Article by LinksManager.com Staff - © 2006, Reproduction without permission prohibited.

The Fantasy World of Full Duplex Linking

Depending on the efficiency of your spam filters and the number of sucker lists you've inadvertently wound up on, you've received thousands, hundreds or, if you're lucky, a mere handful of invitations to hitch your website to a Search Engine Spammer's star. Virtually all these too-outrageous-to-NOT-refuse offers fall under the definition of full-duplex linking schemes - programs that allegedly make adding links a zero-effort, no-brainer proposition that you can accomplish simply by clicking an "OK" button.

Typically, these messages start by promising to link you up to "thousands of websites automatically" without the "tedium of submitting individual link exchange requests." The second most common element in these pitches is, to put it politely, misstatements - a pack of lies, to put it less politely - about the relationship between linking practices and search-engine rankings.

Here's a direct quote from one promoter who offers to sell webmasters instant access to 248 links from websites set up by "volunteers" dedicated to attempting to manipulate SE rankings: "Although the major search engines place importance on relevant links it does not discount non-relevant links."

Overlooking the semi-literate grammar, which is typical of link-farm propaganda, compare this statement with Google's official position on what it describes as link popularity schemes: Typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

One company offering webmasters an opportunity to "blast 1000 links in two minutes" even offers "Guaranteed Search Engine Results! Now!" While the claim is undoubtedly true, the "results" are almost certainly not, to steal a line from Google again, what anyone "would likely to consider to be positive." To quote from Google's Information For Webmasters: Fiction: Joining an unmonitored "free-for-all" link injection or exchange program will boost my rankings. Fact: Linking schemes will often do a site MORE HARM than good.

One of our favorite e-mail invitations to dance with the danger of SE oblivion, began this way: "Get Instant Access To 21,591 Websites Just Waiting To Exchange Links With YOU!" and went on to tell us that "the more websites you can get to link to your website, the higher you will rank in the search engines, guaranteed!" Guaranteed! Indeed. Would you believe someone who said you could avoid death and taxes indefinitely as long as you paid your membership fee every month?

Cynical that we are, we decided to take an empirical look at this particular scammer's guarantee by Googling the term "DVD". The first return was for a company called DVDEmpire.com. Going back to the Google search box, we typed link:dvdempire.com to get the number of links leading to Google's highest-ranked DVD site. The number? Under 400 (depending on when you read this article). Not 4 million. Not 400,000. Not 4,000. Under 400. With less than 400 links, this site - at least as of May, 2006 - was ranked Number One in a Google search for "DVD." Number One in a Google search that turned up 2,100,000,000 returns.

Google admits that its ranking application considers "more than 100 factors … 500 million variables and two billion terms" in assigning page rankings.

Netflix, which we, for one, would consider a pretty prominent DVD site, came in at the Number 15 spot despite having over 3,300 incoming links (keep in mind these rankings are based on research done in May 2006). And way back on return page 10 - buried behind dozens of sites with tens or hundreds of links - we found a DVD review site called Celebrity Wonder which has over 20,000 links.

Go figure. Better yet, don't go figure. It'll just give you a headache.

Google admits that its ranking application considers "more than 100 factors … 500 million variables and two billion terms" in assigning page rankings and anyone - ANYONE - who tells you that their linking product, membership scheme or "volunteer" link network can "guarantee" you a higher search-engine ranking is flat-out lying. Claiming that it's possible to increase site ranking without intelligence, planning, time, and effort is promising a miracle - and is a perfect example of the adage that "if it promises to work miracles, it's a miracle if it works."

As DVD Empire shows, you don't get to the front of a pack of over two billion by falling for "instant access to 21,591 Websites Just Waiting To Exchange Links With YOU!" deals, you get there on the strength of your website and its construction and the integrity and relevancy of your links. And a few hundred high-quality, relevant links are virtually certain to do more for your page ranking than 5,000 bogus or irrelevant ones. The reason for this is no mystery. Even the most cursory look at Google's Quality Guidelines will clearly reveal it.

Here are just a few brief excerpts:

• Have other relevant sites link to yours.
• Make pages for users, not for search engines.
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
• Ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank.
• Avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.