"You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path."
That is an absolutely ridiculous rule of thumb to follow. What exactly is wrong about doing something like:
1) Having a good article on your site about a certain topic
2) Reaching out to other site owners who have similar content and asking them to link to you as an additional resource
3) Getting that link.
Can you honestly, with a straight face, tell me that's BAD!?
Can I, the potential reader, chime in? I hate this tactic because it results in lower quality content getting further up the search rankings. If I'm a gardener, I want the blogs of well-respected gardeners who have real-life community standing and mutual respect to link to each other. What I don't want is two amateur gardeners with crappy writing skills who have made side-deals to link to each other getting on the first page of a Google search.
The situation you mentioned can start out as innocuous but quickly become downright shady. Hmm, you're asking them to link to you, but what do they get in return? Oh, here's a thought, you tell them you'll link to them as well if they link to you, that way you'll both get a ranking bump! Totally fair and win-win for everyone except for the people who are trying to get quality information.
If I'm a gardener, I want the blogs of well-respected gardeners who have real-life community standing and mutual respect to link to each other. What I don't want is two amateur gardeners with crappy writing skills who have made side-deals to link to each other getting on the first page of a Google search.
That might be the ideal result, but it's hard to see how anyone could achieve it with a purely automated system. To make the kinds of distinction you're describing, in general you probably need some form of manual curation by genuine experts with uncontroversial opinions, assuming such people even exist in the field of interest.
As long as we are concerned about the organic structure of markets...
How do you feel about Google sponsoring educational seminars for market regulators where they do not disclose their sponsorship, actively conceal it, and request the entity putting on the sponsorship do the same thing?
It is also worth mentioning that when Google was lobbying against regulation they indeed DID control & manipulate the placement of favorable media masquerading as regular content:
"the staff and professors at GMU’s law center were in regular contact with Google executives, who supplied them with the company’s arguments against antitrust action and helped them get favorable op-ed pieces published, according to the documents obtained by The Post."
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Another thing with the line of thinking based on pureness...should companies which have repeatedly been caught rigging actual physical markets (e.g. municipal bonds, California energy, LIBOR, interest rate swaps, forex, etc.) in the real world get a penalty by Google for it?
Or is it reasonable that they take their outsized gains from their market rigging behavior & invest some small portion of it into buying out smaller competitors, lobbying & writing regulations to harm smaller competitors, buy some feel good brand ads & do various charity donations to paint a picture of themselves?
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I also want to quote the following past statement from a Google executive about the AdWords ads Google puts directly in the search results:
"As with all of our policies, we do not verify what these sites actually do, only what they claim to do."
"While important as a vote of confidence for the content they point to, there is simply so much link spam these days that it’s tough to know where to turn. Obviously buying links is a dead end, and it doesn’t matter how you split this hair: sharing, encouraging, incentivizing, buying – it’s all the same. You want links to surprise you. You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path. Links are part of the bigger picture. You want them, but you want them to be natural. If an engine sees you growing tem naturally, you’re rewarded with rankings. If they see you growing them unnaturally, you’re rewarded with penalties."
If you disagree with that, you'd need to take it up with Bing's webmaster outreach team.
Holy moly man, you were the one who provided that link: "It's not just Google that recommends to avoid link spamming. For example, at http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-links-knowledge-18535.html you can read where Bing said "You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path."
Your statement implies both Google and Bing share the same sentiment.
So now, my question still stands: What about that scenario that I laid out is actually bad/spammy/evil? Why should anyone ever be punished for doing that?
Why shouldn't I ask my customers to provide feedback on Internet? A business must encourage their customers to spread good word by various channels like social media, word of mouth, blogs, links, reviews, invite friends etc.
This practice has existing long before Internet, and internet has made it easier than ever. Google is essentially telling us not to ask our customers to evangelize for us.
Why such hypocrisy? How about the invites system Google uses for many products including Gmail where users are encouraged and incentivized to invite friends.
According to Google's terms if I link to my Dropbox referral link on my blog, Dropbox should be penalized for it because they incentivize users to do that.
The internet should not work according to Google's algorithm and policies, it should be the other way around.
Every marketing seminar I have ever been to has emphasised that as much as you can turn your clients into fans, in the end you still need to ask them for a testimonial and that you need to tell them that you love referrals.
That is an absolutely ridiculous rule of thumb to follow. What exactly is wrong about doing something like:
1) Having a good article on your site about a certain topic 2) Reaching out to other site owners who have similar content and asking them to link to you as an additional resource 3) Getting that link.
Can you honestly, with a straight face, tell me that's BAD!?