The Worst SEO Mistake You Can Make

[theGypsy]

So do you think the recip links from 5 years ago that are still at least linking to your site from non relevant sites or spam sites hurt even if you pulled the outgoing links on your site or will G largely ignore those if you are currently following accepted linking practices?

Well, as Steven alluded to... links pointing TO YOUR SITE cannot hurt you.... (almost).. That is to say there are nefarious ways in which one can be harmed, but being on of 'the good guys' I never discuss such things in public ;0)

As far as recips go... the worst we can envision is Google devaluing them. Meaning, that once a recip threshold has been established the links are devalued thus making it no more than a waste of time.

There are many instances when we link to sites that link to us in a legitimate fashion, as such there is likely a threshold in place. Let's say Steven is linking to me in one of his round-ups; considering he is in my blog roll, it is effectively a recip link

Now this is where attributes such as page segmentation come in. Increasingly search engines understand where a link resides (header, side panel, main content, footer, comments, forum post) and are accounted for. These are what can be considered thresholds.

Further to that, we have page naming conventions and page content. If your link is on a page that is named links.htm and the recip is on a page named resources.html it is very likely this form of recip is devalued as it is a page of links with little actual content.

There are many forms of recips that occur and search engines tend to valuate them on many levels....

In many cases over the last few years they have been devaluing recips... so for me... they aren't a part of any of our campaigns... though they do occur in natural fashions as outlined above...

... recips aren't worth much really... I don't actively pursue them....

[billbenson]

actually, what I was referring to is footer recip linking was a common practice up until two years ago when G even figured out how to track A->B->C links. At that time it helped sites rank. I don't know any webmasters that do this anymore and all the credible ones I know have dropped what footer links they have (or wherever they put the links such as link farm pages).

Since the recip links were obviously an attempt to manipulate SERPS, G doesn't like it. I'm just kind of wondering if the ones that were done when G wasn't able to look at this are being granfathered in so to speak.

I'm not referring to content or any other type of quality linking.

[vangogh]

I'd still say it's more a case of the links no longer counting. Since Google can determine where on the page a link is and they can determine if a link is being reciprocated or part of a three way exchange it's easy enough for them to just not give any weight to the link making them effectively useless.

That could easily appear to be a penalty to some as their pages would drop radically and rapidly in the SERPs, but instead of a penalty it's likely just a site that used to rank on the basis of a lot of links that are now no longer present.

Also as Dave mentioned other sites linking to you are generally not going to hurt you. However, generally does not mean always. If your link profile is filled with nothing more than questionable links back to you it probably will hurt your site. Fortunately building in some good links and building trust in your profile should alleviate the problem.

I don't think there's going to be any kind of grandfather clause. I can't imagine Google thinking, "well since your spam existed before June 4th 2003 we'll let it go" Google likes doing everything algorithmically. Not to say their above and hand edit, but in general if they see something that can be improved with their results they want to write an algorithm, test it, and put it in place so it then catches every site and page instead of just the ones for human review. So if they decide recip links shouln't count, they add something algorithmically and let it go. It should then catch all or most all recips and discount them or whatever they decide to do.

[billbenson]

Makes sense VG, although back in the day, some people went crazy link building this way. You still see people promoting it.

Kind of why I want to cut over to xhtml and be standards compliant. What may not matter so much today, may be very important in the future. JavaScript, for example, can be used for cloaking. I avoid it if at all possible. I suppose html behind flash could have the same impact (I think we discussed this in a different thread). Another reason not to use flash.

[cbscreative]

I think judging on code languages alone may be going too far, though they may be watching for certain patterns. As for XHTML, I think the primary benefit is tighter control. Future browsers are more likely to favor it because it eliminates some of the looser standards of plain HTML. I forsee a day when depricated tags will fall from grace, but that is likely several years away. I suppose it's possible that search engines may look closer at code standards some day, but I mostly doubt it will happen.

With that said, I believe that search engines do pay attention to code. If all things are equal, and one site has better use of tags (h1 and such), and code structure is clean, my observation suggests that the better code wins.

It sounds like you're very anti-Flash. I agree that it gets misused and even over used. But in cases such as a photographer site, it seems silly to not utilize the benefits that Flash offers. But I would still make allowance for non-Flash visitors.

[vangogh]

I don't know that one or another language will be preferred by search engines. I usually make those decisions for development reasons. I do think standards compliant code is a good thing, but I doubt it's going to play a major role in search at any point for a variety of reasons.

One of the best and worst (depending on your point of view) things about the internet is that it's very easy to have a website up and running in a short amount of time. Generally those super quick sites are not going to be great code. One of the reasons I like WordPress a lot is because they do work in better coding practices than many.

You're just always going to have garbage code and the companies that could enforce it don't really have a reason to enforce it. Browsers want to be somewhat forgiving because they want to be used. Imagine a browser that only displayed standards compliant code correctly. The majority of sites wouldn't work so the browser wouldn't get used. It's in their interest to display poor code.

Search engines are concerned with presenting their users with content relevant to a query. The code used to display that content isn't all that important as long as the content can be indexed. If you search for the declaration of independence you should find the document somewhere. Whether that document is sitting on top of perfect xhtml with an all css layout or it's sitting on a table based layout using deprecated html isn't all that important to the end user of a search engine. As long as they get to that content they're happy with the search engine.

[billbenson]

Steve or Steve?? I do think Flash has a place. That includes some flash only sites. I represent a product and put a page on a pr1 site, actually the first site I ever made that pitches their product. The manufacturer has a flash site that is at least 5 years old. In a search, my page comes up one and the manufacturers site doesn't appear. Just checked.

When I say use standards I really mean "make G's life easier". They will certainly index good pages that are old for years to come. But, if you write a sloppy page that doesn't validate today or tomorrow, will they give you that same courtesy in 3 years? No idea, but I'd rather hedge my bet and write pages that validate. Worst case, its better on browser compatibility.

[vangogh]

I can't imagine search engines placing criteria for validation on pages. Most pages are not going to validate for a long time. Validation is based on standards and standards move at a slower pace than technology. People are going to use new technology regardless of whether or not a standards body has said it's ok.

Search engines aren't going to stop showing pages because someone is trying to do something new on a site. It's true you want to make it easy for search engines to spider your content and I think there are things you can do to help your rank purely through the way you code things, but I can't see search engines requiring validation for the most part.

[yankeerudy]

this thread is like every forum owner's dream. we have a really good discussion going on here, and i forgot what the original question was about two pages ago.

[vangogh]

What? There was an original question? Hmm?

Actually it was about the worst SEO mistake being not including SEO early in the design process of your site. I think that's where we started, though we've ambled along in a different direction.

Glad the thread is helpful.