The link age theory

[Chatmaster]

Something I really want to discuss is the link age factor. Everywhere SEO's are dicussing the link age factor and the effect it has on the Sandbox. Also the past week it seems to have been tweaked to a degree.

I personally feel that the link age theory has not yet been convincingly motivated for me to actually believe it does exsist. I'd rather say that it is much more important who you link to and who links to you, rather the company you get the link from than the age of the backlink.

Any thoughts?

[Koz]

Maybe its a combination. I also feel the quality/relevancy of your links are very important. Maybe it's good that the age of your quality links are taken into account.

[Paz]

It doesn't make sense that a link should have to simmer for a few months to take effect, but I've seen it happen with specific links targeting unusual, long-tail keyword phrases. Also, Google have said in their patent that aging links would be a good idea to eliminate spam.

However, say there's a big news story and a particular site gets lots of backlinks, then it wouldn't make sense for Google to ignore those links for three months in the middle of a hot story.

So how do they find a compromise? They're monitoring all searches - you can see that with Google Trends. If there are lots of searches for "Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter" and links appear at the same time, then those links are probably given immediate weight.

However, if a site suddenly acquires a bunch of links for "cheap payday loans" and there isn't a commensurate increase in the number of searches for "cheap payday loans" then a flag is raised and those links are put on ice for three months. If you read the part of the Google patent about "historical data" you'll see what I mean.

A partial solution is to continuously keep adding links, but match it with fresh site content. If you hear of a buzz keyword phrase in the news in your industry, then that would probably be a good time to get links more quickly for that keyword phrase.

Cheers,
Paz.

[Glen]

Great take on things paz

Very interesting

[Chatmaster]

Mmmmmmm, I like your view Paz! So do you believe then it is better to create a daily routine with regards to link building in general?

[Paz]

Well a routine certainly helps, even if it doesn't have to be daily in practice because of the way the crawlers operate.

I'm trying to get creative with backlinks at the moment. I think it's important because of the way Google have seemed to be continously targeting specific attempts at link manipulation.

It's been like that for two years, Hilltop, Jagger, maybe Big Daddy dunno what the latest (August 31st) one was called Little Daddy.. LOL but my feeling now is that there's been a retrospective change in the importance of the location of links within a page.

[Jocelyn]

Originally Posted by Paz

I'm trying to get creative with backlinks at the moment. I think it's important because of the way Google have seemed to be continously targeting specific attempts at link manipulation.

Google is staring at links for their intent big time. Was #3 for POKER HANDS for over a year, was getting traffic like crazy from that one... greed made me get a link to that page to get it to #1... it dropped to the 60s as soon as the new link was indexed and it's still in the mud after a year... no way to bring this page back and I'm sure this keyphrase is lost for that site.

Did the same to an other page to see if the pattern is consistent... and this one disapeared completely also... been 2 months and it's not comming back.

Google is very quick to derank pages, and very slow to rank them. Links to niche will not raise flags, but competitive ones are. Manipulation will get you out quick and natural links take a long time to have an effect. Think twice before you try to trick the system for a search that brings traffic.