Rankers from last month

For some reason they supplied me with a table with all the links nofollowed apart from the keyword links to their deep pages. I may have swapped some of that around .

Ranking made by Wikio

According to Blekko I'm the 43rd most important SEO blog, which sounds slightly more likely than 3rd.

Last December, I pointed out that:

Shownar is a BBC site that tracks online buzz about BBC shows. Despite being paid for by the licence fee, it's pulling the wool over bloggers' eyes by claiming that, if you link to it, it will link back - but it's nofollowing the links.

The BBC replied that:

Shownar will be retired in a few weeks. The good news is the version we are creating for bbc.co.uk is going to be backed by the moderation support that means we should be able to remove nofollows for those non-commerical blog posts that are significantly about a BBC programme.

The old Shownar

It's now followed through on that with its about to go live Buzz service, explained here (cheers to Martin Belam for the spot):

We've built a tool that finds where on blogs, Twitter and other online communities people are discussing BBC programmes, and presents links to them on the relevant programme page.

If people are talking about a programme, a section called 'Buzz about this programme' appears on its programme page. Clicking on the links in that section will take you to online conversations about that programme.

As to how the links work, that's explained here - the bit about nofollow reads:

We use an automated system to find our blog links which means if you link to a BBC programme page and your blog passes our external link guidelines we will usually link to it. This opens us up to possible abuse with people linking to us just to boost their page's search positioning. To counter this we add a nofollow tag to pages we've looked at and decided are not fully relevant within the context of the programme (find out how we judge relevancy here). We don't put this restriction on relevant posts, so if the post is very much about the programme and not trying to gain search positioning it does get the authority from us.

Please note we only check blog post relevancy during office hours and it may take a while to get through any backlogs that have built up. So if your blog is recent, relevant and has the nofollow tag it may just because we've not checked it yet.

Anyway (1) well done the BBC (this presumably counts as part of its promise to double monthly clickthroughs to external sites) and (2) I must go and write about some BBC programmes (don't forget this tip to get links from the BBC to your Twitter page) ...

As far as I can tell, the new service isn't live yet as I can't find it anywhere on the BBC site. Let me know if you spot it ...

• 

  Digital Inspiration has interviewed five of the Google search quality team

  If you don't nofollow affiliate links, your search engine rankings will suffer.

• Links in copy ARE worth more than other ones.
• Fresh content isn't a ranking factor.
• Rel=canonical is suggested for cross-domain redirects - 301 isn't mentioned.
• Google doesn't seem to like guest blogging.
• Linking out both benefits you and doesn't benefit you at the same time. (Hey, don't shoot the messenger).

Of course, just because they say it, doesn't mean it's true. But here goes.

Finally a statement on affiliate links and nofollow ...

... just not the one anyone wanted.

Q10 is about adding affiliate links to blog posts. You might have an Amazon account, for instance, and decide to include a link to buy something that you've reviewed - knowing that you get commission for any sales that result from the traffic.

To many people, this doesn't count as a paid link. You haven't been asked to put it there, you've chosen to put it there yourself. So should you nofollow the link to stay within Google's guidelines or not?

What Google now says

Google has faffed around for some time about affiliate links, and has appeared reluctant, in the past, to say they definitely count, in its eyes, as paid links.

So the first part of the answer seems gracious enough - it's fine in Google's eyes to include links like this. Jeez, thanks for the permission. Sarcasm mode over, the second half of the answer looks a bit more troubling:

While it is legitimate for a webmaster to monetize great content, in order to perform well in Google’s search results it is important to take technical steps in order to prevent unnatural passing of PageRank through paid links, e.g. by either using the “nofollow” attribute or by creating a robots.txt file.

What it's said in the past

This seems to go further than in Google's official statement on paid links, which doesn't really address the affiliate issue. In particular, its page on affiliate programs doesn't mention nofollowing the links. (If you'd like to have these points reinterpreted in a more ranty way, read SEOmofo's comment half way down here).

