Critical link Mass - A Luxury for the Rich, the gifted or can anybody do it?

[highlander]

Got my main site up and been running it for years (linking is hard) but am fascinated by this massive link surge thing. Basically my question is "Does it exist for every website or only the few?.........


Critical Mass
A lot of talk surrounds link development these days, usually the same old stuff is being discussed, but does the mystical critical mass really exist or has the word be invented to wind up certain categories of webmaster? I personally do not believe anyone has reached this stage as having gained a massive amount of links myself, I know other techniques are involved besides ‘link swaps’. I think the whole idea is a reality for the very few and that a genuine conspiracy exists with the specific goal of 'slowing' down the progress of site owners by claiming the 'critical mass' technique - as by slowing down the opposition, an advantage is gained. But for those who don’t know what Critical Mass is:
“It's where links that a site has gained, have reached a certain amount that those links are enough to 'auto' gain new links with no further effort on the webmaster's part. Link building effort is no longer needed to get new links - or something along those lines. Basically the idea is that a site gains more and more links, which gain more links etc etc – I suppose it’s a like compound interest. But having spoken to many a webmaster, their stories of such linking success are little or plain lies – so what does that indicate? Are they doing everything wrong, following the mountains of bad advice out there - more than likely.



Link Theory
Link swaps are just one way of getting links, but seems the main way it's done. One way links can just appear and hopefully the idea is for others to pick up on this, then 1 link leads to a domino effect and hey presto 500'000 of them. If that were true, then every site on the web would have millions of links pointing to them. That isn't true, so why do people go on about claiming otherwise - and a simple check on search engines will show who the players are or not if the case may be. Game Over.
If getting links were that easy then how come the top 100'000 sites all do PPC on Google. Nope, free advertising stopped when Overture etc came along. My guess is the Amazons of the world simply got realistic here, and the link swap, surge boom stopped years ago, when businesses realised they could charge for links instead of giving them away. There aren't any secrets or free advertising anymore and the sooner people start simply building something useful for a business, the better.

Can anybody link, sure - but reach that incredible amount of links everyone craves, I doubt it as it tough to do for any bog standard website. Or is it..

 

[temi]

So what would you put the link surge in your new website down to? You did something right which most webmaster don't do?

 

[highlander]

So what would you put the link surge in your new website down to? You did something right which most webmaster don't do?

I dunno, I did begin by linking to everything, but wasnt getting me the right visitors and on checking most of the links were low traffic generators, low PR etc (a bad linking decision on my part).

My niche might have been the reason, eg: visitors liked the information, bcos the links were off-target a lot. Think I ended up with about 50k of links in total but changed the domain & site to completely new idea/niche and then they all unlinked to me. First it went from 50k to 40k, then to 20k, then 14 and then just 2000 links left, which I was crying at that point.

But all things considered, including massive link loss - it was the right idea to keep true to my visitors needs, than attract junk traffic.

Yep, its definately website content that attracts one way links. But it wont work for any old site, there has to be an igniter and thats the clever bit - Got to know your industry, and domain expertise is required for expansion of websites. The better the site, the more it will get one way links, and all for nothing!

Ofcourse my brief success with that site could just be a load of luck, (Link mass happened 4 years ago) might have set up the site while the last of the link craziness went on. Difficult to put my finger on it, bcos now armed with an even better idea than before, the links are very tough to get and my theory is based on Google penalising and businesses refusing/charging their linkspace.

 

[highlander]

But getting links is tough - and thats just 2 way linking. One way links is very tough, infact the only one-way links I've gotten are from about 240 directories, but that was ridiculously easy, and no skill was required to get those links and doubt those are worth anything beyond bare minimum traffic transfer.

But generally speaking, link swapping, well, UK sites just don't want to know which is strange as I would have thought a good free link is going to be valuable and give much unpaid traffic for possibly years to come.

Obviously I was wrong……… “but any old link will do” is the norm of the web, so be it and it makes me chuckle hehe. To tell it like it is, gradual steady links take forever to have any major effect, I don't think it's worth it anymore, asking for recip links takes up much time and few link anyway - except the desperate and untargeted sites that is - you know the type

"Please link with my illegal drug site or porn empire"

or

"We like your site and we've linked to you from our poker one (even though we know it’s untargeted for your needs – but we don’t care, as we have what we want).

Is this what the web has become, maybe that’s the key to this Critical Mass objective or perhaps it’s harder than it IS to obtain THAT status.

What I find frustrating about the link developing process is the amount of bull#*$! about the ease of gaining high PR links: From my extensive research my findings are:


1.People will brag about their link development success - genuine or not
2.Be a barrier to the desperate and uneducated link hunters
3.They are lying about their fantastic success to ‘put people off’

In a world where links should be fairly easy to obtain (bcos of the sheer amount of websites), this isnt the case anymore perhaps, and maybe people should just accept it and move on to other methods.