I have even told people not to put me on their blogroll (especially if search traffic matters to them), though appreciate links to content.
That doesn't mean they can't be used strategically, or that they have to be the same on every page, or even link to a root domain. I have 13 widget areas on this theme that could be used for "blogrolls"
Weblogs Inc uses massive blogrolls for sister sites B5 Media has used various linking strategies, not sure what they are doing these days - last I looked they were linking to related network content. Techcrunch top navbar is a blogroll
Then you get big media, Ebay, IAC etc - Footer link lovers united.
The idea that Google "punishes" site-wide links is ludicrous. They may value them differently, though most link based algorithms are page based. With blogroll links you don't get the benefit of link diversity.
Most people who have received some kind of penalty for blogroll links have been selling them, and penalties are still not universal, even more than 18 months after Google Oktoberfarse
Mikael @ Retire Rich
· 5 months ago
Great reply to a poor comment Andy ;)
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
I much prefer people call me an idiot in the comments so I can respond, and in many ways I welcome negative comments because it allows me to clear up any misconceptions.
I certainly don't want to encourage people to run around leaving comments or using contact forms asking for random blogroll exchanges, but I wouldn't rule out strategic sitewide linking.
christine
· 5 months ago
Dang andy - I respect you. You can take it and dish it out. Great blog and great comments -
Michiel Van Kets
· 5 months ago
well, true that was a porr, aggresive comment and indeed a good reply.
....
I don't use blogroll, just because "'m just not that much in blogging at all. still interested in the concept I gather information (which is why I'm here reading this blog :)) abd I didn't know about the 'how blog-roll can kill', although it doesn't surprise me, as site wide links are known to do this anyway.
but ok, point being; despite he's negative comment ... it has turned out to be useful ... ok, now I'm going to read the blog roll killer page ... see ya :)
Adam Alfia
· 5 months ago
I've had positive experiences with limited application of blogroll linking - obviously, techniques lacking tact are going to be caught and punished. It's just like all SEO efforts ... do it piece-meal and intelligently using varying techniques.
Internet SEO
· 5 months ago
Pat, I'd have to respectfully disagree. It's how you implement blogrolls.
Just to preface, I design my website for my human visitors first, search engines are an afterthought.
There is nothing wrong with having a blogroll of several highly relevant, trusted, and useful blogs listed on every page for your readers.
The problem is listing hundreds of blogs including those that are less trusted or relevant, THOSE will hurt you.
Search engines are getting better at understanding what is useful for a visitor, and that is how their algorithms are adapting.
To come out and blanket suggest "DONT DO BLOGROLLS!" sounds very simplistic to me.
Hellas
· 5 months ago
I completly agree with this guy.
You should also count that you can not control who links you. World is so small, someone will end up on your blog and decide that it likes it. Logical thing you get blogroll link on his site. If blogroll links can drop you are PR then people would use that to sabotage competition.
Worst case scenario is that Search Engine will disregard blogroll links that leads to your site.
However it can penalize you if you have to much blogroll links on your site.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
It is only in very rare circumstances that someone linking to you will have a negative effect on your rankings, and then in all the cases I have seen, it was due to specific tactics used such as spammy anchor text in WordPress themes spread virally.
Gordano
· 5 months ago
It is good to the view from top, feels really awesome and is very pleasant. I have no words to explain the excitement believe me. I have had many such beautiful experience and sometimes they are dangerous too.
gregdbowen
· 5 months ago
I wish someone could share a link about the kinds of mistakes that you can make that can really mess with your SEO attempts in the long term. I a, always afraid that I am going to break something
itthai
· 5 months ago
waw.. i ilke climbing too
Kay Forrester
· 5 months ago
I love heights....i get really mad i see them. I went more mad i got to see that pic taken by PHOTO monkey. It is really awesome, i wished i was there with them. Nice post in all and feels great to read.
iwan setiawan
· 5 months ago
talking about climbing is a activity that hard to done...especially climbing to google mountain, so far i've done as good as possible i can to increase my blog PR but there's no progress...:) oh ya..don't forget to visit my blog too my friend...Nice info
buy hgh
· 5 months ago
We all love to climb but as there is well known fact the higher the height the higher the risks so for the better success there is only way o follow the steps specified above in the your posts !Thanks for that!
