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Went Hot: January 31, 2008 - 12:25 pm
Posted By: gyutae 105 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.sugarrae.com) my network
Category: Link Building
18 Comments
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Comments
This is for bookmarking for sure. Was waiting for this post to publish since Rae hinted about it last night on twitter.
Probably going to be another post of the year nominee for 2008 on another one of those ridiculous awards sites. Good stuff nonetheless.
If you ony have time to read one post on Sphinn this month, read this.
Bookmark it? I may set it to my homepage. That's some honest, concise stuff from the experts there.
Only rae could get these guys and gals to open up so much. Good stuff!
Wow... That's all that needs to be said. If you're in the internet business in any way, shape, or form and you don't read this... then you should just quit.
Thanks!
Yes this one is for sure a bookmarker! This post was great - read on it all day long. Thanks again Sugar Rae!
This is one of the non-fluffiest posts I've seen in a long time. Solid stuff.
To each of you who've participated in this interview; thanks!
Outstanding content. Thank you.
best resource I've read in a while on what the "experts" think about link-building.
Great article, it gives one a lot to think about.
I just don't understand how this advice is meaningful:
"Will it pass a hand check?"
Roger Montti repeats it a hundred times, but I believe neither he nor anyone else knows what would pass a Google hand check.
I've done enough site reviews and have been around the search engineers enough and have had years of experience where I'm quite confident of what will or won't pass a hand check. If you need it spelled out, well there are a number of great posts on WMW and elsewhere to help move along your understanding. Basically, use your common sense.
If you truly do not have even a clue of what will or won't pass a hand check, then you may need to reconsider how much you think you know. Beyond that, don't use what others are getting away with as a metric for what will pass a hand check. That's what got the real estate people in trouble.
Cheers.
You have been around the search engineers!
That's cool. But am I too far off the mark if I assume that 99.999% of webmasters have not been around search engineers too much?
"linking back and forth to another site in a related industry from your navigation bar may not pass a hand check"
Common sense would tell me that a hand check is applied to find things done in bad faith. Hidden stuff, manipulative arrangements, spammy links etc.
Is the above scenario necessarily the sign of bad faith?
It is more likely that the guy who does it:
- has a business interest in or a real-world commercial connection to that other site
- is not up-to-date in the minutiae of "how to fake natural" as taught by the experts
- was too lazy and just slapped the link in the site template
But that still doesn't amount to manipulation or cheating. Why would he need to fear a hand check from the Google commando?
>>>Common sense would tell me that a hand check is applied to find things done in bad faith.
I ask you, do you really believe Google will allow you to game their rankings dependent on whether they can guess if something was done in bad faith or not? That's rationalization, and it's not a road you want to go down. You have to be more objective. Remember the real estate guys cross linking back and forth? One of those guys admitted he knew it was bad, but everyone else was doing it and getting away with it. That's rationalization and it's not a good practice to get into. Don't go there.
"linking back and forth to another site in a related industry from your navigation bar may not pass a hand check"
Some of what occurs in a hand check is subjective. That word MAY means that this situation may lead to a negative impression. You have to ask, Should Google give credit for that ROS link? If it's between two sites that are under different ownership, this may give a negative impression. Use your common sense.
What caused the hand review? Did someone file a spam report? Or is the site ranking well and came under the eye of a QA checker? Do spam reports work? Absolutely. I don't file spam reports. However I know some people who do and the sites they report are usually whacked sooner rather than later.
Also wanted to add that I didn't pull that scenario out of thin air. It actually happened to someone.
"Some of what occurs in a hand check is subjective."
That's why I struggle to see the practical use of "will it pass a hand check". I understand what you mean in theory (which may be "in practice" to you because you've seen it first hand and been around search engineers, but most of us haven't) and it certainly does offer a broad guidance to webmasters when deciding about fishy things. This is the common sense part.
However, for the webmaster who wants to stay on good terms with Google, but at the same time aims to explore his opportunities, the notion of "will it pass a hand check" only instills a permanent incertainty and anxiety about Google.
Taking into account the possibility of a subjective hand check is simply the equivalent of fearing Google. So your advice can perhaps be paraphrased as "Be afraid, be very afraid".
>>> the notion of "will it pass a hand check" only instills a permanent incertainty and anxiety about Google... So your advice can perhaps be paraphrased as "Be afraid, be very afraid".
Not at all. What I am advocating is "Be aware, be very aware."
What I am advocating is to do an objective accounting of your risk, and judge whether or not you are ok with burning a domain should a particular series of actions on your part come under scrutiny. Justifying your actions on the basis that everyone else is doing it is a mistake, remember the real estate sites.
IF you want to proceed in a safer manner, do them in a way that will not raise flags. There are better ways of buying links, wheel has mentioned these recently. There are better ways of distributing your articles rather than going the lazy way like everyone else does.
A few years ago I received heated responses when I asserted that reciprocal linking was not a white hat method of building links. Not too long ago it was commonly accepted that reciprocal linking was white hat and Google approved. Pretty laughable. Of course today, more and more people are slowly and painfully slowly learning there are limits to what will pass a hand check in terms of a reciprocal linking strategy.
Really great and useful article on link building. Thank you :)