Link Baiting For Seo ? Should I Reciprocally Link Or Not?
The idea that links from other sites to your own, actually aid your site, is a logical one. But can back-links hurt or harm your ranking?
Many of us search engine optimization afficionados will know what this term means, but for the less geeky it simply means getting others to link to your site from their own.
Pre-google, this was done by asking friends and foes to link to you, and this was acceptable for a while but the search engines soon began to devalue these reciprocal efforts due to not just the potential for spam but because actual REAL link spam that was taking place in this area.
The word "Spam" is known by some as ham, but in internet lingo it is also known as the process whereby a few tech savvy individuals attempt to gain unfair advantage by flooding areas of the internet with their own commercial resource.
As an example, many unscrupulous spam masters send out unsolicited blog comments to thousands of open blogs in an attempt to gain back links. Others created fake websites and pages with links back to their own - not the phrase "their own" - commercial products - thus creating a need for Google and other search engines to objectively create quality ranking scores to determine the relationship between linking sites. At that time, the search engines were not looking at the following things such as which reciprocal links were owned by the same person or which 20 reciprocal links were on the same machine. In order to thwart those who would fill our inboxes with junk, this data is collected and analyzed as it's rather important for determining exactly who the spammers are.
Perhaps one of the most important parts of the backlinking process is which keywords one uses - traditionally, this has been where most linking efforts have fallen down.
Why? We can't specifically tell others to use such and such an anchor text in their link to us.
Also, since as a casual reader, one is not likely to be an expert on niche market keywords, one is going to most logically try to pick the keywords having the most traffic. One could however be forgiven for this as it really is a most logical mistake. A brand new site, even after being indexed by Google or most search engines, typically has no chance at ranking on its chosen keywords for many months if not years.
Ergo, have we looked at a potentially time wasting effort here?
The potential problems don't stop there. Initially a new html or htm page has a Google Rank of N/A. Then after its indexed, typically 0 where Zero is not good and 10 is the best. Although some may argue this while a new page with N/A or O as its rank can have a freshness quotient that can help it positively, in most search engines, its zero which is evidence of lack of backlinks will definitely not work in its favor.
Exceptions to this - if the newly created page is sitting on a very popular Web 2.0 social network property like squidoo or craigslist, bebo or scribd to name a few then it won't be penalized as much just because its current pagerank or credibility level appears to be a zero.
As the examples of exceptions above clearly show, it is thought that new pages on foundation sites such as those with a PageTrust of 5 or above, inherently acquire some of the PageRank or PageTrust of the site that they rest on.
Technical babble galore - the question really is - What can a novice do ?
Google's time worn advice, go back to basics, create good and get creative. They would recommend strongly that you even create "link-bait" that will cause others to want to link to you.I like both this phrase and the thought if you have any idea what this link-bait thing means. Its never a great idea to truly ignore what Google recommends, however I urge you to examine the issues involved in creating link-bait more deeply. Calculate whether you really have 8-9 months that it takes to consistently create new articles almost daily, and to publish a huge amount of high grade material in one spot that would cause people to consistently put a link to that page from their own - If the answer is yes, then you now know the true meaning of link-bait.
There has got to be a better way no?
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