Link Building: Quality over Quantity and Diversification is a Myth

Great insights as usual.

Im still a bit obsessed with the number of RDs simply because i think that its the most difficult metric to manipulate.

Creating thousands of links from only a few domains is pretty easy but creating thousands of links from thousands of (strong) domains should at least in theory be pretty hard... and i think google's algo understands this very well.

Also there is the "trending effect", that when the number of links and RDs increase almost equally in quantity it could generate a sort of buzz in google's eyes.

Of course there must be a balance of quality and quantity, always.

Not trying to deny or debate anything you said though, im just exposing my thoughts on the subject.

Thanks for the great info!

whothefisalex said:

I'm not sure I would agree with that, these no logical reason why a EMD would be punished let alone "dead". Of course they don't give a positive advantage like they did 10 years ago.

But I see no reason why they would have a negative impact, I'm sure google can determine that EMD brand anchors and main keyword will clash in terms of overoptimizing your keyword anchors, and account for that in the algorithm.


Sidenote, in my experience site-wide links do work despite what gurus say, provided they have relevancy and they don't make up a large portion of your RD's.

Click to expand...

If you feel emds are good, then use them. In all the 100's of sites I work directly and indirectly on, I can't recall a single emd that does well, and because of that, I will never use them or advise my clients or others to use them. My responses with you are based on experience, not guess work or what I've read. I write when I feel inspired or I spot some pattern or something useful based on sites I work on and by analysing competitors of those sites.

Ever since the emd update in sep 2020 emds stopped working well. pmds are still ok, but even at that I wouldn't use more than 1 topical keyword in a domain. "toasterworld.com" etc, never "toasterreviewworld.com".

If you've had actual positive experiences with emds then I would enjoy hearing your feedback about how it went for you.

varun barve said:

great thread mate learning a lot about the current SEO scene! I have been searching and making pbns.

I have a few queries!

how many links do you give to a domain from 1 pbn? also how many total links?

also for content what no of words do you focus on? I am dong around 500-1000

how do you do your content for pbns? order from people? or write on your own? or your own writers?

Click to expand...

1 link, but that link will appear on on the homepage, the article page, sometimes a tag page, and usually the category page. Also sometimes author pages or archive pages. I vary it on my networks, but I usually like it to appear in a few places. 90% of the juice comes from the homepage, but it's a few extra links, and it means that a high % of your links aren't just from the homepage. If every pbn link gives you 3-6 links, then your homepage % is going to be < 10% if you have only a few other non-pbn links.

More is better. I recommend 700+ words, but feel free to go for 1000-1500 for a private pbn a p^2bn

For a private one I would do bigger articles, 1500 words, and link out to 4-5 sites. You don't really lose any power. Link juice doesn't really work like that, where if you link to 10 sites, you only get 10% of the juice, otherwise your best option would be a 300 word article with 1 link and nothing else.

The only reason you want public pbns to have lower obl is for the safety. Of course, when you're talking about having 30-40 posts on the homepage, with 2 links each, it will definitely reduce the power.

The absolute best way, and the way that will look very natural is to have 1 big 3000 word article and link to about 10-12 different sites. 2-4 can be yours, and the rest just general related authority sites. That only works if you have sites in the similar niches where that big article will be good for them all. (Note, that you don't want an article "Toaster Guide", to link to your toaster review page. You want something more natural like "The 7 Most Delicious Breakfasts In the World", so that could link to any site related to food, kitchen or even potentially travel if you modify it to a guide to breakfasts from around the world.

The more cost effective way to build your pbn is to use it for 5-6 of your sites, but be wary of footprints. You can't build 100 pbns, with 6x500 word articles, each linking to one of your money sites. You would vary, having site a, b, c on some, site b, d on others, a, e, f on others, a, b, c, d, e and f on some, and including other articles linking to other sites. This is of course higher risk, but 1 pbn for 6 money sites is quite a saving.

But, if you only build a super strong pbn with 10 say, $500-$1000 domains, you can quite happily just link to all your sites from every pbn site, but you'd mix in links to other sites too. Just don't do this with 30, 40, 50+ because it's too much of a footprint.

My pbn content is done by my own team of writers that I've trained in how to use anchors in content properly. That's the most important thing.

Matheus Moreira said:

Great insights as usual.

Im still a bit obsessed with the number of RDs simply because i think that its the most difficult metric to manipulate.

Creating thousands of links from only a few domains is pretty easy but creating thousands of links from thousands of (strong) domains should at least in theory be pretty hard... and i think google's algo understands this very well.

