Exposing SEO Myths: Inbound Links Hurt
I’d like to introduce you to a new column I’ll be running as often as required. In case the title didn’t tip you off, I’ll be exposing SEO Myths and the SEOs that have decided to proliferate them across the industry. As I said, I’m hoping I won’t have to do this very often but I’m fed up with pompous SEOs spouting off at the mouth and getting offended when someone dares to question or correct them.
So, without further ado, I would like to present to you our first case study: Aaron Prat Pratt of SEO Buzz Box. Recently Mr. Pratt posted an article in which he discussed the fall out from his site being hacked. In the article, he linked to a quote from Vanessa Fox which he claimed proved that Google uses inbound links (links pointing to your site) to categorize your site. Pratt then made the “logical” conclusion that having spam sites linking to your site would hurt your rankings. Let me go over that one more time. He claimed that spam sites linking to your site would hurt your rankings in Google. Then to finish the post off, he asked if anyone else was tired of being “collateral damage”.
Apparently Pratt skipped basic SEO 101 when Google taught us that “There’s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index”. Also, this premise has been tested several different times, several different ways. If I recall correctly, one test even pointed 700,000 spam links at a single site and had no affect on the target site’s rankings whatsoever. So, if in fact Mr. Pratt’s site was hacked, it was likely the links FROM his site pointing to spam sites along with the incredibly spammy content that hurt his rankings, NOT the links from the spam blogs in the UK linking to his site.
When I pointed the error out Mr. Pratt responded by assuming that I must not have understood his post if I dared to question him. “Read my post again before you start making foolish claims.” And, I must have some sort of agenda to boot. “I also notice that you resent me, interesting.”
I did not misread his post and I do not resent Aaron Pratt or his site in the least. I simply wanted to correct error in his post. Normally I would have left it at that and you’d never be reading this post. However, after unsuccessfully trying to defend his position, Mr. Pratt decided to delete the post, the comments, and act like the whole issue never happened. I was hopeful that was an indication he had realized his error and decided not to perpetuate this myth any further. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case… (Note: unfortunately this post has been deleted…hence the link to Google’s cached version)
So, Mr. Pratt, congratulations, you and your spam links myth have been the first (but probably not the last) to be exposed. Enjoy!
UPDATE: I feel the need to emphasize this point just a bit more. Pratt stated that his site was ranking well for Viagra terms and that his traffic was “through the roof” until he figured out what was going. Let me say that one more time, his site RANKED WELL for Viagra terms. RANKED WELL! One could make the logical argument that not only did these spam links not hurt his site, but obviously must have HELPED his site if he was ranking well for Viagra related terms. Those phrases are some of the most competitive terms around. If spam links hurt your rankings Mr. Pratt (or anyone else who’d like to take up the “Inbound links CAN hurt” position), how do you explain this?
Well, one part of that is correct. Google does categorize your site by the links pointing to you. Hence the site flavored search, that is now defunct or actually part of the new adsense program. I actually tested it and you could change the sites “flavor” by the inbound links, along with appropriate anchor text on those sites.
Jstcrzy, what do you mean by “flavor”? Keep in mind this site has been around since 2005 and would have established a long history of content and links.
Interesting that you guys missed one thing , the most important one :) . Age and trust of the website .
If the website is new and you throw 50k links to it like “buy what you need” type of links the website get’s penalized and in short time deleted from index.
If the website has good links and some age ( read trust) all 50k links won’t be counted .
If the website is a trusted one and instantly 100k links point to a page from this website a manual review is done and if looks like the page was hijacked to rank the specific page/part of the website is penalized .
I am not sure what your intent is but the post was about my website being hijacked, someone placed a viagra page in a sub directory and pointed links at it from multiple blogs. The page ended up ranking well in Google and increased my traffic massively for things unrelated to SEO. Now I work to repair the damage, it’s a mess.
jstcrzyengh is right, you could say that it ruined my “site flavor”.