Daniel Mcskelly
· 5 months ago
Google punishes site-wide links severely. Uh. No. They don't.
They might be punishing your sitewides, they might be punishing lots of other folk who are doing it wrong, but my experience (and common sense) tells me that a sitewide from a highly relevant site helps rather than hurts.
Don't believe me? Try it and wait 3 days. Having gained a sitewide last week that's seen me go from page 2 to top 3 on a highly competitive term, you'll have to excuse me if I don't believe you.
If you're going to spout off about inexperience you might want to make a few less sweeping (an inaccurate) statements.
baby gender predictor
· 5 months ago
Like the metaphor. I think that if you don't like the concept of the effort needed to climb then it's a more of a downhill amble. I'm new to SEO but I can see that there are no shortcuts to the top. Seems as though if you enjoy the journey you're more likely to succeed.
Birth Control
· 5 months ago
Wow, what a great inspiration piece! The part about jetting to the top in your company helicopter is hilarious. As if!!! I don't know many people whose workplace will support such extravagence, but I did work in Kyoto, Japan for a while, for a private school for wealthy girls. Maybe I should have checked into that when I was there...!lol
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
Well you could look on it that Robert Scoble was catapulted to fame while at Microsoft, though he probably would have got there regardless. At least one personal blog of an Adobe employee last I looked was a PR7 or 8.
There are lots of Google employees enjoying PR6+ simply due to blogroll links from Google blogs. There is a dramatic drop in PageRank if they leave an the links are removed.
mobiltelefoner
· 5 months ago
Climbing a mountain is a very dangerous work, so the climbers must have the basic skills. If a climber does something wrong when climbing, the regrettable things can happen. It's similar to climbing the heights of Mount Google. So you must be very careful.
Wayne the Window Cleanning Man
· 5 months ago
Haha, I liked this alot! Right now I am in the process of trying to get my window cleaning website up there and am looking around for as much information as I can get. This definitely helped. So teamwork it is then? Sounds good.
Wayne the Window Cleanning Man
· 5 months ago
"There are lots of Google employees enjoying PR6+ simply due to blogroll links from Google blogs. There is a dramatic drop in PageRank if they leave an the links are removed."
that's ridiculous! But makes sense
Dennis Foreman
· 5 months ago
I liked the new style Andy, in particular the references to teamwork and cooperation.
Once a "lone wolf" I have come to believe that as an individual I can accomplish little relative to the results of a team or a community; I think this applies to SEO as well.
how to make blog
· 5 months ago
i like this articles. really open my view of getting links.
Eclipse
· 5 months ago
Don't try to climb the highest mountain from the start, it will always end in failure <--- this quote really means for me...thx for such a good posting...
Eclipse
· 5 months ago
Still have no idea how to build quality back link
Alex Sysoef
· 5 months ago
I think this post was a bit unusual to what I normally see on your blog but I kinda liked it - it illustrates some concepts quite nicely!
prince2 training
· 5 months ago
Nice way of putting things and great photos! I guess the most robust way of climbing the GOOGlE mount is by building steps all the way up, step by step, using the mountain as the foundation of your path. That means, no tricks no quick wins, believe in what google uses to base their whole search engine on.
soundbud
· 5 months ago
interesting controversial blog! i like to read through any thing seo related. i thought that using reciprocal links was a good idea to anchor similar sources of information giving readers extra info to back up the topic.
Pakar SEO
· 5 months ago
Will Climbing and start right NOW. ;p
Patrice
· 5 months ago
Very interesting blog. It enlightens my understanding on how to build links.
red pandas
· 5 months ago
I must say I like the "keep it simple with pictures" style. As much as I like deep analytical stuff, I like to pause and see something interesting (all of the chosen pics except Tom Cruise) and then plunge back into the next paragraph and important points. avoids over-reader's burnout.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
The Tom Cruise picture didn't depict the scene, but the film graphically portrayed the use of various state-of-the-art gadgets. I am not going to get into what Tom does outside acting.
