BY: JOHN MCKNIGHT

Introduction: the template letter 3 way link request

I just received an email forwarded from one of our large resellers where a client was asking their Internet marketing consultant (our reseller) if he should engage in 3 way links.  This client had received a template email requesting that they engage in a 3 way reciprocal link program to "boost" search engine credibility.  Funny thing is... the person who sent the email didn't BCC the list so we went through every single email address, looking at every single domain asked to participate... not a one of them was over a PageRank 3 with most of them in the PageRank 0-1 range.  Hmmm... a whole bunch of loser sites linking to each other in a ring of deception. Yeah, that is something we really want to recommend...  This linkster was so desperate to make his request seem legit that he even tried to add credibility to the letter by mentioning a respected real estate coach. The plot went something like this: The student of a Real Estate Coach enlisted a webmaster to request that you (along with a group of other bloggers) put 10-15 links on your home page and then another group of sites put 10-15 links on their sites and then, get this... a third group links 10-15 domains back to the first group.  Imagine, all that work for 10-15 low quality backlinks...  My brain hurts just thinking about this scheme.  It's not like a resourceful webmaster couldn't just submit to Dmoz, Yahoo or other high quality directories for solid, valuable backlinks that do not require cluttering your homepage with junk links. 

Resource: Search Engine Land's Cult of Reciprocity

3 Way Links = Reciprocal Links: You can put pierced ears on a pig, but at the end of the day, it's still a pig.

You can always smell desperation in the air when someone starts talking about reciprocal linking, link exchanging, 3 way links or Amway.  So what is the smell exactly?  It might be the lovely fragrance of "Oops.  My real estate blog and website are doing poorly."  Or it could be "Wow.  People have figured out that my other tips are BS so this will surely help!"  Or my personal favorite which is "I don't really know what I am saying but if I use big words it will impress people."  No matter what size, shape or brownish hue - this is a recipe for disaster.  Way back before many of the current crop of "experts" had a day job selling advice on web matters, a little thing called link farms came and went and just like all great moments in history they were quickly forgotten.  Link farms, reciprocal linking and showing other sites "love" through blogrolls are all the same thing just dressed up in a different wrapper and the arguments that fly around the latest bad advice stink of "It's not a pyramid because we have turned it upside down." 

Resource: Aaron Shear, 3 Way links are spam

Remedial Course: What are backlinks and why are they important?

Backlinks, links from other sites to your real estate blog, help to improve your credibility with search engines, online visibility, content reach and traffic. Therefore, building quality backlinks is just as important to the health and well being of your real estate blog as the content that you write. So, let's take a good hard look at not only why and how search engines value backlinks but now you go about building quality backlinks through an easy to follow link campaign.

Why do search engines measure backlinks?

In simple terms, search engines consider each backlink a "vote' for your site. It is a way for Google to determine the overall authority and popularity of your site.

Tool: See how many backlinks your real estate blog has

Not all backlinks are created equal

Here is a simple example of how Google does not value all links the same. One of my competitors has around 10K backlinks pointing to their site. RSS Pieces, on the other hand, only has 3.5K. However, both sites have a PageRank 5 and both sites show up well in the search results for our prime keywords. While, my competitor, should have greater authority with Google based on the volume of backlinks, the quality of most of those backlinks is so low (multiple sitewide links from client sites with PR 3 or below with low quality anchor text) that Google de-weights the overall value of those links to the point where they are meaningless. So, the lesson to take away from this is that it is not the quantity of the backlinks that matter- it is the quality. Shoot for fewer backlinks from quality sites (PR 4 or above within the same industry or geographic area) with solid anchor text.

Read also: Explanation of Google's link algorithm and why you only want to actively build high PageRank backlinks

What are 3 way links?

The brain child of Jonathan Leger, 3 Way Links are links where website A links to website B which links to Website C which links back around the ring to website A. The claim, which for the short term may work, is that you can build backlinks quickly and rank better because of those backlinks.  Praise Google, this guy has discovered the holy grail of linkage... Ywah, right.  This is nothing more than a new twist on the old reciprocal link scheme.  Check out the example Jonathan Leger uses to "prove" his method works: he tells you about a site he created (no link to it so who knows if it exists) and shows you some pretty graphs.  Why wouldn't he want to give the link out- probably because the site received a penalty or doesn't really rank well for an expected key term. Now, I am not going to call this trick black hat SEO (there are many more devious and fun ways to black hat your way to the top than this) but it certainly falls into the realm of gray hat SEO and I recommend protecting your domain by not engage in this type of link program.

So, you think you can trick Google with stupid SEO tricks?
The brilliance of the latest version of a link (3 way links where website A links to website B which links to Website C which links back around the ring to website A) is the assertion that having a large enough ring of links that interconnect in unique ways will confuse and befuddle Google.  Seems plausible right?  Except that the last time I saw a count, Google had indexed over 8 billion pages and you can find results for any kind of query in under a second.  Oh, and this is also the same system that can crawl itself and send updates to you whenever it finds key terms that you like.  And it can weed out duplicate content on different domains.  But, apparently, Google is too stupid to see a trend like linking back and forth or linking here, then there, then back.... and if only it could see those patterns it could punish link farms.  Wait a minute.  Didn't that already happen?  I guess the latest chain mail must obviously be a clever way around the system of servers that Google has established all over the world and spent more money than you and I will see developing a robust and cool search engine.
Still buying into their theory?  Let's break some of it down.

