What happened to all my (Your) back links?

Hi,

Provide excellent customer service, customer value, superior products, and so forth. Then your links will naturally build overtime, and then you don't have to worry about your links disappearing, etc. Or really competing with others, for that matter, simply because your business will spread by word of mouth.

The purpose of having a business (should not) be simply to "get" money, or see what you can "get" from other people or "trick" them into buying, but by "providing" service and something of value so that they genuinely want to buy. When people like what you have to offer, they will naturally purchase what you have, tell other people, link to it, etc, etc.

Altneratively, if backlinking is important to you, you could always set up your own network of sites. Might be a little more work, but then you don't have to worry about it going down the tube because 5,000 other people are using it.

Billy? How quaint.

I have no wisdom in this area.

I'm guessing you're one of the many who see gaming the system as more productive than contributing to the actual worth of the net by actually creating content that serves the purpose of bettering a users' experience when using search engines.

If you really consider yourself a business owner then focusing on your value to your customers should take precedence over simply taking the easy way out and buying your way into a market or niche for the sake of rankings using artificial means that add no value to the system whatsoever.

Are you seriously advocating that you think it is better for your customers that they are tricked into believing that you are someone of substance because you can afford a backlink packet?

Are your offerings so weak that they need to be artificially propped up because the real world won't provide any buzz?

I'm absolutely in favor of genuine links. I have links to my money site that go all the way back into the 1990's. I got them because other sites saw the value my site provides to that given market/niche.

What is amusing is to see 'newcomers' who are not aware that backlinking has had value over an extended period of time and seem to sense that backlinking is synonymous with all the artificial gaming they have been exposed to.

I am fully aware of my dinosauristic view on this matter, hence I fully appreciate viewpoints like yours whereby you believe that to be successful you need to resort to trickery in order to gain traction.

I just don't seem to grasp the concept of being 'king for the day' and having to start all over again when the SEs realize the only thing I can bring to the table is another 'me too' offering supported artificially by propping myself up.

I am also not advocating that you refrain from using tools you believe you need in order to get rankings. If you want to use them it's no skin off my back. Likewise, when your true value to the net is exposed and you fall back into oblivion I won't care, either.

If, on the other hand, you are truly creating substance that will stand on it's own merit, and using artificial backlinking to get you to the top of the serps where real people with real needs and wants are benefited by your existence, then I don't see it as being a big deal if you use those tactics.

Unfortunately, that is rarely the case...

~Bill

I salute you, sir!

Hi 4morereferrals,

When you say "relative" links do you also mean to say "relevant links", as in links from relevant pages, pages that contain relevant keywords in or near anchortext? Are relevant links "utter nonsense" in your opinion?

Isn't this the main purpose of Google's algorithm? They seem to be pretty good at it. Your website topic is not a part of Google's algorithm, they achieve high relevance in SERPs by using a more granular approach. Simply put, they analyze and index individual documents, not websites.

If you'd like a demonstration of how well they can do this, and how quickly they can do it, simply enter the URL, where your article about an iPhone App is placed on your blog about auto insurance, into the AdWords Keyword Tool. This nifty tool uses the core "relevancy" algorithm to instantly analyse your page, finds most of the important keywords that are "relevant" to that individual page and even automatically sorts them by relevance. That last part is very significant, it demonstrates their ability to determine the degree of relevancy for each individual word.

That portion of the algorithm calculates and scores the on-page relevancy factors. The calculation for relevancy of inbound links is performed in a similar fashion, allowing for the different contextual application of proximity and prominence (core principals of Google's algorithm). This slightly different approach applies more weight to the anchortext followed closely by the words near the anchor that links to the indexed page, since those elements are closer in proximity and promenance, relative to the indexed page.

Google's algorithm is not only able to tell that your article is relevant, (absolute value), it is able to determine the degree of relevance (relative value). Google's superior application of the principals of prominence and proximity are part of their core competency. This effective approach produces a relatively high degree of relevancy in their query results and has led to their dominant position in the search engine industry..

I think some folks may be too quick to dismiss the importance that relevance plays in earning high SERP rankings. Backlinks without relevance may pass PR value, but PR alone wont get you ranked. That value must be channeled through a relevant link before you will get any increase in the relevancy score used to sort your position on the SERP.

I believe if we choose to look at relevance from a webmaster's perspective we may fail to see how a search engine determines relevancy. For us to be effective at SEO it may be helpful to understand relevancy from the perspective of the search engines. Does it matter what you or I call relevant, or irrelevant? Or is it more important to understand what Google considers to be relevant?

Google, nor any other major search engine, uses website topics to determine relevance. The primary reason search engines exist is because a more granular approach was needed to go beyond limitations of a website directory organized by website topic.

Many of the earliest search engines used meta tags, but these were not used universally, and were frequently abused. Google revolutionized the industry by developing an engine that read the visible content of a web page and analyzed the relevant keywords contained within the content. This ability combined with the ability to determine relevant inbound links, weighted by popularity (PageRank), to form a relevancy score that is used to sort the listings of the SERP. This same core concept is still at the root of Google's algorithm today.

I noticed a drop in my links and competitors, but I also know that sometimes Yahoo much smaller memory backlink image. I do not know if they are, a glitch or what, but I saw my own sites fall to 200, then pull back to the normal amount the next day.

Hi Frank,

I appreciate your courteous explanation of Billy's obnoxious post. And I do agree but my point simply is this - if they are doing it, then I must. And I do work very hard to build valuable, useful content into the whole pkg. It is the playing field that Google has given us and what choice do I have?

It just irks me when self righteous blow hards come on here and shoot you down for trying. Especially when some of them (looks at little Stevie Wagenheim) have even purchased backlink packets such as Angela's. That kind of hypocrisy just wants to make me puke.

Exactly.....

Yeah, same thing happened to me today. I went from 1200 backlinks to a little less than 500. Now it's back to over 1200, so it's "Yahoo dance".

Besides (and I'm sure you already know this) Yahoo Site Explorer shows only a portion of all links.

Pure genius Crew Chief! I have no doubt there are certain folks in this thread who are grabbing for their credit cards right now. You shoulda thrown a 1-800 number up here!

I WILL GO WITH YOU

IF I can have the upgrade package. It must NUKE any and ALL backlinks. In content, article everything. that way there is ZERO chance at spam. None.

However in the true spirit of giving back to the community I will not use it on any of my sites (or my paying clients). It will be my free gift. I don't hold grudges so I am even prepared to pay for my other competitors in serps.

I might sound all rough on the outside but I am a teddy bear on the inside. Thats just how I roll.

I should have been more specific. Spamming the exact same articles that hundreds of other people are using. Basically, taking some PLR or some other content that is in the hands of hundreds of people and submitting it to article directories as is.

I know the benefits of web syndication, I just wasn't specific enough. Thanks!

Pffft....your English is better then mine and it's my first language! This what I've learned and the more knowledgeable SEO experts can chime in if I am wrong. It is difficult to fully identify all of your back links. You can use 3,4,5 different tools and get different answers. As some of the experts pointed out in this thread - don't sweat the back links too much - pay closer attention to your rank in the SERPS. Since losing all my backlinks, my ranking did not change for most keywords and actually improved for one or two!

As another poster pointed out - given that this sudden loss of back links seems to have been across the board, we have all been affected equally and hence you should not see a change in your position in the SERPS..

I have learned alot from these guys. They know their stuff. Find a few guys / gals who you feel are really good and search and read all their posts in WF. You will learn more from that exercise then reading any book...