It also goes further than Matt Cutts did in a recent interview where he suggested that Google just ignored affiliate links:

Typically, we want to handle those sorts of links appropriately. A lot of the time, that means that the link is essentially driving people for money, so we usually would not count those as an endorsement.

Google now seems to be saying that "in order to perform well" you should nofollow the link, and not just rely on Google working it out and ignoring it. The threat of what happens if you don't nofollow it is clear ...

Are links in copy worth more?

Things like block level analysis have been around so long, I'm surprised anyone is surprised that Google would treat links in copy as more important that footer links or auto-generated related content lists.

Anyway, Q13 is this:

"Are all links on a page treated the same or does the order of links matter. For instance, will Google flow more juice to the links that are in the first paragraph of the story than the ones that are in the page footer?"

The answer is this:

Our link analysis is getting much more sophisticated than the original PageRank used to be. To answer your question, we may treat links across different areas in a different way, as some areas of a page might not be as relevant to the content of the page as others.

Reasonable surfer patent

Which would not be inconsistent with the reasonable surfer patent that was recently granted to Google (which they may or may not be using in that form these days - but the direction of travel seems clear.)

Fresh content doesn't matter

I never really got this "fresh content is important for SEO" stuff people trot out. The suggestion seems to have taken hold that fresh content, in and of itself, helps the rest of your pages rank better.

Matt Cutts was interviewed in March 2009 and was reported as saying:

Matt said that fresh content isn’t part of the algorithm, but it almost always gets you more links than if your site is stale.

The answer to Q20 in this latest Q&A suggests that taking a long period off publishing content will make no difference to your existing rankings.

Compare that with the people prattling on in these pages. If you want your site to feel that it's up to date or you want to target more keywords or earn more links, then create fresh content.

But fresh content itself isn't going to help your old content (actually, it might harm it if your site architecture is poor by pushing old content ever more links away from the home page ...)

Changing your domain name

Question 3 was about handling moving your website. The  answer was:

"One easy way to handle duplicate content across different websites is to use the rel=canonical link element. Other possibilities are included in our blog post about handling legitimate cross-domain duplicate content."

It's interesting that they choose to give rel=canonical as the key method they quote - and not a 301 redirect.

Does this confirm Rob Kerry's observations at SMX London about the death of the external 301? To quote the Seo Insight round up:

In January Google clamped down on smart affiliates using cross-site 301s on affiliate links and stopped them passing value ... the key message is, if you’re moving sites, don’t rely on 301s to save all your link juice – build up the link profile to the new domain with fresh linkbuilding.

Guest blogging: can't you just answer a straight question?

Q11 seems sensible enough. "I've got a new blog but noone knows it's there. So I've guest-blogged  - do the links back to my site count in Google's eyes?"

I mean, "yes" or "no" would seem good answers here. Instead we have this:

In general I would recommend putting that work into your own site, instead of creating content for other people’s sites.

It’s much better to create great content for your blog and to let other sites refer visitors to your site on their own.

That's not the question. The question is "Is Google fine with guest blogging and do links ‘earned’ from writing guest blogs matter?" Are they trying to give the impression that their algorithm looks for guest posts and discounts them - or can't they just say "yes" or "no"?

How does linking out benefit you

The question is:

I know that inbound links will help my site’s ranking in Google search results but is that true for outbound links as well?

The answer is:

No, they don’t contribute directly towards your site’s rankings ... On the other hand, being selective and preferring quality sites to link to might help in how Google perceives your site.

First up, see the yes / no thing above. Surely these two halves of the answer contradict themselves - and it's not a long answer. Or does being perceived better not help your site's rankings directly? Why would it be worth being perceived better then?

Anyway, secondly, Matt Cutts has previously said that:

In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.

So, I think that, overall, we can take it that linking out is a good idea in general. Sadly, not enough of one to encourage it to happen more. Personally, I'm with Aaron Wall:

[Google] could undo the years of FUD that destroyed the link graph by stating the importance of outbound links, and then putting a bit of weight on it.

