AOL is Using Profile Backlinks

[ttomp13]

AOL is Using Profile Backlinks...

Oregon Student Action Center Forums | Santa Fe Travel

Interesting, or no?

I found it interesting.

[Jacob Martus]

Originally Posted by ttomp13

AOL is Using Profile Backlinks...

Oregon Student Action Center Forums | Santa Fe Travel

Interesting, or no?

I found it interesting.

It could be someone building links to AOL because their site is linked to from those pages on AOL.

For example, if I get a nice link from AOL, I might want to supplement the power of that link by building links to the page where my link is. It's actually a fairly common practice.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by ttomp13

AOL is Using Profile Backlinks...

Oregon Student Action Center Forums | Santa Fe Travel

Interesting, or no?

I found it interesting.

Same thing as linking to an "authority" site in your niche from your own site. Only this time the guy is doing it from a profile.

[Peter Gregory]

Or it could be someone testing a forum for some reason. Maybe someone testing an automated software out. Who knows really. We could probably speculate all day here, but I surely doubt anyone associated with AOL is going around leaving profile links. I'm sure if they are really worried about getting things ranking they could optimize their own internal linking structure or use any number of other properties, partners, etc to help their rankings far better than leaving some profile links.

Originally Posted by Jacob Martus

It could be someone building links to AOL because their site is linked to from those pages on AOL.

For example, if I get a nice link from AOL, I might want to supplement the power of that link by building links to the page where my link is. It's actually a fairly common practice.

It's also highly doubtful that anyone who got a good link from an established page on AOL would need to supplement it with any further profile links. I'm sure it carries enough weight on it's own . Of course that assumes that the page it is coming from within AOL is worth a damn in the first place.

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

Same thing as linking to an "authority" site in your niche from your own site. Only this time the guy is doing it from a profile.

Tom, that's probably a much more likely idea, but still there are too many possibilities to even speculate.

[Jacob Martus]

Originally Posted by Peter Gregory

It's also highly doubtful that anyone who got a good link from an established page on AOL would need to supplement it with any further profile links. I'm sure it carries enough weight on it's own . Of course that assumes that the page it is coming from within AOL is worth a damn in the first place.

It might not necessarily be an established page on AOL. It could be a brand new article with little to no PR. It could be syndicated for all we know.

I know of many people who supplement their most powerful backlinks with more backlinks. Michael Gray is one who has talked about it several times on his blog.

[Peter Gregory]

Originally Posted by Jacob Martus

It might not necessarily be an established page on AOL. It could be a brand new article with little to no PR. It could be syndicated for all we know.

I know of many people who supplement their most powerful backlinks with more backlinks. Michael Gray is one who has talked about it several times on his blog.

That is why I mentioned established, if it was in fact it would not need the "boost"

In terms of whether "boosting" your backlinks is an effective strategy or not I would have to do some more testing, but logically it would seem if the boosts are coming from low quality sources that have tons of outbound links on them I don't see it being effective as the link juice passed would be too diluted to even matter, and in the event that you can obtain a good quality link I would much prefer to get that link to my target page and not just another page that is linking to mine.

[theseoguys]

Maybe AOL hired an SEO firm to work on some of their sites and the SEO firm is using this method.

[Jacob Martus]

Originally Posted by ghostcash

Why would someone need to supplement AOL with profile links? I'm sure that anything they do won't affect it very much.

You're sure huh? Well, people would supplement their AOL links for the same reason people supplement their web 2.0 properties, articles, and other backlinks. It's common practice to send backlinks to your backlinks. And with the amount of automation out there it can be as easy as pressing a button.

The question would be, why not supplement your most powerful backlinks? Sites like AOL have tons of trust and authority making them pretty much immune to anything and everything you can throw at them.