Aaron, your post stated that having the UK splogs linking to your site hurt your rankings. That’s wrong. Your site was made “a mess” because of the sites you linked out to.
Also, to be honest, I can’t for the life of me figure out why you would kill of traffic for Viagra terms. I mean I realize that’s not what the site is about but there’s a lot of money to be made from having your site rank well for Viagra terms.
As I said before, I have no intent other than to stop the spread of an SEO myth. For whatever reason you couldn’t handle that and deleted the post and comments. I felt it was an issue that needed to be addressed.
Yeah, this post doesn’t mention much the domain and link age as well as outbound links, which play a larger role in determining the topic and trust of the website.
I forgot the English equivalent of the proverb, but “The first pancake is always a blob” we have here.
Actually, now that I can use my brain, I have to disagree that links can’t hurt a website.
Though an aged and trusted website may be impossible to influence with low quality links, if a new site only gets links from bad neighbourhood (or his incoming links are for the larger part from there), it may be considered low quality, until the site owner gets more links from quality sources.
Given that spammy sites aren’t supposed to pass link weight, such an influence may be possible, but it is not that powerful to worth worrying about, if your intent is clear. Simply talking with people for a half a year should get you the natural trusted links to cure any bad links.
So, in this case, I’d say that
– Aaron was right, but he may have probably exaggerated the issue (there are many things to affect the site)
– yet, you are not entirely correct that incoming links bear no effect. Even the Google quote you cite says ‘almost’.
Cheers.
Yuri, SEO Buzz Box has been around since 2005. Even if it was a brand new site, it would have been the links OUT from SEO Buzz Box not the spam links TO the site.
Skitzzo,
and what is happening with new sites which get a lot of spammy inbound links. (let’s say 10000 spam links from viagra sites etc.)
Google push those sites into filters and they much have much more to prove themselves, right ?
I think that sites which have history behind them, those from 2000. – you can’t bowl them.
But with new sites you are signing up their bad link profile.
Zoran, there’s no evidence to suggest what you say is correct. Google filters spam links, not the sites they link to. Allow me to reiterate, if you link OUT to spam sites, your rankings will be aversely affected. Spam sites linking TO your site will not hurt you.
Skittzo – my, errr, black hat friends would say that in certain instances Zoran is right. Google takes a hard look at where a site first gains link pop from, temporal data, trust, etc. If you launch a new site, start getting lots of crumby inbounds and don’t bolster that with highly trusted links, your site’s profile is going to resemble a spammy site.
So – I’d agree with you a majority of the time; the folks who link to you can’t usually hurt you. But, with newly launched sites, already likely to suffer “boxing” type effects, there can be some danger in pulling in copious amounts of crappy links from scummy sources.
Randfish, thanks for stopping in!
Even if that were the case, and I’m certainly not conceding that point, SEO Buzz Box has over 19,000 links to it and has been around just as long as this site. That hardly fits one of the “certain instances” you mention.
P.S are you a part of the power grab too? =)
A reason why the inbound links might INDIRECTLY hurt, is that adding a gazillion icky backlinks in one go is bound to raise an eyebrow or two. Any human reviewer taking a look at the site itself would notice that its subject had been changed.
I recall MC himself (dare I reference him) being not-amused when certain SEOs tried to make a couple of their blog pages rank well for popular search words…
Rand only hit me with a negative reference once about politics or something Skitzzo, but me and him a good for now.
Let me try to say it one last time, the inbound links were coming from a handful of blogger and hacked sites all pointing at pages hidden in a sub directory on my blog. All this combined linkage made his pages on my site rank well. So Google believes I am some sort of Viagra Selling SEO Blog thing currently. It is very clear what happened and what needs to be done, should have kept it to myself I guess…
Bah give him a live link you heathen ;)
Well unless you think his site is a Viagra site
I have a request, can I be exposed next?
It might be good for qualified traffic
Yes inbound links hurt. it happen to my site. So it the lesson for me.
Blend It`s was happened on my site too :(