October 16, 2007
by Paul Lamach
Evaluation of the article page of the participants of the Internet Marketers United Group Writing Project
I had the opportunity to participate in the Internet Marketers Group Writing Project. I did it to get a little exposure and to see what would happen if I spent a couple of days writing a really good article with great content. The article is “Why Back Links work”. As usual I found out more than I needed to know. I am using what I learned in that research to evaluate what really happens when you leave a comment on a blog as far as pr score goes. I will show why I don't think the reason you should be commenting is for pr score. The reason to leave a comment is the social value, end of story. I could only arrive at this decision by looking at all the participants article pages, and evaluating what a link is worth on each page. One thing we know for sure is that a web page has a page rank score and it gets its page rank score from all the links that point to it.
What is the value of a link?
This stuff is so easy! If my web page has four(4) other web sites pointing to it, the PR score of my web page would be four(4) right! Of course not! That would be too easy. The value of each link pointing to your web page depends on how many links are on that web page. Quick example – Web Page A1 on web site A points to web page B1 on my web site. Web page A1 has 100 links. The one link coming to my web page is worth 1/100. The link pointing to my web page has a value of one-hundredth(.01). I have found that link value does not matter. The percent of internal links on a page matters. Example - If I have a web page with two links and one link goes to another web site (external), I loose 50% of the value of the page to that external link. It would be exactly the same as a web page that has a total of 100 links, and 50 of them go to other sites. I still loose 50% of my web page value. It's not about how many links on a page, or the value of each link, it's about how many links are pointing off the web page. This is where we are loosing our value.
How many links do the participants have on their pages?
YES! You heard it here….I’m an idiot! I actually went to everybody’site and counted how many links are there. Boy, was I surprised! The table is below.
Are you as amazed as I am? Thank god my goal was not to gain PR score for my site! If I left a link on each participants article I would gain a whopping pr score of .50. WOW! If you read the article you would see that I did that with my one page. I think it might be worth it to you to check out how I did that. How did he get .50 link value with a web page?. It’s not a page for a quick glance, Sorry! I supply thinking caps at the entrance.Trust me, it will be worth your time and energy. Anyways, Localref is not a blog. You can’t comment on my pages, so you're not able to leak pr score from that page. I was thinking of doing something goofy, like making up a web page for every great comment of a nice length about the article, or Courtney. Then just point the pages to the article to add more PR score to that web page. Too much work. Getting back to Localref. No comments are allowed, so you can take me right out of the equation.
How many links does Google read on a web page?
100! Boy, did that get your attention or what? Everybody seems to think this is about right. Doing a little investigating, remember I’m an idiot, I found a statement on google webmaster guidelines. I’d link to it, but my links allocation is limited. Link allocation? Anyway, google states – We do not recommend over 100 links on a Sitemap page. If you ask me they are really saying, hey – we can’t handle more than 100 links per page. Boy, this makes sense to me, especially since each link gets a number. Table to hold 100 links is 100 rows, Table to hold 200 links is 1,000 rows. I’ve read a lot of experienced people, and they hint that the excess goes into a text file.
15 of our participants have links of over 100 on their article pages. I wonder which 100 gets used? I’ll bet it's the closest 100 to the tag. After the bot gets to 100, it starts the text file. That is my uneducated guess! GUESS! One more time GUESS! This tells me that the links in the right column would be eliminated. Is that right? Get it….right….get it! The only reason I bring this up is because it may be that the link (one-way link) you are leaving on a web page might not even get read. Don’t believe me? One site I went to had over 400 links on it. More on that later. I am also in violation of this very simple concept. I have 119 links on my articles page. I am soooooo stupid. Here again, is it fact – NO! Why even take the chance? I will be taking my web pages out for a walk soon. Slim those babies down!
Does leaving a back link comment really work?
Yes, the real reason I gathered you here today! Well, it depends on the page you left it on. If you left the comment on UtahSEOServices.com you would get back .048 pr score. WHY? Because he has 21 links (not anymore, im sure) on his web page. Great, so we all go to his web page and leave a comment. Guess what, if we all did that they would have 21 plus 44 comments on the page. Now he is up to 65, the pr score of a link is .015. That's quite a drop in link value. Way to go guys! I was the only one on there before!!!! The more comments on the page the less each back link is worth. By the way, at this time there is 138 comments on Courtney’s original article about his writing project. I think yours got eliminated! Ha Ha!
Is it worth it to comment on a blog?
