get a high quality inbound link by contributing good content. I’ve used it to build links before (legitimately). However, I think we’ve all seen people abuse the system which is why Wikipedia is making the move to the “nofolllow” tag.  Bottom line is that those outbound links will no longer pass any “link juice” to the sites they’re linking to. Of course, certain pages of Wikipedia are so heavily trafficked  that it’s still worth it to get a link just for the traffic alone. Seems to me that Wikipedia is getting stronger all the time. In many occasions, there is no way they should be ranked as high as they are (for example “search engine optimization” shows Wikipedia ranked # 1 on Google??? C’mon).  With this move, their site will get even more powerful as their PR will all be passed internally.

The move to nofollow will not eliminate link spam. Has it really reduced the amount of link spam you see on your blogs? No. Not really.  We all have to deal with link spam every single day. It will reduce it some but absolutely it will not solve the problem. Is it the right move? Yes. If I were running Wikipedia I’d have done the same. You get the benefit of reduced spam while also making your site more powerful.  The people most pissed off are probably the link spammers. At least Matt Cutts will be happy.

Search technology improves everyday. It’s in the search engines best interest of course to ensure that happens if they want to grow their revenues. Users of Google, Yahoo!, MSN, or any other search engine use those engines because they feel they produce the most relevant results for their queries. Google dominates search because most Internet users (as I do) feel they produce the best search results. Most of the time anyways. Of course, we often times see spam sites dominate search results and nobody except the spammers themselves likes to see those results. As Google and the other search engines try to improve their algorithms to ensure better results for users, this means that many of those sites out on the web using techniques that go against Google’s guidelines will be at risk for penalization or deletion from their index. One of the most easily abused techniques is the use of invisible text (text that a search engine spider sees but visitors can’t). Most commonly, text is hidden by using the same colored text as the background. There are other ways of hiding text of course, stacking layers, in external CSS files, etc. Previously Google didn’t crawl through external CSS (not to my knowledge anyways) but Disney’s fan blog recent delisting proves that things are changing in that regard. Obviously, Google is trying to crack down on SEO techniques that they feel unfairly manipulate their results. It got me thinking and this leads me to the point of this post: Are the SEO techniques that you’re using on your sites (or your client’s site) safe?

As search engines like Google improve their algorithm, certain SEO techniques that have worked in the past may not work in the future. Whether it’s invisible text on something like your link building efforts, it would be wise to try to prevent your site from being smacked by the newest algorithms if you care about long term rankings. For a long time now, site owners have known the power of inbound links in improving site rankings.  This is why we all see those incredibly well written reciprocal link requests in our email box every morning. That whole process has been completely abused so sites that only gain links through link exchanges will be at risk. In a recent blog post after a recent SES, Matt Cutts said “…our algorithms can do a pretty good job of spotting excessive reciprocal links.”  He didn’t say “reciprocal links are bad” but why would their algorithm be attempting to detect reciprocal links?  Obviously they don’t approve when it’s done to excess. He did say “excessive reciprocal linking”. There’s nothing wrong with reciprocal linking but when Google detects that you have an outgoing link to all sites that are linking to you, it’s pretty obvious. When all your inbound links have the same anchor text, it’s pretty obvious. So what can you do to help ensure your sites are not in jeopardy? Don’t make your link building obvious and easy to detect. Some tips:

• When you do exchange links, make sure to link only to content related sites 
• Stay away from bad link neighborhoods. Always analyze the link profile of anyone you plan on linking to. Link to someone who is linking to a bad neighborhod, and essentially you’re linking to those sites as well.
• Make sure you have plenty of one way links to your site (at the very least buy some listings in some of the better directories).
• Make sure you deep link (get inbound links to internal pages of your site, not just your home page).
• Link to other sites that are helpful to your site visitors. Stop worrying about “leaking Page Rank”. Seriously. Share the link love if you ever want it in return.
• Vary your anchor text. The same text all the time is an obvious indicator. Make your link building look natural by using variation.
• Link Bait (or find someone to help you link bait).
• A significant jump in the amount of inbound links can be a red flag (If you’re link baiting you have nothing to worry about. If you’re spamming blogs you should be worried.)

Taking these steps should help to improve the chances that your site(s) do not face the wrath of the Google gods.

So everyone is always looking for ways to find other methods of generating inbound links. I think we’re all tired of seeing the lame link request emails in our inbox:

“Dear Info,

Your sight is really great. We noticed it’s similer to our site and we wood like to exchange links with you. Please link to our PR 0 page from your PR 5 page. By doing this, we will help each other to get better rankings. My site will be a PR 12 on the next Google update.

 Thank you,

 Brad…errrrrrrrrrr…..Rajeesh”

Makes you want to link to them right away doesn’t it? So are you one of those people who are trying to send out similar emails to other people? Stop. It’s time for something different. There’s a great new invention that may help you get links much faster than emails. It’s called the telephone. It’s a device used to transmit and receive sound, usually over long distances. Find the sites you’d like a link from and make a call. What’s the absolute worst that can happen? They say no. Big deal. You’ve faced rejection pretty much every time you’ve been in a bar anyways. Pick up the phone and make a call. I think you’ll be suprised at how effective that can be. But, before you start dialing you may want to make sure that:

1. Your sites are topically related.

2. You have something of value to offer the person your calling. If it’s a link back to their site, offer to place it somewhere in the body of your content and not in a footer. Links that come from the main body of content are better. Better yet, ask them what page they would like a link from on your site.

3. The page that you’re offering a link from is cached by Google. On the rare occasion that I do read email requests for link exchanges, half the time the page people are offering to place a link on isn’t even cached by Google!

4. You “sell” them on why they should link to you. Bottom line, what’s in it for them? And come up with something better than ”Link exchanges help improve your rankings in the search engines”. That’s debatable, as Matt Cutts mentioned here that Google is getting better at finding reciprocal links and paid links. Are reciprocal links bad? Not really, but ask yourself if the link you’re planning on adding to your site is beneficial to your site visitors.

 Happy cold calling.