Also there is the "trending effect", that when the number of links and RDs increase almost equally in quantity it could generate a sort of buzz in google's eyes.

Of course there must be a balance of quality and quantity, always.

Not trying to deny or debate anything you said though, im just exposing my thoughts on the subject.

Thanks for the great info!

Click to expand...

Number of RDs is easy to manipulate. You could buy a couple packages on fiverr which will inrease it by 1000+ for $10-$15 total.

In my opinion, RDs isn't even something google measures. Why would they? It's too simplistic a metric.

They have an algorithm which passes trust and link juice from pages to other pages. It's operating on a page by page basis. They don't really think about "sites" either. They don't class a site as being in a particular niche. It just wouldn't be practical. This is what google operate with and what makes them tick :-

1) Pages. Passing juice from pages to pages.
2) Semantics. Understanding context, how pages relate, and what a page is about.
3) Trust/authority which is one of the things that is site wide.

They look at all the pages on your site. From this, they don't classify your "site". They classify you under various topics. Here's an example.

Let's say we have a site with 20 pages

8 on cats
6 general, 2 cat behavior
12 on dogs, all dog training

Now, they have a giant database of topics. They understand how these topics relate to each other, and they're connected with weights. It's a big interconnected network.

As humans we have one. If I say cats, what do you think of? Animals? Tigers? Water? Scratching? Lots of things. Maybe scratching is a 6/10 relation. tigers is a 7/10, water is a 3 and so on. We also understand, and so does google, that cats are not tigers, and tigers are a type of big cat, so a site about cats is not going to rank for tigers, but that it's a related topic.

Now, based on your pages, google builds a kind of topical matrix about your site. HOW they do this is a mystery. It'll include factors like, how many pages are about the topic, how many pages are about similar topics, internal links, length of content, where you link to, and who links to you.

But they certainly do not classify a site as being in any niche. It's WAY too simplistic and error-prone. There are no "niches". There are matrices of topics, with weights, that are used in determining how you'll rank for keywords.

From the above you'd get some sort of matrix, that would say your site has good authority for dog training, and any dog training keywords will have a stronger weighting factor weighed against them. So you may end up position #14 for a new dog training keyword, instead of say 56 if you had zero dog training content, and 100+ if you had NO animal content at all.

So google are quite simply operating with pages. Page to page. Passing juice and building this topical matix of your site. Trust, will be site-wide, and may also be influenced by the topical matrix. Ie, you might have high trust in dogs/cats, and low trust in health. This is purely a guess, but it makes sense and it's how I would do it. I trust my plumber to plumb, not to do brain surgery, and I don't trust my brain surgeon to fix my pipes.


Appreciate your thoughts though. The back and forth creates interesting discussions and exchanges.

splishsplash said:

If you feel emds are good, then use them. In all the 100's of sites I work directly and indirectly on, I can't recall a single emd that does well, and because of that, I will never use them or advise my clients or others to use them. My responses with you are based on experience, not guess work or what I've read. I write when I feel inspired or I spot some pattern or something useful based on sites I work on and by analysing competitors of those sites.

Ever since the emd update in sep 2020 emds stopped working well. pmds are still ok, but even at that I wouldn't use more than 1 topical keyword in a domain. "toasterworld.com" etc, never "toasterreviewworld.com".

If you've had actual positive experiences with emds then I would enjoy hearing your feedback about how it went for you.





1 link, but that link will appear on on the homepage, the article page, sometimes a tag page, and usually the category page. Also sometimes author pages or archive pages. I vary it on my networks, but I usually like it to appear in a few places. 90% of the juice comes from the homepage, but it's a few extra links, and it means that a high % of your links aren't just from the homepage. If every pbn link gives you 3-6 links, then your homepage % is going to be < 10% if you have only a few other non-pbn links.

More is better. I recommend 700+ words, but feel free to go for 1000-1500 for a private pbn a p^2bn

For a private one I would do bigger articles, 1500 words, and link out to 4-5 sites. You don't really lose any power. Link juice doesn't really work like that, where if you link to 10 sites, you only get 10% of the juice, otherwise your best option would be a 300 word article with 1 link and nothing else.

The only reason you want public pbns to have lower obl is for the safety. Of course, when you're talking about having 30-40 posts on the homepage, with 2 links each, it will definitely reduce the power.

The absolute best way, and the way that will look very natural is to have 1 big 3000 word article and link to about 10-12 different sites. 2-4 can be yours, and the rest just general related authority sites. That only works if you have sites in the similar niches where that big article will be good for them all. (Note, that you don't want an article "Toaster Guide", to link to your toaster review page. You want something more natural like "The 7 Most Delicious Breakfasts In the World", so that could link to any site related to food, kitchen or even potentially travel if you modify it to a guide to breakfasts from around the world.