TrafficBlogger
· 5 months ago
Just need to consider carefully who you add to your blog roll and exchange links with in that way. If is a site you don't think will be around much longer than a year or so, you might consider not going through with it. Good post.
make money online
· 5 months ago
Very nice article. You know I really like how you talk about building a team and really you don't need someone already at the top though it would be nice. I really try and build relationships with the top bloggers and make sure when I comment to let them know I have recognized them as top bloggers on my blog. Very good idea also when you talk about climbing the smaller slopes at first, what is really nice once you reach the top for certain keywords and your blog gains page rank it makes it much easier to rise within the SERPs. Anyway excellent post I really like the pics.
Kris,
MrsA TreatMent
· 5 months ago
It is good to the view from top, feels really awesome and is very pleasant. I have no words to explain the excitement believe me. I have had many such beautiful experience and sometimes they are dangerous too.
Dave
· 5 months ago
Do you think the benefit of link building comes from the PR of the site giving the link, it's authority, the relevance of the 2 websites (giver & receiver) to each other, the optimisation of the reciever (or giver), a mix of all of these, or something else?
Any ideas?
Personally I'm edging towards authority being a bigger factor than most people think.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
I think it gets more complicated than that
Briefly...
Lots of authority sites have lots of hanging/dangling pages, especially PDFs Since the original patent, even IBM have published patents on how to handle dangling nodes, I am sure Google has refined things as well What happens to the PageRank from dangling pages/nodes, as well as nofollow links? They might be treated in a similar way Why distribute all that PageRank randomly? Why not allocate it to indexed pages on the same domain? This would partially explain .edu and .gov ranking, and why very little was observed in overall changes on major sites.
make money online
· 5 months ago
Andy I have a question how much time does it take before a blog gets this many comments just hours after a post. I have been marketing the hell out of my marketing blog http://marketing-a-website.blogspot.com/ for months now. It has tons of posts which consititute as link bait and also are extremely useful to webmaster though it does not seem to be doing well. I am not sure if you allow questions like this since I am sure you are swarmed with them and I understand if you don't reply, but it would be nice to know what kind of time frame I should be looking at. I am in the top 5 for website marketing blog though it does not get many searches so confused! Anyway any thoughts would be great.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
First, you are investing time into a blog that is not on its own domain. You don't really own it - not sure how easy it would be to migrate.
In many ways my blog is just waking up again, I took 9 months off - when I started blogging on this site I was pumping out 90 posts per month, I could have done much better spending my times in other ways, but I was looking to attract a specific audience which I couldn't attract with a landing page and squeeze.
If you are looking to optimize a site, you need to do it for terms that set searched for and which you can monetize.
lucy
· 5 months ago
Mount google... baby steps, baby steps... one foot after the other. Let's hope no acute mountain sickness! LOL
No tricks no quick wins, no shortcuts. Just plodding slowly along.
internet marketing
· 5 months ago
Long way to the top?, top is not impossible, all you have to do is going by the safe path.
Unique Small Business Ideas
· 5 months ago
Too bad, I am still climbing the lower slope :(
I was told that blogroll is an bad idea to high high ranking. You have just confirmed that. Thanks
Rapidshare downloads
· 5 months ago
Good metaphor's, also very nice pictures you added. Having somebody at the top to pull you up or having lots of $$$ in my opinion are the easiest ways of getting high on google. Look at bing, spend 100 million dollars and you're everywhere.
Scott frm Texas Divorce Online
· 5 months ago
It's not easy to reach the top especially if you've got lots of competition. This also applies in SEO theres no shortcut you have to do it slowly and and plan it carefully.
Mike@Seo Web Design Services
· 5 months ago
Great post and comments. Google will not mark your website down for sitewide links, they may just not give then any value at all, especially if the sites are not related.
