Sat 24 Oct 2009
Are The Blog Linkerati Getting Lazy?
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo)Is it just me or do you find that less and less blogging folk linking to other blogs these days? When i started blogging properly (at the start of 2008) it seemed it was a free for all when it came to links. Now it seems only the very best stuff (or most obscure stuff) picks up the natural links from the linkerati.
It used to feel like bloggers actively showed support by linking to posts, now it seems they Twitter their approval and the next second move onto something else leaving the average blogger with a % of the links they would have got back pre-2007.
I’m picking up BETTER QUALITY links these days, but LESS overall I think. How are you finding it?
Did you know when you link to a Hobo SEO post we have search engine friendly links back to your site if approved? Our comments are also search engine friendly you know (once you've commented on a few posts)! Do you need any more encouragement to get involved in the conversation ;)
Hi Shaun,
A french SEO posted on this earlier this week : ajblog.fr/referencement/774-twitter-l-ennemi-du-linkbait.html
He’s got similar comments than you : he’s getting a lot of retweets on his posts but a lot less link love from other blogs.
Yes, I’ve noticed this as well. As you say – where people once might have written a blog, now they just tweet.
Slightly related to this, what value do you think those ‘links for such-and-such-a-date’ posts are from an SEO point of view – the one where people list a few posts they read that day with a brief quote from each. I never seem to get much actual traffic from these (and when I read them, i rarely click through if the quote seems to sum it all up) – I wonder how beneficial they are from an SEO POV (they rarely get linked to from other elsewhere, there’s a very high ratio of links to content, etc).
It’s a bit of a risk I think. If you don’t have any original content on the page, i don’t think Google wants to index it or use it as a hub for identifying other pages.
I think it… depends. On your luck sometimes.
perhaps on the site in question too, or the pages you link to. Perhaps what Google interprets algorithmically your intent. Depends if in turn other pages on other sites link to this page.
I see some list of links pages with no or gray toolbar page rank, and identified that some of these did not pass pagerank or anchor text power when I tested them. We have known for ages Google hates useul links pages on sites with no online business authority, more often or not so looking like one probably isn’t the best idea.
Some pages of links (with original content in there between the links) did pass anchor text power, so really, i have no definitive answer.
From my own personal point of view, I don’t do them any more. i would prefer to have just a few links out to good pages these days rather than “101 ways to pick your nose” so i know i am probably passing link juice to the page i am linking to. These pages often have no REAL value – if you’re an expert surely you can get those 101 down to a top ten like Google does so as to make it actually a useful page to visitors.
Yeah, I’ve never done them. But I do occasionally end up on them.
This one on the Guardian, for instance, back in April has no PR in the toolbar – but at least it’s not grey. It’s basically just a list of headlines. I’ve never worked out whether I should be happy Guardian is linking to me or not!
This one has more content, but each paragraph is just a direct quote from the page linked to. It’s too new to have any PR shown, but at least it’s white rather than grey in toolbar.
I can’t see how to test if either of these actual examples is passing PR / anchor text (one link uses my name as anchor, the other the page’s headline). I suspect neither as, with the first example, a cross post of my blogpost on the online journalism blog outranks my original: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Do+blogs+make+reporting+restrictions+ pointless
Pah!
I agree – I don’t get many comments (apart from the spammers!), community seems to have moved to Facebook and twitter. but come on – you complain, but have you ever commented on my blog? I bet you’ve never even read it! It’s your right not to read it, and maybe it doesn’t interest you, but I follow you on Twitter, and have commented on your blog several times, so I am part of your community, and community shouldn’t be just one way should it?
It just seems like getting natural links from blogs is getting harder and harder – period.
Thats a fair point Nick – I am a lurker more than a commenter these days.
I believe my authority Google ranking is largely a result of having been on several high PR sites’ blogrolls for quite a long time, plus the fact that I have regularly posted serious (i.e., real) comments on their blogs for nearly three years. One of these used to have a weekly roundup of the best posts in various categories and I would get regular mentions – in fact I used to write some posts with just a little more spice just hoping to get the mention. When I did, I found my traffic immediately jumped remarkably – sometimes more than doubled – before returning to slightly higher than normal, so it climbed steadily over time.
That blog doesn’t do its roundup any more. The guy who looked after it – it was a group blog – got tired, or busy, or bored and just stopped. I think that happens a lot. Blogging seems like such a great idea but I think a lot of people find that after a year it’s not quite as much fun. A year seems to be the separation point for the sheep and the goats.
I get bored, too, and busy, and tired, but I spend time looking after my blog and producing fresh content because it’s like SEO gold. These days Google loves me, apparently. If I build a site for a client, or for myself, just a mention and a link will give them an instant kick start. It’s the quickest way I know to get a new domain name indexed.
On the other hand, I also do the twitter and facebook and sharethis and tweetmeme and the rest because, well, you have to, don’t you?
Shaun, it’s not just links pages that have the grey TBPR, it’s almost any page that has 3rd party content for instance if you look at directories, Press release and article marketing sites they all have that grey bar on user genned content PR flows as expected down the hierarchy of the rest of the site.
The Press Release sites include both PrWeb and PrNewswire. IMO, Google now wants to see incoming links it has nothing to do with anything more than Google is eliminating and crawling no IBLs less, per the Big Daddy and Vince updates which basically killed auto PageRank to a page and the ability to manipulate via publishing boatloads of pages.
As to the linking out? Agreed, twitter is killing that and commenting as well! Look no further than one of my favorite blogs… Search Engine People where there used to be a ton of good comments now……. overrun with 140 chars of twitter shite! Do I really need to see that since that is almost likely how I discovered the content.
All good points Terry – and why i disabled Tweetbacks on here ages ago – Search Engine People is a cool blog too.
Regarding links to pages – yup – I have thought that for a long time too.