SEO Tycoon

**Guerrilla** · 01-07-2008, 10:22 AM

Hi,

Has anyone here done triangle linking or 3 way linking recently as part of an optimisation project?

You know the story, site a links to site b in return from a link from site c.

I have posted a lot asking for feedback on these linking structures but people always seem reluctant to share their findings.

Thanks,

G

**Connie** · 01-07-2008, 11:09 AM

The only reason I can see to do that would be to fool SEs into thinking your links were all one way links. SEs can detect those linking patterns and they are likely to get you in trouble rather than help. At least in the long run.

**ADAM Web Design** · 01-07-2008, 12:16 PM

What Connie said.

**gringo** · 01-07-2008, 12:40 PM

How could they detect it?

If I link to webmaster-talk in return for a link from emonetized (also owned by Tim) and the whois info for those sites was false, unless you were really obvious with your linking behaviour I'm not sure this kind of thing is detectable. Am I missing something?

**ADAM Web Design** · 01-07-2008, 12:45 PM

gringo: Site A-->Site B-->Site C-->back to Site A leaves a footprint of sorts. So a triangular link exchange is "detectable". One by itself probably won't set off an alarm bell, but a whole bunch of them (i.e. the amount most link exchangers put out there) would.

Connie's a wise ol' Missoura hillbilly who knows his stuff (I know him from IHY). Never argue with a wise ol' Missoura hillbilly.

**gringo** · 01-07-2008, 12:56 PM

I agree with you about the pattern you gave but what about
A-->B
C-->A

Sites B and C owned by the same person. I thought that was what Guerilla was asking. There is no detectable relationship between site B and site C. I say detectable because the scurrilous Guerilla will have doctored his whois.

**Guerrilla** · 02:03 PM

I didn't explain the linking structure properly. Hopefully this clarifies things.

Site A = Site we are optimising
Site B = a website owned by someone else, most likely in the same category as site A.
Site
Site C = a site we also own but not on the same Class C IP address as Site A and also has different domain owner.

We contact site B and ask it to link to site A. In return for this link, site C will link to Site B so the link is reciprocated but not from our main domain.

This means site A has one way incoming links but no outgoing links.

Site C is a content site that has some natural links, a fair bit of content and a collection of other outgoing links unrelated to this optimisation process. We don't get greedy and try to trade with good websites in a related field. Will this work or not?

I have been asking in the forums for a long time now to try and find someone with experience of using this method. I have been involved in SEO for over 5 years now and understand the risks involved in link trading but would like some feedback from someone who has used the method before I possibly waste 6 months on a linking campaign (in my opinion it would take this long to get accurate feedback on how it works).

So, anyone out there tried this?

**Learning Newbie** · 01-07-2008, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guerrilla

Site C = a site we also own but not on the same Class C IP address as Site A and also has different domain owner.

"Block" IP addresses are a very out of date script kiddie myth.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guerrilla

So, anyone out there tried this?

Yes. Lots of people flocked to this silver bullet 7 years ago. Shockingly, most of them still didn't get the #1 position. It's been largely ignored by legitimate SEO campaigns ever since.

**coolguy27** · 01-07-2008, 04:28 PM

Google now detect those who try to manipulate rankings (SERPs) it is not advisable to do that anymore.. Try building one way links...

**chrishirst** · 01-07-2008, 08:01 PM

It's not a case of who "owns" what sites and whether there is a relationship there that would count.
It's not actual relationships between sites/pages that the SEs are looking for, they are simply looking for "unnatural" linking patterns.

**johneva** · 01-07-2008, 08:43 PM

To be fair my findings at the moment from looking at other websites is the reciprocal linking actually works better at the moment, simpley from the last big change they made to try and hit link sellers and buyers hard.

I have seen websites with 10 spammy links pages full of rereciprocal links do very well in search engines since the last change about, compared to if you have outbound links which are one way on your site you seem to get penalised quite badly ATM simpley as they assume you must have sold them.

This is not me saying go out and do loads of reciprocal linking though as this is something they clamped down on before link selling and buying and will hit again in the next algo update I would think.