The more cost effective way to build your pbn is to use it for 5-6 of your sites, but be wary of footprints. You can't build 100 pbns, with 6x500 word articles, each linking to one of your money sites. You would vary, having site a, b, c on some, site b, d on others, a, e, f on others, a, b, c, d, e and f on some, and including other articles linking to other sites. This is of course higher risk, but 1 pbn for 6 money sites is quite a saving.

But, if you only build a super strong pbn with 10 say, $500-$1000 domains, you can quite happily just link to all your sites from every pbn site, but you'd mix in links to other sites too. Just don't do this with 30, 40, 50+ because it's too much of a footprint.

My pbn content is done by my own team of writers that I've trained in how to use anchors in content properly. That's the most important thing.





Number of RDs is easy to manipulate. You could buy a couple packages on fiverr which will inrease it by 1000+ for $10-$15 total.

In my opinion, RDs isn't even something google measures. Why would they? It's too simplistic a metric.

They have an algorithm which passes trust and link juice from pages to other pages. It's operating on a page by page basis. They don't really think about "sites" either. They don't class a site as being in a particular niche. It just wouldn't be practical. This is what google operate with and what makes them tick :-

1) Pages. Passing juice from pages to pages.
2) Semantics. Understanding context, how pages relate, and what a page is about.
3) Trust/authority which is one of the things that is site wide.

They look at all the pages on your site. From this, they don't classify your "site". They classify you under various topics. Here's an example.

Let's say we have a site with 20 pages

8 on cats
6 general, 2 cat behavior
12 on dogs, all dog training

Now, they have a giant database of topics. They understand how these topics relate to each other, and they're connected with weights. It's a big interconnected network.

As humans we have one. If I say cats, what do you think of? Animals? Tigers? Water? Scratching? Lots of things. Maybe scratching is a 6/10 relation. tigers is a 7/10, water is a 3 and so on. We also understand, and so does google, that cats are not tigers, and tigers are a type of big cat, so a site about cats is not going to rank for tigers, but that it's a related topic.

Now, based on your pages, google builds a kind of topical matrix about your site. HOW they do this is a mystery. It'll include factors like, how many pages are about the topic, how many pages are about similar topics, internal links, length of content, where you link to, and who links to you.

But they certainly do not classify a site as being in any niche. It's WAY too simplistic and error-prone. There are no "niches". There are matrices of topics, with weights, that are used in determining how you'll rank for keywords.

From the above you'd get some sort of matrix, that would say your site has good authority for dog training, and any dog training keywords will have a stronger weighting factor weighed against them. So you may end up position #14 for a new dog training keyword, instead of say 56 if you had zero dog training content, and 100+ if you had NO animal content at all.

So google are quite simply operating with pages. Page to page. Passing juice and building this topical matix of your site. Trust, will be site-wide, and may also be influenced by the topical matrix. Ie, you might have high trust in dogs/cats, and low trust in health. This is purely a guess, but it makes sense and it's how I would do it. I trust my plumber to plumb, not to do brain surgery, and I don't trust my brain surgeon to fix my pipes.


Appreciate your thoughts though. The back and forth creates interesting discussions and exchanges.

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for such details about the Seo things.

I have a question about niche edit links.

Suppose, i am publishing a post on 17 April 2020 on my website.

And the site i am taking niche edit links published the post on 17 April 2019 or more earlier.

Isn't it unrealistic to G's eye?

Quality always stands above quantity... But getting quality links dont come cheap..people tend to focus on money rather than on the result. It id always better to do some research before choosing any services.

Nice share, I'm trying to invest $500/month in backlinks buying 5-10 high-quality homepage links or guest posts. This thread made me feel better. Staying away from the blog comments and profile links for now. Hoping for the best!

Hey

splishsplash said:

If you feel emds are good, then use them. In all the 100's of sites I work directly and indirectly on, I can't recall a single emd that does well, and because of that, I will never use them or advise my clients or others to use them. My responses with you are based on experience, not guess work or what I've read. I write when I feel inspired or I spot some pattern or something useful based on sites I work on and by analysing competitors of those sites.

Ever since the emd update in sep 2020 emds stopped working well. pmds are still ok, but even at that I wouldn't use more than 1 topical keyword in a domain. "toasterworld.com" etc, never "toasterreviewworld.com".

If you've had actual positive experiences with emds then I would enjoy hearing your feedback about how it went for you.