I am still climbing, slowly but surely does it, might see you at the top when I am grey and old.
Thanks
science of health
· 5 months ago
Google is definatly a mountain, i first assumed that it wasnt when i got into blocking and thought it was a small hill to climb to the top. Ha was I wrong
Leo Vidal
· 5 months ago
This has been a great and interesting chain of comments to read along with the post. I'm a bit confused, but heck, what else is new. This is stuff I'd never thought of. Thanks.
Ben Cornelius Videography
· 5 months ago
In your follow up, I think you've got it all wrong. I actually found it refreshing; the topical content, the visual analogies to otherwise completely mathematical concepts. Keep the faith man, you did well. I got the message loud and clear. Much like any solid structure, good things take time and sound method to build.
Arlene Myers
· 5 months ago
Nice article and interesting to read. Every pictures represents to each task that we might want to accomplish.
David Lamb
· 5 months ago
I agree with one of the original commentators that blogrolls have the potential to sink your blog. This has happened to me in the past. Still, as you suggest, teamwork is the best solution to get high pagerank and traffic for your blog. That often consists of getting solid relationships through networking.
snitgard
· 5 months ago
I'm just getting in to climing this mountain... And sometimes it looks kind of scary. But i guess it is all about strapping on the helmet and just start climbing.
Erik Organic
· 5 months ago
Andy,
Could you articulate the 'VIP Ticket' concept a big more fully? Perhaps in another blog post?
I'd be curious what techniques might be adapted by small businesses.
AndyBeard
· 5 months ago
There are the less obvious routes
Be the blog mouthpiece of Microsoft (Robert Scoble) Developer relations for Adobe Flash Google Employee blogs Leverage your brand as a journalist Existing stars seem to pick up lots of followers on Twitter, easy to leverage into links
With small business it is a little harder but not impossible
Here is an example
Currently you seem to be publishing your blog on your Volusion hosting, plus using images through out your site directly from the same hosting.
That is probably costing you a small fortune, or it would if you had a lot of traffic.
Here is what I would do (if you are otherwise happy with Volusion)
Set up a Cname blog.erikorganic.com pointing to some 3rd party hosting Set up a Wordpress blog with a good gallery theme to highlight stunning pictures and videos. Change all your media links on the Volusion cart to use the images on your blog hosting (though make sure they allow this - with some hosting that might be looked on as being used for media hosting)
Document the whole process with great pictures - I am sure lots of other Volusion store owners would appreciate the tutorial and possibly link to you.
I bet lots of your customers have got blogs, and would love to tell their audience about the new table or bed they purchased. Why not provide them with an image of their purchase along with link text to the appropriate site section or model within one of your thankyou emails. Create "link to us" links on each product page, with image, but have the image from your other server
Work on building a mailing list, maybe with an incentive for signing up Attack prospects from multiple angles - work out your conversion rates and lifetime customer values - see what you can offer affiliates - possibly offer a free hand crafted item in exchange for a mailing address, or a DVD on Amish furniture. Maybe an ebook on what to look out for when buying hand-crafted furniture. Also take advantage of the free training Stompernet provided in their recent relaunch of Formula Five. http://andybeard.eu/2047/i-hate-rhubarb-not-bro...
Investing money in learning how to make more money from each prospect, so you have more money to spend on traffic and other growth is a killer option.
Erik Organic
· 5 months ago
Some good ideas to think about ... thank you.
(A new site is going up in around 1 week that's well-integrated with blogger and picasa, with most of the images being hosted by google).
