The Link Paradox and other paradoxes of link building
The Link Paradox stipulates that in a system (Web search) requiring that Web sites have links pointing to them, a Web site must obtain links before it can be included in the system (indexed for Web search). The paradox arises from the generally accepted observation that “good content will naturally attract links from other sites”. How does the good content attract these links if no one knows about it? In practice bad content naturally attracts links at the same rate as good content, especially given how subjective the terms “bad content” and “good content” prove to be. In fact, if you ignore subjective valuations like “good” and “bad”, you will find the supposed link paradox is less daunting than the imagination makes it out to be.
Because browsers and search engines are single-perceptive state devices (they can only be in one place doing one thing at a time) they cannot hold Web publishers accountable for the reliability of links. That is, neither the crawler nor you know whether this link actually leads to a real Web destination — until you (or the crawler) follow the link.
If you (or the crawler) could know when you see the link whether the link leads somewhere useful, you would be in a dual perceptive state. Knowledge of previous states does not enhance knowledge of a current state. That is, knowing that the link took you somewhere useful yesterday doesn’t tell you if it does today (the server may be down, the domain name could have expired, it could have been a bogus domain name that is now active, etc.).
All that is to say that you, the Web publisher, can both create content and link out to other (possibly real) content at the same time, which makes you both a creator and a referrer at the same time. This dual capability leads to the question: which comes first, the content or the link? Neither has to precede the other, either CAN precede the other, and BOTH can be created at the same time, independently or dependently upon each other.
In other words, World Wide Web documents defy the laws of physics because they completely lack the interdependencies that our recognized laws stipulate must exist in order to create a structure.
It is, of course, in part the single-perceptive state of the Web that allows this apparent violation of physics to exist in harmony with the rest of the universe. That is, we don’t actually know if everything we perceive about the Web is true. Hence, the real paradox of the Web is that we don’t know if what we know is real or imaginary. Our knowledge that our knowledge is false makes our knowledge imaginary; hence, our imaginary knowledge about what we know is accurate and for all intents and purposes complete.
Which takes us back to link building and the paradox of the link: how do you naturally attract links for content that people cannot find through links?
Or, put another way, CAN you attract links for content that cannot be found through links? It’s not a question of whether you can obtain links, but rather of whether the content will attract links. Anyone can go out and ask for or place links on other Web sites. We all do it as a natural part of the process of promoting Web sites.
But if you were to simply build a site and do nothing else, would that be enough to attract links?
I believe so, but only because of the automated processes that are now part of the Web. Let me ’splain.
About us is a Web wiki that creates pages about domains. How does it find new Web sites? You query it for those sites. In other words, you don’t link to the sites, you just submit the domain URL (AboutUs only indexes domains, not sub-domains). AboutUs then constructs a page about the domain.
There are, however, other processes even more automated. For example, some WhoIs information providers list domains as they are purchased and/or as they expire. Many SEOs have been buying up expired domains, so even if the links don’t pass PageRank and anchor text you can still get crawled.
Now, if you’re being crawled through links that don’t pass PageRank and anchor text, you may very well end up in the Supplemental Results Index in Google — where most of your on-page text probably won’t be indexed. Nonetheless, if you provide a variety of content pages with unique titles and descriptive URLs, the odds are pretty good you’ll pick up some long-tail traffic.
In other words, through indexing sites like AboutUs and natural domain crawling, you can get SOME visibility that helps people find your content — WITHOUT your having to build a single link.
But wait! That’s not all!
You can also publish an RSS feed and ping blog search indexes to come crawl your site. “But my site isn’t a blog…” you say. Who cares? Blogs publish Web pages and RSS feeds tell crawlers and feedreaders where to find the pages. So publish an RSS feed and ping the blog indexes. You don’t have to build a single link in order to create visibility.
Is pinging a viable, long-term solution? I don’t know. I’ve been publishing RSS feeds for ten years and have received a lot of traffic and visibility because of them (not to mention links). Your mileage may vary and I make no guarantees the system won’t be abused into implementing some massive filtering.
As a link builder you always have options. The lesson to be learned here, however, is that content also has options for attracting links regardless of how many links it has. Although the Filthy Linking Rich Principle remains as valid today as when Mike Grehan first showcased it for the SEO community, no domain should find itself linkless. If nothing else, it CAN get some links without anyone batting an eyelash.
Is this any way to optimize for search? Of course not. But if you’re stuck for ways to get some helpful links, try thinking about the ways that natural Web processes can help you. Stop focusing on who you can ask for links, where you can seed links, etc. Learn to cultivate the automated processes that create visibility and get at least minimal crawling.
If you really do have link-worthy content, your chief focus should be on building visibility for the content. The links will take care of themselves. A single page may be visible for a thousand expressions. It would take a thousand links to create equal value.
www.seo-theory.com
published @ October 2, 2008