Paid link penalties

I've already pointed out the answer to Q9 says that Google appears to have taken action over a UK newspaper group - presumably the Express - offering advertorials with links for SEO benefits. Thanks to Jon Hudghton (and on Twitter) for spotting the interview.

@ mentions now nofollowed

Is this breaking news, or am I losing my mind?

Update I'm not. I've looked through the google cache of some tweets and this is new. And it seems I was beaten to the news ...

Shownar: promises links but nofollows them

The site tracks - and links to - what people are blogging and tweeting about BBC shows and episodes (like Doctor Who) so you can see what's hot. You get the idea.

Excitingly for bloggers who struggle to get many links to their site, Shownar says:

If you’re discussing BBC shows, just link to us and we’ll link to you (subject to the checks below). It’s as simple as that.

And these checks?

Shownar automatically creates sets of links to blogs discussing every show on the BBC. We want the links to reflect everything that’s going on about a show, not select a favoured few, but that’s not to say we don’t check them before they go on the site. We do.

So the BBC encourages you to link to it. If you do, it checks out your site and, if it approves it, it links back.

And then it prevents Google and other search engines from counting that link by slapping nofollow on the link.

Nofollow explained

What is nofollow? To quote Google:

When Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.

Whats it for? It's main aim is to avoid linking to sites you can't vouch for, or for links which aren't "natural" in some way. So most URLs in comments are automatically nofollowed by blogging software to try to defeat spammers. And if someone pays you for a link, you can use nofollow to make sure Google doesn't penalise you.

There is a third use for nofollow - to try and do better in Google's results by not linking properly to other sites (or to avoid helping them in Google's results).

All the links Shownar promises are nofollowed

You can't tell the links are nofollowed by looking at the webpage - you have to look at the HTML (although in this screenshot, I've shown the nofollowed links - ie all of them - with pink).

The BBC should either make them standard links - or be much more transparent about its "you link to us and we'll link to you" statement by making clear they aren't normal links.

The BBC runs minute-by-minute text commentaries online for most Premier League and international matches. As part of this, they occasionally print comments that people tweets. When they do, they link to the URL of the person who tweeted.

First example

Last night, for instance, you can see that Caroline Cheese was writing the page, reporting on goalflashes and major incidents (her name is at the top, above the last timestamp). Look down the page, and you can see two tweets that she's included.

Here's a screenshot of the link on the BBC page (the blue copy is a link to peg_leg5125's Twitter URL):

Link from BBC to someone's Twitter

Second example

Here's last saturday's live report, which featured seven tweets, each with a link to the tweeter's main twitter URL. The report author was Jonathan Stevenson, and he'd handily included his twitter address at the bottom of the page. Here's a sample tweet quoted on the BBC page (again, the blue text is a link):

More tweets used by the BBC - with a link

Conclusion

These links are followed. Obviously they aren't going to print any old spam or rubbish. So don't bother trying to game them.

But if you've genuinely got something interesting to say, why not tweet the author of the BBC report and see if you can get a link.

Update from 13 December 2009: And here's my link!

Result!

GOOOAAAAALL!

The problem with linking

Put simply, Google counts a link to a page / website as a vote for that page / website. So everyone who blogged about, and linked to, Jan Moir's article on Stephen Gately has, unfortunately, helped that particular article AND the Daily Mail website as a whole do better in Google's results. (According to Yahoo Site Explorer, there were 334 links to the original URL and 541 links to the URL after it was changed - that's 875 links in total)

Google will notice a lot more pages linking to the Mail, a lot more websites linking to the Mail - and will decide that the Mail and that Jan Moir article must be more important than they were the day before.

(You don't need to worry about linking in Twitter, though, as I explain below.)

You can see the effect here. A search for the letter 'a' in Google currently brings up Jan Moir's article first. (Update - it no longer does.) (It didn't used to. Fortunately, at the moment, that article is only on the second page of results for a search on 'Stephen Gately'. Notice, too, they've forgotten to update the meta description).