Malibu I Do
· 4 months ago
Not often I see pictures of Tom Cruise, helicopters, belays & human pyramids explaining a technical point. Very clever.
ppc campaign management
· 4 months ago
I think PPC is an essential tool for anyone to "Climb Mount Google". Not only can you target very specific key search phrases, you learn how to better optimize your site for Google which in turns boosts your organic search rankings!
allmaritime
· 4 months ago
OH God ... I'm also asking if is possible to me to climb a big mountain in my country (Romania) and the same question I'm asking if I can understand the Google system how it works ... . And to fiind the secret of Eric and Larry the owners of Google is like I take a helicopter to climb the big mountain from my mind.
alexsmith
· 4 months ago
Really nice blog. An interesting article
Teresita Ledesma
· 4 months ago
I like your articles especially google mountain. I wish to be back for more information and thanks.
k2seo
· 4 months ago
Really very interesting heading for the post. I think its hard to start up but once you reach a point things get better.
sanneM
· 3 months ago
Nice article - great advice for a seo beginner like me ;)
ottoboettcher1
· 3 months ago
Slowly but surely. A good strategy indeed.
You can learn more about the online strategy by going to GetThemOnline, or doing a search on Google.
arinsblogcdyt
· 3 months ago
Thanks for the nice post. Great post as usual. I strongly believe in team work and with a good team work we can climb The Heights Of Mount Google.
Brian Carter
· 3 months ago
Andy, this is awesome, can't believe I didn't see it sooner. As an SEO and a climber, this is perfect for me! Thanks! I think you just onsited Mt Google. ;-) And on the SEO + climbing topic, check out http://www.rockclimbingindoor.com/
All Comments
Google punishes site-wide links severely. This is thanks to the great work of people like textlinkads that ruined the party for all of us.
Don't believe me? Try it and wait 3 days.
I think the fact that you'd even suggest it shows your inexperience, and that you're talking out of your arse.
Not one of your best or most credible posts.
http://andybeard.eu/121/how-a-blogroll-can-kill...
I have even told people not to put me on their blogroll (especially if search traffic matters to them), though appreciate links to content.
That doesn't mean they can't be used strategically, or that they have to be the same on every page, or even link to a root domain. I have 13 widget areas on this theme that could be used for "blogrolls"
Weblogs Inc uses massive blogrolls for sister sites
B5 Media has used various linking strategies, not sure what they are doing these days - last I looked they were linking to related network content.
Techcrunch top navbar is a blogroll
Then you get big media, Ebay, IAC etc - Footer link lovers united.
The idea that Google "punishes" site-wide links is ludicrous. They may value them differently, though most link based algorithms are page based.
With blogroll links you don't get the benefit of link diversity.
Most people who have received some kind of penalty for blogroll links have been selling them, and penalties are still not universal, even more than 18 months after Google Oktoberfarse
I certainly don't want to encourage people to run around leaving comments or using contact forms asking for random blogroll exchanges, but I wouldn't rule out strategic sitewide linking.
....
I don't use blogroll, just because "'m just not that much in blogging at all. still interested in the concept I gather information (which is why I'm here reading this blog :)) abd I didn't know about the 'how blog-roll can kill', although it doesn't surprise me, as site wide links are known to do this anyway.
but ok, point being; despite he's negative comment ... it has turned out to be useful ... ok, now I'm going to read the blog roll killer page ... see ya :)
Just to preface, I design my website for my human visitors first, search engines are an afterthought.
There is nothing wrong with having a blogroll of several highly relevant, trusted, and useful blogs listed on every page for your readers.
The problem is listing hundreds of blogs including those that are less trusted or relevant, THOSE will hurt you.
Search engines are getting better at understanding what is useful for a visitor, and that is how their algorithms are adapting.
To come out and blanket suggest "DONT DO BLOGROLLS!" sounds very simplistic to me.
You should also count that you can not control who links you. World is so small, someone will end up on your blog and decide that it likes it.
Logical thing you get blogroll link on his site.
If blogroll links can drop you are PR then people would use that to sabotage competition.
Worst case scenario is that Search Engine will disregard blogroll links that leads to your site.
However it can penalize you if you have to much blogroll links on your site.
i ilke climbing too
Uh. No. They don't.
They might be punishing your sitewides, they might be punishing lots of other folk who are doing it wrong, but my experience (and common sense) tells me that a sitewide from a highly relevant site helps rather than hurts.
Don't believe me? Try it and wait 3 days.