1 link, but that link will appear on on the homepage, the article page, sometimes a tag page, and usually the category page. Also sometimes author pages or archive pages. I vary it on my networks, but I usually like it to appear in a few places. 90% of the juice comes from the homepage, but it's a few extra links, and it means that a high % of your links aren't just from the homepage. If every pbn link gives you 3-6 links, then your homepage % is going to be < 10% if you have only a few other non-pbn links.

More is better. I recommend 700+ words, but feel free to go for 1000-1500 for a private pbn a p^2bn

For a private one I would do bigger articles, 1500 words, and link out to 4-5 sites. You don't really lose any power. Link juice doesn't really work like that, where if you link to 10 sites, you only get 10% of the juice, otherwise your best option would be a 300 word article with 1 link and nothing else.

The only reason you want public pbns to have lower obl is for the safety. Of course, when you're talking about having 30-40 posts on the homepage, with 2 links each, it will definitely reduce the power.

The absolute best way, and the way that will look very natural is to have 1 big 3000 word article and link to about 10-12 different sites. 2-4 can be yours, and the rest just general related authority sites. That only works if you have sites in the similar niches where that big article will be good for them all. (Note, that you don't want an article "Toaster Guide", to link to your toaster review page. You want something more natural like "The 7 Most Delicious Breakfasts In the World", so that could link to any site related to food, kitchen or even potentially travel if you modify it to a guide to breakfasts from around the world.

The more cost effective way to build your pbn is to use it for 5-6 of your sites, but be wary of footprints. You can't build 100 pbns, with 6x500 word articles, each linking to one of your money sites. You would vary, having site a, b, c on some, site b, d on others, a, e, f on others, a, b, c, d, e and f on some, and including other articles linking to other sites. This is of course higher risk, but 1 pbn for 6 money sites is quite a saving.

But, if you only build a super strong pbn with 10 say, $500-$1000 domains, you can quite happily just link to all your sites from every pbn site, but you'd mix in links to other sites too. Just don't do this with 30, 40, 50+ because it's too much of a footprint.

My pbn content is done by my own team of writers that I've trained in how to use anchors in content properly. That's the most important thing.





Number of RDs is easy to manipulate. You could buy a couple packages on fiverr which will inrease it by 1000+ for $10-$15 total.

In my opinion, RDs isn't even something google measures. Why would they? It's too simplistic a metric.

They have an algorithm which passes trust and link juice from pages to other pages. It's operating on a page by page basis. They don't really think about "sites" either. They don't class a site as being in a particular niche. It just wouldn't be practical. This is what google operate with and what makes them tick :-

1) Pages. Passing juice from pages to pages.
2) Semantics. Understanding context, how pages relate, and what a page is about.
3) Trust/authority which is one of the things that is site wide.

They look at all the pages on your site. From this, they don't classify your "site". They classify you under various topics. Here's an example.

Let's say we have a site with 20 pages

8 on cats
6 general, 2 cat behavior
12 on dogs, all dog training

Now, they have a giant database of topics. They understand how these topics relate to each other, and they're connected with weights. It's a big interconnected network.

As humans we have one. If I say cats, what do you think of? Animals? Tigers? Water? Scratching? Lots of things. Maybe scratching is a 6/10 relation. tigers is a 7/10, water is a 3 and so on. We also understand, and so does google, that cats are not tigers, and tigers are a type of big cat, so a site about cats is not going to rank for tigers, but that it's a related topic.

Now, based on your pages, google builds a kind of topical matrix about your site. HOW they do this is a mystery. It'll include factors like, how many pages are about the topic, how many pages are about similar topics, internal links, length of content, where you link to, and who links to you.

But they certainly do not classify a site as being in any niche. It's WAY too simplistic and error-prone. There are no "niches". There are matrices of topics, with weights, that are used in determining how you'll rank for keywords.

From the above you'd get some sort of matrix, that would say your site has good authority for dog training, and any dog training keywords will have a stronger weighting factor weighed against them. So you may end up position #14 for a new dog training keyword, instead of say 56 if you had zero dog training content, and 100+ if you had NO animal content at all.

So google are quite simply operating with pages. Page to page. Passing juice and building this topical matix of your site. Trust, will be site-wide, and may also be influenced by the topical matrix. Ie, you might have high trust in dogs/cats, and low trust in health. This is purely a guess, but it makes sense and it's how I would do it. I trust my plumber to plumb, not to do brain surgery, and I don't trust my brain surgeon to fix my pipes.


Appreciate your thoughts though. The back and forth creates interesting discussions and exchanges.

