Rustybrick at Search Engine Roundtable is reporting that Link-Vault.com has been banned from Google:
Link Vault provides a platform enabling website owners to exchange links with each other in an effort to increase each site’s link popularity. Here is how Link Vault describes their service on their FAQ:
One of the important factors Google uses to determine how high to rank web pages for a given search is the number if inbound links relative to other pages using the given search terms. This works off the assumption that each inbound link is something similar to an endorsement of the site being linked to, so the more inbound links your site has, the more authoritative the site becomes.
However, link exchanges bend the rules a bit. Participating sites are no longer linking to sites because they find them valuable. They’re simply doing so on a quid pro quo basis in order to artificially boost the link popularity of each participant’s site. This causes issues for search engines relying on accurate link popularity metrics and forces them to look for artificial linking patterns. Why? Because a search engine’s number one concern is to provide relevant search results to their users so they keep coming back (and occasionally clicking on the ads).
A few guidelines for successful link building.
2. The most important link building strategy is to first build a great website people will to link to unsolicited.
3. There are many ways to build links to your site that don’t involve link exchanges.
Related News
- Loren Baker at SearchEngineJournal is speculating that members of the Digital Point COOP maybe next in line for a Google slap.
- Jamie Sirovich of SEOEggHead came the the same conclusion as Baker.
