Posts Tagged ‘Link Building’

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