Question for the experts - URL shortener - Anchor diversity

by nik0 Banned
9 replies
  • SEO
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I'm busy with an experiment where I build links to a url shortener, but these links only allow for 1 anchor txt. Would I risk a Penguin non anchor diversity penalty that way?

The plan would be to shorten 50 url's on the same site that has thousands of pages and build many of the same links to each shortened version.

Why? Cause the experiment showed it is insane (cost) effective to rank long tails, BUT will it last?
#anchor #diversity #experts #question #shortener #url
  • Profile picture of the author C Rebecca
    No, i don’t think the strategy will survive in Penguin’s era... You better go to long but fruitful ways of link building if you don’t want to kill your website.
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  • Profile picture of the author jewelraz
    I don't think it would be a good idea. Better stick with long tail keywords, don't go for a test right after penguin 1.1 released.
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
    Banned
    These are 3 word longtails but they won't rank page 1 out of theirselves.

    The precise question actually is: will the url shortener be seen as 1 single link to the money site, or will Google see it as 200 seperate links with 1 anchor that is pointed at my website (although they are pointed at the url shortener). I'm looking a bit for the scientific answer and personally I have no idea but imagined other might know how that works.

    I'm not the first one who invented this, am I? I discussed it with someone else and he said: Where did you read this? And I was like, where did I read this, this is just what I came up with myself lol. I googled a lot on the subject but can't find a single article or forum topic that discusses this.
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  • Profile picture of the author ThatAblaze
    urls that are forwarded via a url shortener or other 300 level redirect become resolved to the new address. In google's eyes it will be as if the site with the link on it was linking directly to the site that you are forwarding to. In other words, google will see the link as going directly to your site, and ignore the fact that it is going first to annon.to and then to your site.

    That's what normally happens, however, since I'm not privy to google under the hood I do not know for sure that the part of the code that ignores any links after the first to the same url engages before or after the part that resolves any forwarded urls to their end location.

    I suspect that Google probably thought of that and fixed it long ago since they've written and re-written that logic so many times. It's worth a test though.. bugs get through all the time. Please tell us if it seems to work.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by ThatAblaze View Post

      urls that are forwarded via a url shortener or other 300 level redirect become resolved to the new address. In google's eyes it will be as if the site with the link on it was linking directly to the site that you are forwarding to. In other words, google will see the link as going directly to your site, and ignore the fact that it is going first to annon.to and then to your site.

      That's what normally happens, however, since I'm not privy to google under the hood I do not know for sure that the part of the code that ignores any links after the first to the same url engages before or after the part that resolves any forwarded urls to their end location.

      I suspect that Google probably thought of that and fixed it long ago since they've written and re-written that logic so many times. It's worth a test though.. bugs get through all the time. Please tell us if it seems to work.
      I did test it recently and it definetly works, the questions is indeed will it keep on working or will the alghoritm catch on. You would think Google is smarter then us ofcourse but hey we never know.

      This is the test I performed (all kw's are equally competitive):

      5 urls / kw's through url shortener (all page 1, top page 2)
      5 urls / kw's through subdomain web2.0 buffer (all page 2, till not in top 100)

      ps the subdomain web2.0 buffer was fully optimized for the kw that we were targetting
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  • Profile picture of the author ThatAblaze
    Hmm.. The forwarder allows you to easily delete any link building you think is hurting you, but it doesn't provide a buffer, so it's like pointing directly at your site. A link going directly to a site will always be more valuable then a link going through a web2.0 site. It's just more risky to go direct, which is why people use web2.0s.

    In order to truly test it you would need to put two links to the same site on the same page, one going directly to your site and the other being forwarded. Then for a control you would have a site or two that just received two links directly to them. If there is a significant difference between THOSE two groups then you have something.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by ThatAblaze View Post

      Hmm.. The forwarder allows you to easily delete any link building you think is hurting you, but it doesn't provide a buffer, so it's like pointing directly at your site. A link going directly to a site will always be more valuable then a link going through a web2.0 site. It's just more risky to go direct, which is why people use web2.0s.

      In order to truly test it you would need to put two links to the same site on the same page, one going directly to your site and the other being forwarded. Then for a control you would have a site or two that just received two links directly to them. If there is a significant difference between THOSE two groups then you have something.
      When looking at results in the past then it doesn't seem to make much of a difference whether we do use a url shortener or not.

      An interesting case study after the penguin update is that penalized sites who do a direct 301 to a new domain pass on the penalty fairly fast, however when doing the direct to a new domain using a url shortener in between, the penalty didn't pass on (so far). And that's where my idea came from initially as I would've expected the penalty to be passed on by now AND we regained about 90% of the rankings by doing this redirect. Before it ranked at #11-12 and now at #13-14.

      Cause this link that we use doesn't get accepted by all sites when pointing it at the same domain it does get accepted by using a subdomain url shortener (as it's treated as a seperate domain), so the loss of the 10% is heavily covered by the advantage of getting the full amount of links.

      The much less effect on the web2.0 buffer can also be caused by delay in time btw, it's a bit too short to draw conclusions on that really.
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  • Profile picture of the author seomagik
    I think that this is a smart idea, but I am not sure that this is the right time to test it.
    The latest update was recent and we do not know the new algorithms well.
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
    Banned
    @seomagik: If you mean bypassing a penalty, then it's indeed too early to tell for sure, about other things like ranking, nothing changed really, most of the links still work the same as 6 months ago, if not all, it's just that you have to be more carefull or Google will bite you in the ass but in effectiveness I see zero difference really.
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