Recently chatting with RustyBrick on WebMasterRadio.FM IRC channel. Mentioned to him about the page rank drop which SE Round Table had experienced due to selling sponsored links on their website. Interesting discussion and of-course a hot topic. Well perhaps not so much now, but it is interesting to get the info direct a little while after the dust has settled. Things he mentioned.
- SE Round Table page rank dropped but traffic remained the same. As we here can see there are a number of possible reasons for this as follows
- Most of SE Round Tables visitors come from referrals other than Google.
- Google is not using page rank to calculate SERPS
- Google is using page rank to calculate SERPS but when you get caught for link selling your page rank is displayed as being lower than it actually is in order to de-motivate people from buying links from your site.
- Most people continued to sponsor or retain their paid link in SE Round Table. Rusty Brick claims that most people actually buy links in sponsorship to show and give support to the website. I totally agree with this but I am sure there is a altruistic aspect to it also. Anyhow the point is that most of the people who had links on SE Round Table still continue to pay for these links.
Anyhow. Hope some of this info is useful to some of you. My take on buying links, or getting any links to your website full stop is that as long as its niche, targeted and relevant then why not eh. If it flows page rank then so what, page rank after all is just 1 very small aspect of getting high rankings. Your much better off sticking to relevance and topical themes.
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