It has gotten to a point where there is no 1 SEO tactic is effective enough you can spam the hell out of it, which is great news. To have a site which does well it is a matter of covering everything in morderation, do article submission and directory submission but dont go OTT do the odd link exchange if you find a really good website that is relevant but dont have many outbound links on your site or you will get penalised.

Most important things of all ATM are making sure your on page optimaiztion is right without making any spammy pages or using cheating methods like hidden text and cloaking, then also as it always has been link baiting your site, which is to have content on your site which people will naturally link to as it is useful.

**Guerrilla** · 10:38 PM

Still to find someone who has actually used this method. Guys I appreciate your comments but every time I start this thread I get the same posts "Don't try to manipulate the serps" or "Google will detect you so don't try it".

If someone asks me what’s the best way to optimise a website I will tell them to create a useful free service on their website that's relevant to their site and promote this, it works so well for me that it eclipses all other methods I have tried by far. But surely it is our responsibility as so called optimisers to fully test and kick the proverbial out of the search engines algorithm each update to fully understand how it works and how it can be manipulated to further our own understanding.

Learning newbie:

Quote:

"Block" IP addresses are a very out of date script kiddie myth.

Around 3 years ago I had a network linked together that did very well in the search engines. I moved all my domains to the same hosting package where they didn’t all share the same IP but the class C ip was the same. It basically killed my rankings and after some research I stumbled upon some info about IP rich linking strategies. After making contact with a seo who worked for an online poker company and following his advice I changed the IP addresses of my sites to great success.

I'm not saying that this is a great factor these days but in my own experience and opinion I would say that Google does in fact take a websites IP address into account in some part of its algorithm. If you have a case study that proves otherwise I would be interested to hear it as I have been wrong before and I am sure I will be wrong again and I try my best to keep an open mind.

Quote:

Yes. Lots of people flocked to this silver bullet 7 years ago. Shockingly, most of them still didn't get the #1 position. It's been largely ignored by legitimate SEO campaigns ever since.

7 years ago it wouldn't have been as effective as it would be today. 7 years ago the search engines were still in their infancy and highly spammed out. I live in the UK and it was very easy to look at American porn sites and copy their optimisation techniques to spam out the UK serps when I first started.

One way links are more "powerful" in the last couple of years as Google’s way of combating link exchanges that is why I am so interested in seeing a case study of this method to further my understanding. Will I use this on my main domain? probably not as I do not need to, but if it works I can definitely make money off it.

I still have an open mind, it would be great if someone said, "yeah I tried that on www.mydomain.com and it sucked, have a look at it and see for yourself". But as always it seems we just regurgitate the basics to each other and repeat what others have told us.

I have made this post to 4 separate forums repeatedly over the past couple of years and opinion is always split and no one has ever posted an example. Google may be able to detect this method but it’s bloody difficult if you’re a human, my competitors may be using it, they may not be I cannot tell from examining their back links. It would be great if someone has developed a tool to detect these linking structures.

Well, never intended my post to be so long, I doubt anyone will actually bother to read it but I felt I should try to explain myself.

Edit: made a typo

**dotservant.com** · 01-08-2008, 12:28 AM

Google's ability to detect link scheme is far smarter than we would have imagine...

**ADAM Web Design** · 01-08-2008, 12:42 AM

Quote:

But surely it is our responsibility as so called optimisers to fully test and kick the proverbial out of the search engines algorithm each update to fully understand how it works and how it can be manipulated to further our own understanding.

This seems reasonable and logical, but it isn't that simple anymore, and another factor will come into play more and more as time goes by.

It is our responsiblity as marketers (not optimizers) to do what we can to optimize our sites for search engines without interfering with the user experience in any way. The whole problem with the link exchange/triangular link exchange theory is that it creates unnatural, user-unfriendly linking structures from page to page. If you like a site and it will help your users, link out to it. If you don't, don't. It's not that complicated, and SEO shouldn't even be a factor.

The whole SEO thing as a standalone industry/concept is starting to become passé, and with the advent of other sites and concepts, things that will harm the user experience need to be considered. As much as I hate to use this as an example, social media sites are one of the biggest reasons why; [b]organic[/red] traffic from these sites can become a potential source of revenue and income. If they can ever deal with their spam issues (and I don't think they can, but I won't count them completely out either...yet).

