SEOMoving To Trusted Links & Change The Link Election Model

Moving To Trusted Links & Change The Link Election Model

Thank you, Aaron. That’s for taking the

research paper
(PDF file) about detecting link spam that Gary
wrote about
earlier and breaking it
down
in non technical language (and Jim Boykin summarizes Aaron further

here
). Aaron finds things like the paper says having .edu and .gov links are
a good thing, don’t worry about having a few spammy links and the more trusted
links you have, the better.

I was thinking last night about the way to describe some of the changes or
generational evolution we’ve seeing with counting links, and I thought it might
be helpful to break it down this way:

Counting Links / Referendum: Before Google, other search engines made
use of links to determine which sites might be important. But this was mainly a
counting exercise. The more links the better, regardless of the quality of those
links.

  • In simple terms, each link counted the same.
  • In election terms, it was like a referendum. Every voter had an equal say.

Weighted Links / Electing A Congress: Google’s PageRank system helped
usher in a change to weighting links, that not all are as important as others.
The system worked to figure out what were the most important links and give
sites getting those links more credit — the authority pages, to use a popular
term for this.

  • In simple terms, not all links are credited equal. Some links are worth
    more than others.
  • In election terms, it was as if Google looked at all the links across the
    web, determined who seemed to get the most, then let those authorities serve
    in a “congress” of sort in making the big decisions about what’s good on the
    web through the link votes they cast.

Trusted Links / Qualifying Representatives

This is what we’ve been moving to. When PageRank knew a link was “important,”
that wasn’t the same as trustworthy despite the authority misnomer. It only
meant knowing that some particular link should count for more because the page
the link was on had a lot of people “voting” for it. You can scam that type of
voting.

  • In simple terms, some links are worth more than others after using some
    checks-and-balances to eliminate the scamming.
  • In election terms, it’s as if after a congress is elected, you go back and
    check the campaign contributions. If you find something iffy, then some
    particular congressperson’s vote might not count for as much as others. Or
    perhaps you watch their voting record, to see if they know what they’re
    talking about. Being popular as everyone knows doesn’t necessarily mean you’re
    an authority!

That’s a rough idea, and I’m playing at refining it more, but I thought I’d
share it now. Remember, it’s also not just about how much a link counts for but
the text that’s in and surrounding the link, along with a lot of other factors.
Also see Yahoo My
Web: An eBay For Knowledge
on how search engines hope to tap into trust in
ways beyond link analysis to improve results.

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index
whitepaper | Analytics

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

8m
Data Analytics in Marketing
whitepaper | Analytics

Data Analytics in Marketing

10m
The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook
whitepaper | Digital Marketing

The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

1y
Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study
whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

1y