Can “Weak” Links Damage Your Linking Strategy?

Edy Cody, who runs BikeWeekLeathers.com (http://www.bikeweekleathers.com) was impressed with Linking Matters and wanted to add a link for us from his site. But first she emailed an important question:

Hi Ken,

I sell a product, motorcycle leathers (I do offer content/information regarding the care of it)

It has nothing to do with what your web site is about……so…. would linking to you hurt you or myself since we are so totally unrelated? I also have a PR4

Good luck guys.

Great question. Edy’s worry is that because our two sites appear unrelated, a link between them would be “weak” and therefore damage the pagerank of one or both sites.

Edy need not worry

Such a link would neither damage her own website nor Linking Matters. Indeed some research on network theory might suggest that such links are very important in spreading information - more on that later but first back to Edy’s question.

Remember that pagerank is only one of many factors that affect your site’s ranking on Google’s. Its importance has been greatly exaggerated by that impressive looking green bar that appears on the Google toolbar if you choose to download it.

Many people use it to rate the sites they are visiting.

But the pagerank score on the toolbar is notoriously inaccurate - indeed Google often guesses the pagerank of a page. It should never figure in your decision whether to link to a site or not. If you find a site you want to link to go ahead - it will not do you any damage.

Indeed, providing outbound links may carry a reward from other factors of Google’s algorithm.

Markus Sobek works through the mathematics on his survey of Google PageRank (http://pr.efactory.de/) but my advice is not to worry. As Sobek says “…since links between web sites are the fundament of PageRank and indespensable for its functioning, there is the possibility that outbound links have positive effects within other parts of Google’s ranking criteria”.

Humans can easily create relevance

If you’re still worried, it’s not too hard to create relevance.

I could write:

“Small businesses should use a linking strategy to promote their website. Edy Cody of BikeWeekLeathers.com has created a page of motorbike related links at http://www.bikeweekleathers.com/http-new-links.html and takes every opportunity to boost the link popularity of her own site…”

I have created a real context and the link to Edy’s site is entirely relevant.

Likewise, Edy could write something like:

“I’ve published this link page of biking resources because I think linking is important. If other bike sites want to find out more about linking strategy visit http://www.linkingmatters.com“

Again, the relevance of the link is clear.

Network theory and weak links

Sometimes, we can get bogged down in the intricacies of linking and forget the big picture. It’s good to pick up a book that helps you look at things afresh.

Such a book is “Linked - The New Science of Networking” by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. The book explains “how everything is connected to everything else and what it means for science, business and everyday life”.

He has a chapter about the web, but what I found most intriguing was a discussion of a paper by Mark Granovetter on “The Strength of Weak Ties”.

In essence, it describes a society made up of clusters of people connected by strong ties. Within these clusters people know each other well and share strong opinions.

On their own, these clusters remain insular. But if weak links exist between clusters - i.e. acquaintances rather than good friends, then this creates a conduit for the spreading of ideas and information.

As a result the whole society becomes more dynamic and information and knowledge spread rapidly.

Could this have implications for linking on the web? It would mean that of course it’s important to link within specific clusters. But those clusters must have weak links to other clusters if they are to remain healthy and survive.

In which case the link that Edy created on her site could be very important is spreading the word that linking really does matter.