Jan Moir ranks 1st for a search on the letter 'a'

Here's how to get round it ...

The easy solution - don't link to it. Sometimes you have to, however - in the short term, you may need your readers to be able to read something to make sense of what you've written.

I saw someone suggesting a URL shortener like bit.ly. This won't work as, with most URL shorteners, Google looks at the ultimate link (read this post on the difference between URL shorteners' use of 301 and 302 redirects to understand why).

The best way to avoid your link counting as a vote is to add rel=nofollow to your links.

This means the links will still work as before for normal users - but nofollow tells search engines to ignore the links when calculating pages' importance - in other words, the link no longer counts as a vote. (Google has an explanation of nofollow.)

How to add nofollow

If you've got blogger or wordpress, adding this is easy. Once you've added a link as normal, just click on the HTML tag of the editor where you write your post - it looks like this picture in wordpress.

Add rel="nofollow" in HTML view

Then scroll down to where the link is. You'll see some text like this:

Jan Moir has written a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1220756/Why-natural-Stephen-Gatelys-death.html">disgusting piece</a> for the Mail on the death of Stephen Gately

The bit code in < > brackets is what makes the link. So you just need to add rel="nofollow" (with a space before and after) inside the bit of code that beings <a href="http: ...

So it now looks like this:

Jan Moir has written a <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1220756/Why-natural-Stephen-Gatelys-death.html">disgusting piece</a> for the Mail on the death of Stephen Gately

Then click the other tab at the top to return to the normal view. You won't notice any difference there - but you can be happy that, in Google's eyes, you're not promoting whatever you're linking to. Result!

Don't worry about Twitter

You don't have to worry about linking to something in Twitter. Twitter automatically adds nofollow to all links that you tweet. (Thanks to Minifig for the point.) And, likewise, comments in blogs usually have nofollow added to links automatically.

Of the 11 pages I pointed out, as of 10.30pm on Monday 14 Sept:

• 5 had weblinks to the MoneyExtra credit card page - 4 have had the MoneyExtra links removed. This one still has them, although the page layout has broken - maybe suggesting it's being republished - with the top navigation sitting over the content.
• 5 contained links to the MoneyExtra debt page - all 5 still contain this MoneyExtra link, but all 5 have the same broken-layout issue.
• 1 contained links to a MoneyExtra car insurance page - all these links have been removed.

Before and after

A before example

Before: with links to MoneyExtra

The same page now - without links

Now with links removed

I'll guess we'll have to wait and see what happens with the other pages. And I'm not sure why they've deleted them - couldn't the Mirror just have nofollowed them if they were genuine, editorially-chosen links and it was worried how they looked?

I shall claim the credit for this sudden change. I thank you (more examples of newspapers selling links here).

I've now spotted that the Christian Science Monitor is selling paid links in its footer without applying nofollow. Obviously, you don't have to do this (it's a Google guideline, not the law). Don't blame me if their rankings get affected ...

And you should see their relocation page - stuffed full of keyword-rich links to other sites:

Unfortunately, Delia Smith is still selling paid links though.

Alongside my other posts on newspapers' paid links, let's look at the ic network, one of Trinity Mirror's local news brands ...

At the very bottom of icCheshire pages in a set of links to other Trinity Mirror sites is one with the link text 'Remortgage'. This links to http://www.godirect.co.uk/remortgages.php. I can't find a connection between Go Direct and Trinity Mirror - they look like separate companies.

icCheshire home page - is one of these a paid link?

At the bottom of the icLiverpool page is the same box, but this one has a link with the keywords 'Life insurance' that links to http://www.godirect.co.uk/life-insurance.php.

icLiverpool - is the first link a paid one?

Of course, people are free to ignore Google's guidelines. However, they shouldn't complain if their ranking in search engine results drop ...

To avoid this fate, Google recommends using the nofollow tag, which Trinity Mirror isn't doing for these links.

It definitely doesn't recommend stuffing a keyword-rich link to a 3rd-party site in among links to other sites you own ... Or am I being overly suspiscious?