There are also means of obtaining organic bookmarks from other sites (e.g. blogs, etc.) that now need to be factored in. In other words, web marketing is more about diversification of traffic sources than it ever was before, and what might work for one source might screw you up in 10 more and have a greater effect.

There are a lot of sites out there with a lot of non-search engine primary traffic sources, and not just because they only get 5 visitors per year, four with the site owner's last name.

This is why you see a lot of the answers given...people understand that there's a bigger picture, and that what might work for short-term traffic gain generally won't work for converting traffic gain. This is one of the biggest reasons why SEO as an industry will undergo a massive decline in the next 5 years, and almost no one will see it coming.

I've seen a case whereby a client (which shall remain nameless) that participated in a series of link exchanges got nailed two years ago during the Jagger update. I took out the link exchanges, bang, everything was restored no more than 2 weeks later. I don't recall there being any triangular link exchanges, but there were certainly a lot of two-way link exchanges. It has been more than fine since then.

Quote:

I have made this post to 4 separate forums repeatedly over the past couple of years and opinion is always split and no one has ever posted an example. Google may be able to detect this method but it’s bloody difficult if you’re a human, my competitors may be using it, they may not be I cannot tell from examining their back links. It would be great if someone has developed a tool to detect these linking structures.

We need this like I need another stupid person to piss me off. All this would lead to is a bunch of BS "competitor analysis" and other silly tools which do nothing other than focus on links, links, links, links, links are SEO, links links, links are SEO, let's all say it now.

I'm sure one of the ethical criminals in the SEO industry will come up with such a tool, though. It would be a complete waste of time, so it's perfect for the customer base.

**ForrestCroce** · 01-08-2008, 03:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I'm sure one of the ethical criminals in the SEO industry will come up with such a tool, though. It would be a complete waste of time, so it's perfect for the customer base.

It really wouldn't be hard to build. Go to a site, crawl their pages, build a list of all their outgoing links, repeat the process for every site in the list, and you have the data to find two and three way link exchanges. It won't be quick to crawl that many pages, and will put a bit of strain on a big site. The main trouble is to be commercially viable, it would have to ignore robots.txt, and probably misidentify itself.

I've been thinking about building a tool like that ever since Matt Cutts said he has one. His is much faster than mine would ever be, though ... probably because they have all the pages and link lists already cached.

I don't think it'd actually be worth the time to code all that up. But stopping to plan out how it would be done is illuminating.

To answer Gorilla's question, though, I haven't tried it. There are a few sites where I can create links; mainly to announce new posts and photos. I participate in some forums, talk to other people with similar interests, and network above all else. That's been working pretty well for me.

**Guerrilla** · 01-08-2008, 08:48 AM

Thanks for the replies.

Quote:

Google's ability to detect link scheme is far smarter than we would have imagine...

I do not under estimate Google but I believe that if a pattern can occur naturally then recreating the pattern "unnaturally" will not have adverse effects as long as you take care to do it correctly.

If you spam out thousands of random trades and your domain is nothing but a glorified links directory then of course you will get detected it’s just stating the obvious.

However if site C is a good information site, perhaps with a few free tools, a forum etc.. and we limit the trades to say 100 3 way links and also mix in other relevant links for the related field then I do not see this being punished, but I cannot talk from experience as I have not tried it (yet).

What would be the process of detecting these 3 way linking schemes? I had a think and came up with the method below.

Google examines back links for site A. It then examines the back links of the domains that hold pages linking to site A. It then checks for a website that links to all of these domains. Now say 30% of domains that hold a link to site A are linked to from site C will Google disregard all of these links? I am sure that this occurs naturally also.

Here is a hypothetical situation. Let’s say I link to all computer manufacturers in the UK on my over clocking tutorial website so my visitors can buy parts. Now let’s say that all UK manufacturers have a trade association website that they link to. Would Google go through the previous analysis and also disregard all of these one way links because of a third party website!? If this was the case then surely I could investigate my competition and create a website that links to every website that links to them. Would they suddenly disappear from Google? Lol anyone wanna give this a go?

Maybe I am missing a vital piece of logic in my thinking, that is why I am posting here to get feedback from other seo with experience. The more I think about it the bigger the loophole appears.