Click to expand...

thanks a lot for all your detailed answers just loving this thread.

So as you said a big 3k word article in a specific niche would be good. Do I have to publish this one article only or I can have more article and more links on the pbn?

also I wanted to ask I have a pbn where I am getting lots of keywords ranked and getting traffic too should I monetise it’s with some affiliate program or ad network? I have linked out to my sites with handwritten articles 500-1000 words articles. And I am ranking for lots of keywords already cause it was an expired domain with good metrics. Also what I have done is the domain is in the food niche and it has a country’s name in it so I am making articles of my niche websites based on the county’s name for eg German dog breeds, German food dishes, German memes etc. is it okay if I do articles like this and link out to my sites? Also the domain has good metrics that’s why I got it I am going to get a generic domain to have links to my sites and clients cause I have lots of different niches to cover and the best option would be to create general niche pbns and link to the sites according to your ideas.

I am using a tool to find expired domains and I have got a lot of niche based and generic domains. I am planning on buying them and making pbns.

also can you tell me how many 301 re directs are safe for a money site? And niche specific ones are better right? I have found some domains who have ranked for keywords I am targeting from my money site should I use them for 301? Or any other ones for 301? Would love your suggestions

Pureananda said:

Thank you so much for such details about the Seo things.

I have a question about niche edit links.

Suppose, i am publishing a post on 17 April 2020 on my website.

And the site i am taking niche edit links published the post on 17 April 2019 or more earlier.

Isn't it unrealistic to G's eye?

Click to expand...

Niche edits are one of the areas I don't have much experience with. All I can say is that you do have to be careful with them. I haven't done any testing with them or been exposed to any sites that have been doing them heavily. I've only ever done guest posts and pbns for my backlinking.

larcha said:

Nice share, I'm trying to invest $500/month in backlinks buying 5-10 high-quality homepage links or guest posts. This thread made me feel better. Staying away from the blog comments and profile links for now. Hoping for the best!

Click to expand...

$500/mo is a decent budget, but 10 quality links, no.

It of course depends what those links are. If it's a monthly pbn service, then $500/mo will get you 10 very very strong links, but not 10 new links every month and even for a monthly pbn service I would only start with $150 month 1, and $150 month 2 if your max budget is $500. Better to grow it slowly and save the other $350 month 1, and $200 month 2 for other things.

If it's your own pbn then you can get 1 to 2 good pbns per month.

For a guest post, 2-3 guest posts a month if you're doing your own outreach.

10 links, no. If you're getting 10 links with $500 they aren't quality. That would be 10x$30 domains with the remainder left over for hosting + content.

varun barve said:

Hey

thanks a lot for all your detailed answers just loving this thread.

So as you said a big 3k word article in a specific niche would be good. Do I have to publish this one article only or I can have more article and more links on the pbn?

also I wanted to ask I have a pbn where I am getting lots of keywords ranked and getting traffic too should I monetise it’s with some affiliate program or ad network? I have linked out to my sites with handwritten articles 500-1000 words articles. And I am ranking for lots of keywords already cause it was an expired domain with good metrics. Also what I have done is the domain is in the food niche and it has a country’s name in it so I am making articles of my niche websites based on the county’s name for eg German dog breeds, German food dishes, German memes etc. is it okay if I do articles like this and link out to my sites? Also the domain has good metrics that’s why I got it I am going to get a generic domain to have links to my sites and clients cause I have lots of different niches to cover and the best option would be to create general niche pbns and link to the sites according to your ideas.

I am using a tool to find expired domains and I have got a lot of niche based and generic domains. I am planning on buying them and making pbns.

also can you tell me how many 301 re directs are safe for a money site? And niche specific ones are better right? I have found some domains who have ranked for keywords I am targeting from my money site should I use them for 301? Or any other ones for 301? Would love your suggestions

Click to expand...

You can do pretty much whatever you like. I'm just talking about from a purely natural point of view, having a site with 1 giant homepage article is VERY natural. Multiple homepage articles with full content displayed is less so. A pbn with one big homepage article, then the rest inner pages just looks like a completely normal site. It's indistinguishable. That's the approach you take if you want a bullet proof pbn that will pass manual review every time, and in those cases you don't link to the same money sites from your network.

You can use ads, yes, non-google.

301's I'd avoid. If you know what you're doing with them and have money to blow, go for it. But stick with regular pbns. Far more reliable.

Thanks for sharing this, much needed!

Great point, mate. Many people seem to forget that quality beats quantity. I think that most of them go with these strategies because they want to see instant results.They look over the fact these instant results last shortly.

