Rather then give you a full backstory, I will just get straight to the point.
When I’m building backlinks, I don’t break a sweat about getting those particular pages indexed. For example if I’m using Forum Profile links, I don’t bust my balls trying to make sure google knows about this page. There is a few reasons for this.
First off, Google is increasingly cutting down it’s index size. At one point, I’m sure Google was probably looking at indexing the entire web. But nowadays people are getting so sick of getting junk results, and complete trash clogging up the SERPS, that Google is now heavily working on trying to recognize quality over quantity. After all, The reason they got so popular all those years ago, is because they returned the most relevant results, not because they had the largest quantity of websites.
Now if we think about this, if we are using something like forum profiles to crawl our way up the serps. What on earth would Google index them for? There is absolutely nothing relevant on a forum profile page, infact no content at all except for a link to your site. Google isn’t stupid. Think about all those VBulletin forums, there is millions (Literally) of them. And every single Profile page looks almost identical. There is no reason for Google to index them all, and so it doesn’t.
If we think back to the Linkwheel craze, I think one of the biggest factors in that movement was the fact that Google was indexing all of the Web 2.0 properties. And this was because they had actual real content that Google could serve to up to someone’s query. Now this led to the question of Web 2.0 being better than just straight forum links for rankings. And to be 100% honest, I don’t know the answer. But we can certainly not call the outcome based purely on the fact that linkwheels get indexed, and forum links don’t.
Something I think alot of people forget, Is that just because Google (Or Yahoo for that matter) doesn’t have something in it’s index, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t crawled that page and knows about your links. This is due to what I have said earlier in this post, it doesn’t need to index a page that is simply a link to your page. This doesn’t mean that Google isn’t counting that link, it is, but it doesn’t need to be shown in results.For some reason this tends to warp people’s minds…
“If Google knows about a page, What reason does it have to NOT index it. It doesn’t hurt that it has an extra page does it?”
Yes, yes it does. Once again, this goes back to the fact that Google is a search engine for users, not marketers. A user has absolutely no use for a forum profile page coming up in their results, and as such, Google has no reason to index it.
Just before everyone jumps on the fact that yes, Google does index thousands of pointless pages a day. Google does do this, But it most certainly isn’t a priority of theirs. And all I’m trying to point out, is the fact that just because Google is not showing that particular page with your link in the results. It doesn’t mean it has never crawled that page before.
I can tell you now, I have had pages ranking on the front page of Google after a long linking run. And both Google and Yahoo not have any backlinks showing for that page. Or any of the linking pages indexed either. So don’t get hung up on it, and certainly don’t waste time trying to get pages indexed in Google that are more than likely, already known by the Search Engine.
I think I just read your entire blog! Anyway, I was reading WarriorForum earlier and found some threads about PyroGenius and was very impressed not only with the software but also your responses to questions and suggestions. So, I went to the site to order it and was disappointed when I read they were sold out. Is there any way to still get this?
Not currently. It isn’t because the software is outdated. But because I took up quite a large 9 – 5 job, I didn’t want ongoing support queries to be delayed. That is when I was doing this for a living, You bought the software, sent me an email, and usually within 10 minutes you were setup and ready to go. That just isn’t really possible with me working all the time.
The development of Pyrogenius is actually still ongoing though. Which is kind of weird to say. But I can still develop in the small pockets of time that I have, but not leave support queries for that long.
Quit your job today so I can buy this! J/K
I look forward to a re-release if you can find the time. I’ll keep checking back here and at WF for updates.
Hey Wade, I really enjoyed reading about your perspective about backlinks. Honestly i consider myself still a newbie when it comes to SEO, and i just started IM 4 month ago. The only thing i have done for my website is about 100 forum posts with signatures linking to my site, and i have almost 600 posts on my site(wordpress) and now its ranking in the top 100 for a very competitive keyword with almost 5 million searches a month. I did very basic SEO for my site. And I have two requests:
First can you please tell me what is happening? as i am not able to understand really how my site is able to reach the top 100 so fast for such a competitive keyword with such a few backlinks?
Second can you please explain more about pinging? as i have no idea what pinging does? and what to ping? pinging my website? or pinging my backlinks? an article about pinging would be highly appreciated.
Thank you very much for the interesting blog
First question, Well it’s google. Honestly, No one really knows 100% why or how we rank (Except for google themselves). I think alot of it is to do with the fact that you have 100 backlinks, That are from 100 different IP’s. It’s not like one site gave you a sitewide link, and then on 1000 pages it has your link. That is still basically one site linking to yours.
For the second part, Ill write a blog post about it