Posted on September 4, 2008 - by Kelly Verge
Top 3 Google Backlink Myths
There are certain things that we hear and read over and over again about how Google weighs backlinks based on several factors. However, I read an interesting article today questioning some of those long-held beliefs.
First, that Google gives much more weight to pages that are extremely on theme. The example given to question this belief is arthritis – might not pages related to swimming, tennis, running, or golf also have relevance to arthritis, even though there might not be a large number of related keywords? Is it possible that Google has been programmed to pick up the subjective relevance of subjects to this level of detail? Maybe. But the author has tested 100% non-relevant links, and was still able to rank as if they were all on subject.
Next, he looked at Pagerank. He believes that Google has leveled the playing field somewhat when it comes to pagerank. While PR might carry some weight, he doesn’t believe that it carries as much as it used to.
Finally, he looks at the “duplicate content” myth. This myth persists because there actually is a duplicate content penalty – Google will penalize you if you have loads of duplicate content on one site (for example, five articles posted on 1500 pages on one site). I can think of countless examples where I did a search for something on Google and several of the top 10 results were pages that were nothing more than content from EzineArticles related to their subject.
I can’t say whether or not they are myths or fact, but it does make you think…
The original article is at Top 3 Link Building Myths Regarding Google
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Visit My Website
September 21, 2008
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Hey Kelly,
Wow, you beat me on getting this awesome theme. I was about to push the button sometime last week but decided to put on hold…
Awesome theme really…
Anyway, back to the subject of this article, I crossed over to the original poster and came back to leave my comment here.
Though they are of different perspective to what we have been schooled, I’m still skeptical about them unless there are some evidences that suggest otherwise. Perhaps, the original author could provide a link to Google Official blog that debunk the myth.
What do you think?
Yan
Visit My Website
September 24, 2008
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tricky. there’s a lot of speculation out there, and a dearth of hard evidence. i’d like to believe that google’s smart enough to be fair to most bloggers, but i just don’t know.
Visit My Website
October 3, 2008
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That duplicate content issue has really frustrated me. I’ve been looking into it because I’m starting to submit articles here and there, and I don’t want it to be counterproductive.
If you go through the forums half the webmasters say don’t submit the same article to heaps of directories. The other half say don’t worry.
So I’ll take the middle option and just
submit to a few!
Visit My Website
October 3, 2008
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@Matt – One of these days I’ll test the theory, and when I do, I’ll be sure to post the results.
First I need a throwaway domain and niche…
Visit My Website
October 31, 2008
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I am the author of this article mentioned above, and I’ve posted a response at http://moonviper.com/blog/2008/10/top-link-building-myths-followup/
Visit My Website
December 2, 2008
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Hi Kelly,
I’m not sure if we can trust Google 100%.I’ve someone telling me he has a blog which has nothing but duplicate contents . Actually 90% of the posts are duplicate content and in 3 months with almost no visitors it now has a PR of 1, . If it was being ignored due to duplicate content it wouldn’t have any rank, but it does? In this case Google is rewarding duplicate contents??
BTW I love your theme.
Peter Lee