What If Search Engines Ignored Links Completely

[Painless Parker]

Just wondering how some of you would change your linking strategy if Google decided to ignore links altogether some day.

In other words, if the SEs started only considering things like keywords and the actual content on each of your pages and did not consider links at all -- either positively or negatively -- would that effect the way you handle links on your site?
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[makphisto]

Interesting question. If links were totally irrelevant, then it is unlikely that I would continue to link at all. I am careful about not adding too many links, and I try to follow the "relevancy" rules by only posting links to sites that I think my vistors would enjoy, but in the end the real reason to have links is to get links back. Since very little of my traffic actually comes directly from other sites links, I probably wouldn't spend the time and money to grow organic links with other sites.

[pageperson]

If search engines stopped considering links altogether I think I'd become more aggressive in my linking and try to increase the amount of incoming traffic I get from those links.

As somebody -- John Wannamaker, J. C. Penny, F.W. Woolworth, somebody like that -- once said about advertising "I spend millions on it and I know that half of that is thrown away, but I just don't know which half it is."

There is no substitute for putting your name in front of people everywhere, Amazon proved that. And while 80 percent of your links may not generate any traffic, it's never, over the course of time, the same 20 percent that does generate traffic. The winners and losers fluctuate, so you might as well get as many as possible. Unlike advertising, links are free.

The only thing that is keeping me from going more gung ho in growing links, is the SEs. If they dropped linking as a factor, I'd be much more active in adding them.
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[makphisto]

You must have better luck with getting customers direct from links than I. VERY few of my customers come DIRECTLY from my link exchanges, the only reason I do link exchanges is because of the search engine value. I'd guess it has a lot to do with the type of product or service you're offering, though.

[glenn33]

I have to agree with Matt to a certain extent. The main reason that I cultivate links is for SE rankings. I'm sure that I would still do links for the benefit of my customers, and for friends who have sites, but I sure wouldn't spend the time I do now to search out exchanges.

glenn33

www.carartonline.com