There are three types of links in a blog or website and it is often debated which one helps in ranking our site in search engines. Which one will yield a higher search ranking or does it really help at all for our site to appear in search?
Three Types of Links
One way link
This is a basic link wherein you cite a website in your post and the site doesn’t link back to you. For example, we are linking wikipedia for an article on hyperlinks. Wikipedia doesn’t link back to us so we created a one way link.
Two way or Reciprocal link
This refers to mutual linking of sites. This type of link help each other out in terms of traffic. Most often, bloggers of the same niche or category request each other to exchange links thus gaining more exposure. For example, blogrolls found on personal blogs are almost always placed there with an exchanged link from the other bloggers featured on the roll.
Three way Link
This is believed to be the most effective of all links if we are to listen to webmasters. Most webmasters think that one way link isn’t any good but so is the reciprocal link so they formulated the three way link concept.
This means that website 1 links to website 2, website 2 links to website 3 and website 3 links to website 1- completing the three way linking.
What do we think?
We don ‘t believe that three way linking is the best strategy in yielding higher search engine rankings. Sure it helps but so are the other types of link. We think all are equal and that reciprocal linking is only slightly better.
The most important thing to consider is that good inbound links are the links that will definitely help in getting higher search engine results. The bottomline is that careful consideration should be exercised when linking with other sites. Let us not be in the habit of exchanging links to anybody who asks or to any website we come across just to get a link. Links to our website should be related or within the same topic, niche or category to get better ranking.
There is constant going ons and improvements at Google, Inc. camps particularly in the area of search. In its quest to giving relevant, balanced, and timely information to people using Google search- they brew up regular updates and changes in the way they handle search results. The changes were greatly observed on new year’s day!
In January 1, 2008- the world wide web celebrated the 25th Anniversary of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). TCP/IP is the basis for all the communication happening the moment you type in a URL. Messages are sent to the webserver/s of that particular URL and get back to you with the information you need, example going into the log in page of the site.
In celebration of the momentous event for the internet, Google opened the year 2008 with a happy new year and TCP/IP 25th year greetings on its logo. Clicking on Google’s logo when it appeared on January 1st, lead users to the search results for “January 1 TCP/IP” with the most updated information on the internet at that time.
The result? It wasn’t Wikipedia that topped the Google search but rather the most recent content it found on the internet.
Normally, we would wait for days, weeks or months to see our content indexed by Google, hence when searching for a keyword, the result would only show those with huge backlinks that are not necessarily recent. As shown on January 1, with Google experimenting on the keyword “January 1 TCP/IP”, it wasn’t the case.
Google now boasts that it could give out search results with almost real-time accuracy- meaning one would likely find a result to a query with the freshest information that was published minutes ago not some old news from weeks or months back!
This is great news!
WRONG!
This is somewhat flawed and is geared towards publishers who could write the fastest on a given keyword and writes on a daily basis but offers no guarantee for quality content or authority on the subject. So for queries that suddenly turn out to be a popular search, Google’s new system makes it so, that the recent articles (regardless of quality) may show on the front page of Google search results. This leaves so much room for bloggers playing the SEO game to take advantage of hot keywords so they would appear on Google’s front page search.
Have you recently searched on a keyword and was frustrated with the results because it showed no relevance whatsoever to your query and only appears like spam articles using the keywords you searched and they appear on the first page only because they were “new” articles?
You’ve probably been asked many times or you’ve probably asked the question yourself to friends. Admittedly, “googling” is among our most favorite past time when in the internet! We may have been using the phrases “to google,” “googled her,” “googling someone” for years but in case you have not heard, Google is officially a verb in the English-language dictionaries only since 2006; prior to that, it is only a noun and we were using the verb as slang.
So what, right? Well since its inclusion in the English dictionaries as a verb, Google has been concerned that the common usage in phrases like “to google someone” or our use of the above line, “googling” is among our most favorite past time… poses a threat to the branding of Google as a company. They are pleading and showing us in their blog how to use Google in the right context and are really telling the media not to use Google to refer to a general search, rather use Google in its context- that is to search using the Google search engine as described in the dictionary.
They have good reason to be worried. We’ve seen it happen to so many brand names when its wide generic usage eventually lead to losing the brand name and given for public use forgetting the company who owns it. Bayer had to give away aspirin as a brand name in the United States (although in some countries, Bayer still keeps Aspirin as a brand). The term elevator, thermos, escalator, walkman, q-tips, chapstick, cellophane, dry ice, brassiere, frisbee, xerox, fedex, kleenex, band-aid, lycra, jell-o, scotch tape, kool-aid are just some of the names we use commonly and interchangeably with any other related product.
Examples:
Can you xerox this book by the end of the day? (should be, can you photocopy this book…?)
Wipe your nose with a Kleenex. (Kimberly-clark Corp. aren’t really happy every time we use kleenex to refer to other competing brands so it should have been: Wipe your nose with a tissue.)
Please buy the cheapest scotch tape you could find. (Huh? Scoth tape is a brand owned by 3M but we never say, Please buy the cheapest adhesive tape you could find.)
You can take the elevator or the escalator. (Very few would say: You can take the lift or the electric powered stairs)
I always carry a band-aid with me. (even if what I actually carry is a store brand adhesive strip)
I bring a thermos to work. (even if my thermal flask is from Farberware)
I carry my iPod everyday! (even if I have a Zune mp3 player; we’ve added this one because Apple Computer is also defending its iPod usage to strictly refer to the iPod and not any other mp3 players.)
How do you “Google”?
Do you Google on Yahoo or MSN? Of course not! When we say: “I google,” we mean it as searching and using THE Google search engine, nothing more. We’ve heard very minor instances when someone actually said: “can you Google this person in Yahoo! please?”
That is exactly what Google is trying to safeguard. However, we really do not see Google going down the path of say Kleenex or escalator. Far from it. “To google” is very obvious that what we’re referring to is the Google search site. Google is the company name. It is hard to dissociate google the verb to the Google the company. In fact search is widely accepted to be synonymous with the Google search.
Google can not censor and sue just about any Tom, Dick and Harry who uses the phrase: “Google him on Yahoo! ”
Google can not stop people from using the word as a verb more so now that the word is listed in the English dictionaries. The word is spreading and it’s usage getting wider and it is there for the next generations to come.
This is the last week of the mini contest! C’mmon you guys, we’ve got more calendars to give away than bloggers joining! Again, the rules are pretty easy to accomplish.
Simply become a DO FOLLOW BLOGGER! Remove the rel=nofollow tag on your template and put a “U Comment, I Follow” badge on your site. Submit your site to Blogs That Follow and then let us know that you did by leaving a comment here. And you’re done.
The calendars are just waiting to be sent and you have until the 8th to join! Good luck!
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for January, 2008.
