Looks like the days of buying text links for pr and keyword value are over. Matt Cutts has made several public announcements about it in a few different blog posts and also some speaking events.
At pubcon I attended a session where experts talked about monitizing your blog. One the the premier people to speak on this was Barry from serountable.com. He said one of his primary sources of income was from text link advertising. I dont think many people gave this a second thought. Until Matt Cutts announced those links would be worthless for pr or anchor text value.
I guess someone forgot to tell the advertisers on se round table:
If these spammy keywords have no link value then… hrmm
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Free Ringtones
Its really too bad that Barrys great site was pointed out as one specifically that no pr or keyword value can be gained.
HOWEVER
The “Free Ringtones” link does rank VERY high in google for “free ringtones” http://www.spacewar.com/the_free_ringtones.html
Even though it does not contain any free ringtones. Also another hilarious thing is the site is for military space news…. lol how does that work. Maybe I should advertise my mesothelioma site on seroundtable =P
NOTE: I am a huge fan of serountable and read it daily. If you are not reading it you should.
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Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
First off, I have a lot of respect for Barry! He’s been one of the most helpful and skilled individuals in the seo world for many years. I’m sure that Google employees do express a little bit of futuristic and wishful thinking compared to what is really going on at this present time. I do believe that they are working on discounting paid links as an seo tool, but from everything I see there is absolutely no evidence that their plans have been fully implemented as of yet.
Mike Dammann
Google would like to that this is true but I am with Mike on this one. I would think this could be a manual damping factor. Keyword anchor text can still rule the serps in the right situations.
This has been in the pipeline for a long time…
From G’s point of view It’s not *that* difficult to identify certian areas within a sites pages as a place where sponsors go.
Discounting links that follow the string ‘sponsors’ is a pretty good way to start.
I first read about Google and this about a year ago following that coding competition they run.
Some guy wrote a paper on ‘Link Stemming’ and it talked about using LSI type stuff to filter out links that just don’t fit in with the site, and kinda stand out… [It was a little more detailed than that of course)
I lost the URL ages ago and I’ve been looking for it again fopr a while now, but it looks like the paper is buried somewhere and I can’t find it.
Hell, maybe Google sandboxed the site I read it on.
I doubt they’ll be penalising anyone for buying links, but they won’t have any value…
Links in copy – that’s where it’s at…
I certainly hope they wont be penalising for buying links, paying for advertising is just a part of business.
All in all, it will just lead to more advanced linking strategies. Links in copy as mentioned by Ol. Might actually lead to higher conversions for advertisers.
SpaceWar.com is an excellent examply on why google is no good… Authority spam is starting to rear it’s ugly head.. I wish google would ban them from the index and from adsense as their authority spam are made for adsense pages…
do a search for popular ringtones. i win!
Admiring the time and effort you put into your website and in depth information you offer. It’s good to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same out of date rehashed material. Fantastic read! I’ve bookmarked your site and I’m including your RSS feeds to my Google account.