Having gained a sitewide last week that's seen me go from page 2 to top 3 on a highly competitive term, you'll have to excuse me if I don't believe you.
If you're going to spout off about inexperience you might want to make a few less sweeping (an inaccurate) statements.
There are lots of Google employees enjoying PR6+ simply due to blogroll links from Google blogs. There is a dramatic drop in PageRank if they leave an the links are removed.
that's ridiculous! But makes sense
Once a "lone wolf" I have come to believe that as an individual I can accomplish little relative to the results of a team or a community; I think this applies to SEO as well.
in failure <--- this quote really means for me...thx for such a good posting...
I guess the most robust way of climbing the GOOGlE mount is by building steps all the way up, step by step, using the mountain as the foundation of your path. That means, no tricks no quick wins, believe in what google uses to base their whole search engine on.
Kris,
Any ideas?
Personally I'm edging towards authority being a bigger factor than most people think.
Briefly...
Lots of authority sites have lots of hanging/dangling pages, especially PDFs
Since the original patent, even IBM have published patents on how to handle dangling nodes, I am sure Google has refined things as well
What happens to the PageRank from dangling pages/nodes, as well as nofollow links? They might be treated in a similar way
Why distribute all that PageRank randomly? Why not allocate it to indexed pages on the same domain? This would partially explain .edu and .gov ranking, and why very little was observed in overall changes on major sites.
In many ways my blog is just waking up again, I took 9 months off - when I started blogging on this site I was pumping out 90 posts per month, I could have done much better spending my times in other ways, but I was looking to attract a specific audience which I couldn't attract with a landing page and squeeze.
If you are looking to optimize a site, you need to do it for terms that set searched for and which you can monetize.
No tricks no quick wins, no shortcuts. Just plodding slowly along.
I was told that blogroll is an bad idea to high high ranking. You have just confirmed that. Thanks
I am still climbing, slowly but surely does it, might see you at the top when I am grey and old.
Thanks
Could you articulate the 'VIP Ticket' concept a big more fully? Perhaps in another blog post?
I'd be curious what techniques might be adapted by small businesses.
Be the blog mouthpiece of Microsoft (Robert Scoble)
Developer relations for Adobe Flash
Google Employee blogs
Leverage your brand as a journalist
Existing stars seem to pick up lots of followers on Twitter, easy to leverage into links
With small business it is a little harder but not impossible
Here is an example
Currently you seem to be publishing your blog on your Volusion hosting, plus using images through out your site directly from the same hosting.
That is probably costing you a small fortune, or it would if you had a lot of traffic.
Here is what I would do (if you are otherwise happy with Volusion)
Set up a Cname blog.erikorganic.com pointing to some 3rd party hosting
Set up a Wordpress blog with a good gallery theme to highlight stunning pictures and videos.
Change all your media links on the Volusion cart to use the images on your blog hosting (though make sure they allow this - with some hosting that might be looked on as being used for media hosting)
Document the whole process with great pictures - I am sure lots of other Volusion store owners would appreciate the tutorial and possibly link to you.
I bet lots of your customers have got blogs, and would love to tell their audience about the new table or bed they purchased.
Why not provide them with an image of their purchase along with link text to the appropriate site section or model within one of your thankyou emails.
Create "link to us" links on each product page, with image, but have the image from your other server
Work on building a mailing list, maybe with an incentive for signing up
Attack prospects from multiple angles - work out your conversion rates and lifetime customer values - see what you can offer affiliates - possibly offer a free hand crafted item in exchange for a mailing address, or a DVD on Amish furniture.
Maybe an ebook on what to look out for when buying hand-crafted furniture.
Also take advantage of the free training Stompernet provided in their recent relaunch of Formula Five.
http://andybeard.eu/2047/i-hate-rhubarb-not-bro...
Investing money in learning how to make more money from each prospect, so you have more money to spend on traffic and other growth is a killer option.
(A new site is going up in around 1 week that's well-integrated with blogger and picasa, with most of the images being hosted by google).
You can learn more about the
online strategy by going
to GetThemOnline, or doing a search on Google.