But the main problem is finding these type of links.

Do you have any guide on how to find this type of links?

splishsplash said:

I still see too many people focused on this diversification crap.

This usually entails a plethora of comments, forum posts, profiles and other low quality junk that has the effect of causing their site to dance around and basically nullifying the positive effect of good links.

Guys..

You can rank a site with 50 RDs and beat out guys with 800 RDs.

RDs by its self is really not a ranking factor. There's just a correlation between higher RDs and more high quality links.

Really all you need to rank in a good place is 15-20 strong contextual links.

It doesn't take volume to rank(And if you're going after high comp stuff, you shouldn't even need to read posts on a forum, otherwise you have absolutely no chance of competing with the guys who you'll be up against)

Whether you're doing pbns or guests posts, just focus on getting a few very very strong links every month. Stop building a lot of trash to your site. It doesn't work. Sometimes you'll rise up for a bit, sometimes you'll get lucky, but you'll usually just dance around and get hit by the next update.

If you built 5 strong links to your site every month for a year, you'd be surprised at the results you get. Almost no one does this, people just go after any old link they can get.

Click to expand...

Yes big thubs up for this. diversification is pure crap, I am competing for 96 KD niche, and most websites in top 10 including my websites mostly have high DA, DR real guest posts, and I have easily beaten many old competing websites with over 2,000+ profile, comments backlinks, no-follow link craps just by adding powerful 50-100 guest posts and PBNs to my website

splishsplash said:

Metrics mean zero. Absolutely zero. There are strong domains that are DR10 and crap ones that are DR60.

Click to expand...

Maybe not absolutely 0, but yes, very many "exceptions" of dissappointing high-rank / shockingly effective low-rank.

I guess SEO is like dating: pretty girls sometimes end up famous, but the most famous aren't the prettiest.

Traffic is also completely irrelevant. Don't use it as any sort of determinant.

Click to expand...

Traffic is probably the most relevant signal, actually. There is no way a site with major traffic doesn't rank for whatever. People go around this with all sorts of weird ad-hoc nonsense, they call it "social signals", they call it whatever. It's traffic, that's what it is. The #1 signal search engines use in ranking sites is "what some Indian kids in Hyderabad think", but the #2 is simply how much traffic they get (and the #1 signal is actually negative - the little indian boys club doesn't rank your site, it just de-ranks it, that's all, leaving #2 to rule them all).

People have a serious issue looking at this in the face because it seems logically contradictory like you explain yourself ; but that doesn't matter. All sorts of things seem that way and are actually the case, there's even a word for it: counterintuitive it's called.

And yes the system is broken. Google was born broken and it was never fixed. It just floats around hopelessly, taking water every turn.

So if we use traffic to determine strength, we can now say that domain 2 is super powerful and domain 1 is weak. Completely false and this is why pbns almost never have much traffic.

Click to expand...

It's also why the P in there. They have to be kept secret, because otherwise they get burned on sight, because they have no traffic.

Because google has managed to con the whole world into using its (mostly worthless) analytics pixel, it knows a lot about traffic, in any case a lot more than you. It's not an indistinct torrent, for google, but like internet cable : a bundling of differently colored strings. So when I say "traffic" above I do not mean, "500 visitors per X time" as a scalar. I mean a multi-dimensional vector, three layer+ deep classification trees, traffic for google is "type A, subtype a sub-subtype 1 : 15 ; type A, subtype a sub-subtype 3 : 12" and so on up to the 500.

And yes, of course they use this (and mostly this) type of data. If user X fires the pixel on "howtomakeinternetmoney.com" at 15:11 and then off "breitbart.com" at 15:12 and then off "racistporn.net" at 15:17, google isn't going to serve java programming tips when they google "java" at 15:55 but instead java islander stories and coffee links. They're not very good at it, which is why it even looks like they're doing something else. They're not doing something else.

When you do it you call it "retargetting" or "remarketing" or w/e and feel pretty proud of yourself. Google does just about nothing but. I guess they're also pretty proud of themselves.

Which brings us back to PBNs : see, the only reason PBNs work is because, specifically, they don't get enough traffic to allow google to judge them on it.
[/QUOTE]

I can tell you with absolutely 100% certainty that traffic doesn't impact ranking at all.

If this was the case, pbns just would not work.

I could go away, get a brand new domain, and write 100k words of informational low comp content and hit 50k traffic a month within 5-6 months.

That doesn't mean that domain is more powerful than my $700 auction domains with 500 RDs and 100's of contextual links from authority blogs, but has only a few dozen keywords and traffic ranking for it. Nowhere near.