Linking raises PageRank...
Linking is supposed to raise your PageRank by showing that you are known and respected in the web community.  While this is true, here is where the latest link scheme falls apart.  Your trust value is based on the value of the link that comes to you and most likely you are sharing a link with another site that has a poor PageRank.  Why do I make this assumption?  Because if they are sharing a link with you they are also desperately looking for a PageRank boost so their site will mean nothing to you.  Doubt this assertion?  Look at the following quote from Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank)
"The PageRank theory holds that even an imaginary surfer who is randomly clicking on links will eventually stop clicking. The probability, at any step, that the person will continue is a damping factor d. Various studies have tested different damping factors, but it is generally assumed that the damping factor will be set around 0.85.^[4]

The damping factor is subtracted from 1 (and in some variations of the algorithm, the result is divided by the number of documents in the collection) and this term is then added to the product of the damping factor and the sum of the incoming PageRank scores."

Look at the last portion of the last sentence which I have put in italics.  Yes, it says sum of the incoming PageRank scores so if the site that links to you is a dog with a PageRank of 0 guess what you get?  If you said "0" you passed math at a first grade level because 0 = 0 and 0 + 0 is still 0.  Hmmm.  So what was the advantage?
PageRank means everything...
Sorry to say this but the PageRank that people refer to is typically the one that is part of the Google Toolbar update and is nearly irrelevant because it represents a trust but does not necessarily correlate with search traffic and the reason is simple.  You can have a billion pages link to you of various qualities and you will still get no appreciable traffic if no one cares to search for something on your site. 
The PageRank that does matter is instantaneous PageRank and it is updated on a daily basis.  It is also the one that is most closely related to SERP and at the end of the day that is what matters to site traffic.  But since it cannot be directly measured, it is hard to say if the incoming links will help but let's say for the sake of argument that they do and that puts you smack up against the first item.   Am I saying that PageRank, old-fashioned PageRank, is useless?  Yes, except for one little detail.  It can tell you what Google really thinks of your site.  A PageRank 5 or 6 for a typical site puts you in high orbit but a 0 puts you 6 feet under.
The slippery slope
If you put one snake oil link on your site, you will put two.  If you put two, you will add three and so on.  Once you do that, you will run into the too many links on a page issue.  I have said it before and I will say it again, too many links is SEO death and I have been able to prove this using analytics and not just theory.  Sites with fewer that 120 links on a page will be crawled more often and more consistently that sites with excessive linking.  If you have ever wondered why that is the case, here is the answer.  Link farms.  Spammers.  They have excessive linking and other sins on their sites and Google has decided that too many links may mean that you are trying to pervert the search algorithms by loading up pages with links in the same way that spammers would.  Down here in the south we call that guilt by association or a family reunion but it is a fine line.

Read also: The 7 worst pieces of SEO advice for real estate blogs
What happened to content?
One of our guaranteed SERP tricks is writing quality content that has contextual information and here is the simple way to prove that theory.  Do a search for someone's link.  Did that seem natural?  I hope it didn't because it is a wholly unnatural act.  What is natural is looking for words and better yet looking for words that mean something and a link just doesn't cut it. 
A site with a PageRank of 0 can still be found if two criteria are met.
1.  Google indexed the page.
2.  You wrote something that people wanted to read.
Seems rather obvious but it may have sneaked in under the radar.
Praemonitus, praemunitus = Forewarned is forearmed.
What is the quickest way to get ripped off in the world?  Knowing nothing about something when you have to make a critical decision.  Read, alot.  Ask questions.   Attend one of our WebEx conferences or call and ask one of our team.  We will not shamelessly pitch our products to you because we are busy enough as it is.  The training and tips are free to all because we believe that knowledge should be freely shared. 
My personal challenge to you:
The first person to guess who was the template of our free knowledge ideals will get a free blog.

What kinds of punishment can you expect when you get involved in a link scheme?

You know, this 3 way link thing will probably work for a while, just like reciprocal links do, but be assured that somewhere down the road, you will feel the sting of Google's hand across your well linked real estate blog.  Google don't play with cheaters.  Just check out what happened to Advanced Access and other realtors that thought link schemes would work for their sites... They were struck down in a blaze of glory, stripped of PageRank, yanked from search results and left dazed, confused and back at square 1.

Read also: Real Estate Blogs and Reciprocal Linking Penalties: Does Google hate your Link Love?

Read also: Google slaps real estate blogs in latest PageRank update

What is the solution?
1.  Good SEO
2.  Common sense
3.  Good content
4.  Wash, rinse, repeat

Read also: Ultimate Guide to Building Backlinks

In closing
When I see these new link strategies I can't help but picture a Rube Goldberg invention that ends in something being burnt and someone being hit over the head with a hammer.  Is that someone going to be you?  If you can connect the dots between the latest linking scams and the scams of old, you have just passed step two of the Nutshell SEO course.

Read also: NUTSHELL SEO: why redirecting keyword rich domains to your vanity domain doesn't do a lick for SEO

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