Chess great Bobby Fisher recently emerged from Japan, escaping to Iceland to avoid U. S. authorities. Even Bobby would be amused with the chess match that search engines and SEO’s play on a daily basis. This is especially true when it comes to linking.
In the old days, websites didn’t have to have links from other sites pointing to them. People would simply submit their websites to the search engines directly. Then it became known that links were important. So, webmasters started trading links with a wide variety of websites with differing themes, under the idea that quantity would get great results. Which it did.
Then the search engines made another change to their algorithms, giving priority to relevant links. So, reciprocal link trading between relevant websites was born and continues to this day. But, it is also theorized today that reciprocal links don’t hold the same value that they once did.
So, those into SEO know that in order to stay competitive they need to make a counter move to the search engines’ reciprocal link devaluation. Three basic counter moves have developed. The first move is to gain one-way links from directories or other sources such as paid links. The second method, which is employed by some unscrupulous Webmasters, is to do reciprocal linking but employ some methodology so that the search engines cannot find their partner links so that their websites appear only to have a bunch of one-way links pointing back to them and none going out.
The third move is find link partners who are willing to do triangular linking. This would look something like, “If you link from your site to my site, I will link from another of my websites to your website.” This would give both websites non-reciprocal links. This method, though, is not quite as effective as one-way linking since the Webmasters would still be giving away an outbound link. Triangular linking is currently most difficult if not impossible for the search engines to detect. And, if somehow, in the future, the SE’s will be able to detect this method, then octagonal linking may just be the next counter move employed.
In fact, since there is not a lot to do in Iceland and it looks like Bobby Fisher will be holed up there for a while, perhaps some of the big search engines would like to employ Bobby’s help with fending off the SEO’s. Bobby has proven himself to be able to think many steps ahead and from his opponent’s eyes. Maybe along with the Cassandra, Florida, Brandy and Allegra updates, there will be a Bobby update in the near future as well.
