Please take down my link. I never thought I would live to see the day that I would get an email like this, but the latest Google update has caused some people to panic. This particular person thought that his site would be penalized if he had a link coming from a site in an unrelated field. Well, following the Jagger update how should we approach linking? Should we nuke our reciprocal links directories altogether? Or is there a sensible way to continue linking?
Google doesnt explain the details of their updates and algorithm changes. It is widely thought they made moves to crack down on spamming and techniques designed to fool their indexing efforts. And possibly sites that added lots of irrelevant links in a short period were penalized. Google representatives have also stated publicly, in forums, that if you link to a bad neighborhood you could be penalized.
I cant get inside the Google algorithm anymore than anyone else, but I strongly believe that linking should go on in a natural way, in a way that predates the linking craze which Google itself helped to create. Here are some elements of a natural linking strategy.
1. Link to the kinds of sites that...