I originally hypothesised that Google would have a tolerance level. For example if the percentage of domains talked about earlier was over a certain amount then it would raise the alarm bells but this would not work as it could be exploited.

The only way I can see Google accurately detecting it is if they record the date that the link was added on site c and site b and test to see if they are within a certain parameter but most people’s pages that hold the link will not be spidered on a regular basis so again this method won't be accurate on a smaller amount of links as they would have to have some level of tolerance applied.

My thinking is now that if you do it in the right way it could be a viable method. I still have an open mind but I will always try to base an opinion on logic, facts and research as opposed to hearsay.

Quote:

We need this like I need another stupid person to piss me off. All this would lead to is a bunch of BS "competitor analysis" and other silly tools which do nothing other than focus on links, links, links, links, links are SEO, links links, links are SEO, let's all say it now.

I like knowing the reason that my competitors rank higher than me, it gives me targets to aim for. Will analysis tools solve all my problems? No of course not but information is power and it is my job to identify trends in competing websites. If someone ranks well I want to know why. Links are just one part of this equation but they are an important part.

**ADAM Web Design** · 01-08-2008, 11:58 AM

That's exactly my point, Guerrilla: you're not going to get anything you can really use, thanks to things like multiple servers, multiple datacenters, personalization and geotargeting. What you see will give you a distorted "ranking" picture that doesn't reveal much of anything.

Is that competitor getting referral traffic?
Is that competitor getting converting referral traffic?
Is that competitor profiting off of that referral traffic?

There's no way to know any of that stuff via a "if someone ranks well" type of a question (which as explained before, is a silly question and will just get sillier), and this is precisely the type of logic that has to change if people want to get ahead. There really isn't anything that you can pick up from a competitor that is of any use.

As far as your example goes, the part that you're missing is probably the percentage. Sooner or later, you're right; both two-way and three-way external linking may be inevitable for some sites in a natural form, and the trade association is actually a good example if the triangle is completed. But a trade association would also presumably have a lot of organic, natural one-way links and enough unique and original content (usually trade associations have a bunch of stuff on their meetings and/or what the organization is doing, etc.) and as such, the X number of two-way or two-way links wouldn't be as prevalent. In other words, the threshold is likely a combination of percentage and volume, with some other stuff thrown in (whether or not there's a specific links page, any detectable link exchange posts on forums or other places, etc.)

This is purely conjectural. I haven't tried it and I have no desire to. Quite frankly, I think it's a waste of time and will sooner or later lead to a chop block at the knees by big G (if no one else).

As far as links go, the problem with the prevailing theory is it's not just "links". If it were, everyone would submit daily to link farms, get their 1,000,000 classified ads that no one reads, and rank for whatever they want. It's the type of links that matter. Taking this one step beyond SEO, consider this: would you rather have a link that you had to give a link out to get, or one that you didn't? The former would lead traffic away from your site, the latter wouldn't.

That's why I wouldn't waste my time with something like this...there's nothing to be gained.

**~DaRk-EyE~** · 01-08-2008, 12:04 PM

Triangle Linking or A-B-C link trading is an effective way of building one way links... I think there is no problem with the scheme or some google detection whatsoever... I categorize this one as an legal way of building "One Way Links"... I use to do A-B-C link trading for 1 year already and it really benefits me a lot... There is no penalty in this kind of link trading method so you have the freedom to use this one...

**mhaye_01** · 01-08-2008, 12:09 PM

Triangle Linking is a form of one way link since there is no site's meeting,.
As what I know google prefer this one compare with reciprocal links

**johneva** · 01-08-2008, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guerrilla

Still to find someone who has actually used this method. Guys I appreciate your comments but every time I start this thread I get the same posts "Don't try to manipulate the serps" or "Google will detect you so don't try it".

Prehapps I should have been clearer and said yes I have tried it but I thought that would be pretty obvious as I dont make comments on something I have not tried myself and have experianced myself.

3 way linking did work great up untill the last update where they tried to counter link sales and buying at which point they basicly penalised anybody with outbound links from their site which were 1 way, this was a big hitter aswell. This is what made me say what I did in my perivious postwhich you may want to read again now you know I have actually tried everything I talked about.