Linking Psychosis is Treatable

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about linking insanity and the foolishness of self-referential
links.

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Linking Psychosis is Treatable. Link Obsession & PageRank
by Mike Banks Valentine © September 21, 2004

Search Engine Optimization has become inextricably linked
with linking schemes over the last couple of years. During
that time EVERYONE has noticed the value of inbound links
to their web sites. This has lead many agressive webmasters
to buy up hundreds of keyword focused domain names, slap up
a few weak and repetitive content pages over dozens of domain
names in an attempt to build their own little empire.

MINI-WEBS BECOME ROAD KILL IN TRAFFIC GENERATION
SCHEMES

This misguided strategy has littered the web with garbage
that nobody wants to clean up. Outdated sites that no longer
reflect the businesses that created them, with broken images,
broken links and broken promises to visitors are everywhere.
Their owners don't maintain them, update them, and sometimes
don't even pay to host them as duplicated domains are strewn
across free hosting services and are forgotten for years.

WHO IS TO BLAME FOR PAGERANK OBSESSION?

I'm reluctant to place the blame for this on Google, but I'm
afraid I must. Google made PageRank the holy grail for the
web and everyone simply set out in search of the holy grail.
For those of you NOT obsessed with PageRank, it is only a
small part of a complex set of factors Google uses to decide
how important a site is based on how many other sites link
to it. Linking is important, but many have become obsessed
with it to the point of linking insanity.

There are linking clubs, reciprocal linking services, link
building software, link popularity software, and now even
link brokerages that purchase links on your behalf! Search
engine optimization firms have now begun to establish and
position domains solely for the purpose of selling links in
multiple categories. Those same SEO firms fill their fully
optimized pages with Google Adsense Ads to earn income from
that portion of visitors not interested in pages of links.

ADSENSE PROVIDES ESCAPE FOR VISITORS TRAPPED IN
LINK FARMS

Those visitors click away on the Adsense ads simply to find
escape from the contentless link farm that they've found
while looking for information. The SEO firm has made money
both selling links and now from Adsense clickthroughs, but
provides no useful information. This is litter generated
along the road to traffic generation and link popularity!

Another phenomenon created by linking insanity is the self-
referential linking scheme, where webmasters link ALL their
sites from the footer of EVERY page on EVERY site to gain
link popularity increases. If they've also created mini-webs
of repetitive content strewn across hundreds of domains,
they will inevitably link every domain to every other domain
they own, sometimes from the bottom of every page on every
single mini-web site - even their main domains!

SELF REFERENTIAL LINKING OF MINI-WEBS IS LINKING
PSYCHOSIS

Often the owners of these linking fiefdoms will refrain from
using every page of their site to link out to their many tiny
domains, but will create "index" or "sitemap" or "search" or
"resources" pages that essentially do the same linking, but
with keyword focused anchor text encompassing every possible
search phrase that might be used to find their business site.

Those afflicted with linking psychosis have entirely lost
contact with reality in favor of the fantasy of PageRankLand.
The missing ingredient for these lost souls is the "Authority"
site concept. They link from every page or domain TO every
page or domain randomly and this confers no prominence of
"Authority" to any one domain. They might actually succeed in
their attempt to rank well if they weren't so unclear on this
single concept.

A PARTIAL TREATMENT FOR AFFLICTED LINK PSYCHOTICS

A single link from each domain - from ONE page - back to the
"Authority" site will increase link popularity of the main
site. Those mini-web sites SHOULD link to each other, but only
once and only in one direction, in a daisy chain fashion to
confer authority to the main site and lead the search engines
to the next domain that does the same thing - it in turn
confers authority to the main site and leads the spiders to
the next mini-site, etc.

The mini-web site psychosis isn't cured with this treatment.
They STILL offer no substantial, original, useful content
and the visitor gains nothing except being lead to the main
site where they might find the product or service they set
out to find in the beginning. A total cure comes only when
real content of unique value is added to those individual
mini-sites. Then they become self-actualized and they matter.

I've rescued many client mini-webs from linking psychosis by
filling mini domains with useful, relevant and interestingly
unique content. Those sites become destinations themselves,
gain rank and status of their own and then link to the main
business site, conferring even more relevance upon the single
authority site they link to.

A treatment is available, the cure is substantial, relevant,
unique text content. There is hope for linking psychosis.