I don’t think it’s worth it if you are trying to gain pr score. The real value comes from the social value. In this writing project the value I have received is from the knowledge and the people I have met! Fantastic group of people. I can’t believe you let me be part of it! …..and then of course there is that nofollow attribute thing……
How many bloggers use the nofollow attribute?
How the heck do I know, I’m stupid!!!! I do know how many of the participants use the nofollow attribute. It’s easy if you use firefox. Left click on the link and click on properties. I don’t know if that works for Internet explorer. Probably not. So how many of the participants use the nofollow attribute?...and better yet, who really cares? You should if you did this project to gain a lot of pr score. The nofollow attribute tells the search engines to not add the link value to the site when a links on the page are calculated. If you spent an hour leaving a comment on each participants web page, and they are using the nofollow attribute, you just wasted an hour. But, you would meet 44 very nice people! OK, 33% of the participants use the nofollow attribute on their comments. There I said it! YES! UtahSEOServer.com uses nofollow, so forget all I said about them! Ha Ha! The new guy to pick on now is Superbloggingtips.com. He has 4 comments, and of course I am one of the chosen few! So he has 54 links and if we all go over there and add a comment we would have 54 plus 44 for a total of 98. OH-OH….Thats only .010 pr score for each link. You thought you were done didn’t you?
External Links vs Internal Link Ratio
I just made that up, I don’t think there is a ratio like that. You know, cover that keyword thingy! The average amount of external links on a page is 52%. May I say that one more time. The average amount of external links on a page is 52%. If we all get the most pr value we can possibly get by participating in the writing project, we can only keep half of it. Ok, take a breather, sit down relax, let me ask you this. What percent of internal links do you think the participants had. Tic-tic-tic. OK, you over there sweating. That’s right – 48%. This is another article I think! Help me here with this. Why would we try like heck to gain pr score when we give it away? Anybody besides me laying on the floor? OK, I am getting up, standing on my little soapbox – I want all to hear – I WANT TO KEEP ALL MY PR SCORE! There I said it! You, my friend get nothing! You guys are on your own. I may spread a few morsels every once in a while.
Impossible you say? Hmmmmm, maybe I can give a few examples. Yahoo...…lets go to Google.com. Get it - yahoo,google! I bet they know a little bit about web pages, even though there search engines! Ha Ha!!! I will go out on a limb and state they might know the best way to create a web page to get the best results, since they are the ones keeping score! Ok, lets count the links on the home page. I am here to serve, there are 29 links on googles home page. OK, guess how many external links. Why would I use it as an example if it was anything other than zero. Google has 29 links, all internal links. If they shold happen to get lucky and get up to 10 pr, they keep it all.That was kinda a joke, get it! My kind of people! They keep it all!!!!! Another example you say? Ok, how about sitepoint.com. 171 links, zero external links. I love it! OK, lets go to my friend with the great nascar site – Jayski.com. 280 links and 68 external. No wonder he's only PR 6.
OK, I know your dying to find out if you’re the one with the most external links. NO, lets reward the site with the best internal link percent. That goes to RaProject.com. Wonder if it was by luck, or they know what they are doing. Probably someone just starting out, and hasn’t had the chance to add all those useless links. Did I say that. And the site with the least internal links is – Pajamaprofessional.com. There you go I just lost a friend. They had 22% internal links. Am I right in saying they give away 78% of there value? Lets all hop on board and work them like crazy! Do you guys mind working harder? On every page they develop they loose 78%. Ok, were done. Everyone go out and redesign their sites and get back to me.
What? You over their with the hand up. What? Oh, they want to know how their hero Courtney is doing in this whole mess. Lets see how do I do this diplomatically? What the heck, if he gets mad I’ll pull his link. And besides he can’t comment on my site. Let ‘er rip! Ha ha! Courtney has 221 links on his article page. Of the 221 links, 134 are internal. He does use the nofollow attribute. This surprises me because I thought for sure he said he doesn’t. I must have bothered him too many times! Since, I’m loosing friends…Bu.bilicio.us.com. My hero! 20 articles a day. He da man! Ready for this 466 links on his home page. Of the 466 links 93% are internal. He must have read the right books! With over 400 links on his page, he is still my hero! Wonder if he knows of missing any of those links? Hes a genius! …466 links, hes too busy to remove them.
You all have my email address. I’m looking forward to the hate MAIL. Bring it on baby! Thank god, I don’t have a comment section on this page! Its all mine!!!! Well most of it, well, maybe a little of it!
Thanks for your time.