When Does Linkbait Become Black Hat?
Funny how the SEO world works. SEO practitioners have this inherent problem – when they figure out something works it is both sensible and rewarding to push that method as far as they possibly can. Unfortunately, pushing any SEO tactic too far is almost guaranteed to result in restrictions or rules being implemented by Google to curtail the successful tactic.
One interesting story that illustrates this point is the story of Matthew Inman and his site JustSayHi. You can read the full post, Widgetbait Gone Wild, over at SEOmoz, but for those of you who prefer the Reader’s Digest version, here it is:
- Matthew created an online dating site called JustSayHi
- Matthew built widgets that displayed information for various quizzes that people took – in each widget was a text link that pointed to JustSayHi with beneficial anchor text
- Due to the popularity of the widgets, JustSayHi ranked #1 for “online dating” and many other competitive dating terms – the site had over 500,000 members
- With the encouragement of the site’s parent company, Matthew started using their widgetbait technique to promote other offers, including payday loans and EDU sites
- Google discovered the widgetbait scheme and decided that, even though people willingly put the widgets on their sites and could remove the text links if they wanted, the use of widgets to cross-promote other web properties was a violation of webmaster guidelines
- JustSayHi was dropped from the Google index and was not allowed to return even after a reinclusion request
- Since JustSayHi was dropped from Google, Matthew started a new site OnePlusYou to try to get a fresh start and move over the JustSayHi users
- Matthew used the same widget technique, but in a way that seemed to fit the regulations of Google, since they were only linking back to the site that distributed the widget
- Google changed the rules again and said that OnePlusYou could not use keyword anchor text on the widgets, and were forced to change all of the anchor text to OnePlusYou
In the end, Matthew is left wondering how linkbaiting – a method that was once embraced by Google – has suddenly become regulated and grounds for penalization.
A good question indeed.
I find it terribly hard to stomach that having a successful widget can suddenly be a bad thing if that widget has some helpful text link in it for the widget creator.
Yes, the reason that is there is to help Google rankings – and I can see why Google doesn’t like that. But they need to realize that people don’t just build cool widgets for the heck of it. They are looking to get something out of it. It might be money, notoriety, or Google juice. Heck, Google should get it – I mean, do you really think the Google search engine would still be up if they didn’t run ads on it and make billions off dollars off of it?
I don’t think so.
But where is the line? At what point does Google, with all of its power, start taking away one of the benefits that drive people to innovate and create things for the web? Is that what Google really wants?
I don’t think so – but their ever-fluctuating definition of acceptable and unacceptable optimization techniques, like linkbait, may slow down innovation on the web, and deny web users of some of the more enjoyable, exciting, and entertaining things that make the web so wonderful.
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