Google are definitely not coning the entire world using its analytics pixel. It's a very advanced algorithm that does an excellent job at sorting data and understanding context. It's not a chicken and egg system that's only ranking sites that have traffic. Which comes first? The traffic or the rank? It's a chicken and egg problem. 90% of the internet has no traffic. Does that mean links from those sites are worthless? No. What about a site with 1000 words of content vs a site with 1 million words? The 2nd will rank for more, but it doesn't mean it's more powerful. Traffic is not a ranking signal. Never has been. Never will be.

opencube said:

Which brings us back to PBNs : see, the only reason PBNs work is because, specifically, they don't get enough traffic to allow google to judge them on it.

Click to expand...

That has nothing to do with why pbns. Otherwise, a brand new site with no traffic would be as powerful as a $5k auction domain with 2000 RDs if both have no traffic.

Why would google just make a domain powerful because it doesn't have enough traffic to judge it? How can it judge it in the first place? Links from other sites that have traffic? But then how does it judge those? Links from more sites with traffic. So where does it start? Where are the seeds. That just doesn't work.

pbns work because they have strong links. Period. Google's algorithm works on links. Not traffic.

opencube said:

Maybe not absolutely 0, but yes, very many "exceptions" of dissappointing high-rank / shockingly effective low-rank.

I guess SEO is like dating: pretty girls sometimes end up famous, but the most famous aren't the prettiest.



Traffic is probably the most relevant signal, actually. There is no way a site with major traffic doesn't rank for whatever. People go around this with all sorts of weird ad-hoc nonsense, they call it "social signals", they call it whatever. It's traffic, that's what it is. The #1 signal search engines use in ranking sites is "what some Indian kids in Hyderabad think", but the #2 is simply how much traffic they get (and the #1 signal is actually negative - the little indian boys club doesn't rank your site, it just de-ranks it, that's all, leaving #2 to rule them all).

People have a serious issue looking at this in the face because it seems logically contradictory like you explain yourself ; but that doesn't matter. All sorts of things seem that way and are actually the case, there's even a word for it: counterintuitive it's called.

And yes the system is broken. Google was born broken and it was never fixed. It just floats around hopelessly, taking water every turn.



It's also why the P in there. They have to be kept secret, because otherwise they get burned on sight, because they have no traffic.

Because google has managed to con the whole world into using its (mostly worthless) analytics pixel, it knows a lot about traffic, in any case a lot more than you. It's not an indistinct torrent, for google, but like internet cable : a bundling of differently colored strings. So when I say "traffic" above I do not mean, "500 visitors per X time" as a scalar. I mean a multi-dimensional vector, three layer+ deep classification trees, traffic for google is "type A, subtype a sub-subtype 1 : 15 ; type A, subtype a sub-subtype 3 : 12" and so on up to the 500.

And yes, of course they use this (and mostly this) type of data. If user X fires the pixel on "howtomakeinternetmoney.com" at 15:11 and then off "breitbart.com" at 15:12 and then off "racistporn.net" at 15:17, google isn't going to serve java programming tips when they google "java" at 15:55 but instead java islander stories and coffee links. They're not very good at it, which is why it even looks like they're doing something else. They're not doing something else.

When you do it you call it "retargetting" or "remarketing" or w/e and feel pretty proud of yourself. Google does just about nothing but. I guess they're also pretty proud of themselves.

Which brings us back to PBNs : see, the only reason PBNs work is because, specifically, they don't get enough traffic to allow google to judge them on it.

Click to expand...

splishsplash said:

I can tell you with absolutely 100% certainty that traffic doesn't impact ranking at all.

Click to expand...

Seems a tall order.

If this was the case, pbns just would not work.

Click to expand...

Well... actually, I explained how and why pbns rank in my model. You're not addressing that, so I guess there's no way we can talk.

I could go away, get a brand new domain, and write 100k words of informational low comp content and hit 50k traffic a month within 5-6 months.

Click to expand...

There's a coupla problems with this proposed counterexample. One problem is that 50k/month aka 2k/day is so low as to not really mean anything. The web starts at 1mn/month or something. Under that it's a sort of "I can prove to you capitalism doesn't work : I can go right now begging at candy stores and by next week I'll have free candy guaranteed". Mayhap you could, but it's mostly because you're nine years old, and people really don't care about how much candy you can eat.

The other problem is hidden under that "in 5-6 months". Permit me to re-write what's really happening :

I could go away, get a brand new domain, and write 100k words of informational low comp content which will give google a slight signal which it will attempt to evaluate, in small part by throwing some selected organic traffic my way, and in larger part by looking at its pixel data. If the evaluation comes out ok they'll escalate my signal by degrees and keep vetting it with traffic, and if all goes well 50-100 evaluation passes later I might even see 50k traffic a month.

Click to expand...

You might, yes, but traffic has still been the overwhelming signal throughout.

Google are definitely not coning the entire world using its analytics pixel. It's a very advanced algorithm that does an excellent job at sorting data and understanding context.

Click to expand...

Yes. For their benefit.

Looksy, I have no investment in this matter, you enjoy giving yourself away to your Daddy, keep at it. There's (evidently) quite a lot you don't know about how that works, but that's ok.

Why would google just make a domain powerful because it doesn't have enough traffic to judge it?

Click to expand...

That's not exactly what happens. What happens is : 1. there's unknown entity x ; 2. some claims are made (in the shape of pbn links) about the relevancy of x ; 3. normal signals (ie, pixel data) are not available, for lack of traffic. because 4. google does not want to miss out on this, it then 5. sends some of what you call organic SE traffic to check it out. Simple as pie, you get something and google gets the data it didn't have.

Then it burns your pbns.

pbns work because they have strong links. Period. Google's algorithm works on links. Not traffic.

Click to expand...

Not since 2004 or so, but anyways.

Here's how I see it.

If a website has good links but no traffic then the whole link profile may not be so great.
Google decides whether a link is good or not. No third party providers like Moz, Ahrefs or Majestic

opencube said:

That's not exactly what happens. What happens is : 1. there's unknown entity x ; 2. some claims are made (in the shape of pbn links) about the relevancy of x ; 3. normal signals (ie, pixel data) are not available, for lack of traffic. because 4. google does not want to miss out on this, it then 5. sends some of what you call organic SE traffic to check it out. Simple as pie, you get something and google gets the data it didn't have.

Then it burns your pbns.



Not since 2004 or so, but anyways.

Click to expand...

What?

Where are you getting this stuff from? How many sites have you ranked and how many pbns have you built?

I rank sites every single week with pbns. They work. This isn't theorycrafting and conspiracy theory time. I work with pbns every single day, every single week, every single month. I live and breath them. They are the single most powerful way to rank websites, and they do not need traffic to do it.

I don't know where you're getting this "simple as pie" stuff about google not wanting to miss stuff, so it sends some organic traffic to check it out, then it burns your pbns.

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/can-anyone-help-me-with-keyword-research.1222857/#post-13104856

What's your actual experience? You're in that thread over there wanting to pm someone to do some keyword research for you on ahrefs.

No offence, but if you don't even own a copy of ahrefs, what makes you think you are qualified to talk about pbns and seo? How many of your own sites have you built and ranked, how many pbns have you created and how many client sites have you successfully increased rankings for? If the answer is zero to all these, then stop arguing with people about things that you have no knowledge about. This is like me watching a documentary on astronauts, then having an argument with a 30 year veteran astronaut about space. You are just saying things that are weird. Saying that google hasn't used links to rank sites since 2004 is beyond strange.


https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-google-study

Now read this study here

https://ahrefs.com/blog/links-with-traffic-study/

An analysis of 44,589 serps.

In 66% of the serps only 1-4 of the pages have at least one link with traffic.

22% where not a single page has even one link with traffic.


Direct quote

"
It looks like “links with traffic” aren’t too common among the top-ranking pages.
"

Would you say spending around 30k would be enough to take a site from 0 to 1k a month? How would you use the money?

WorkingNow said:

Would you say spending around 30k would be enough to take a site from 0 to 1k a month? How would you use the money?

Click to expand...

If you have 30k you go and by established site that makes 1k/month already

WorkingNow said:

Would you say spending around 30k would be enough to take a site from 0 to 1k a month? How would you use the money?

Click to expand...

I wouldn't just drop $30k in SEO unless you know what you're doing. Too easy to lose money.

Bank it and try to get a site to $500/mo with $5k. Much safer.

yesfuture said:

If you have 30k you go and by established site that makes 1k/month already

Click to expand...

You can do, but I'd rather start fresh rather than spend $30k on a site making $1k/mo. $300k for a $10k/mo site is different though.

splishsplash said:

I wouldn't just drop $30k in SEO unless you know what you're doing. Too easy to lose money.

Bank it and try to get a site to $500/mo with $5k. Much safer.



You can do, but I'd rather start fresh rather than spend $30k on a site making $1k/mo. $300k for a $10k/mo site is different though.

Click to expand...

Thanks, will shoot you a pm.