- Market Share of Search
- Market Share of Mobile OS
- Market Share of Browsers (us) – 43%
We don’t really have a choice, do we?
As long as links are manipulated, many businesses will fail.
When a website has bad links and gets punished for it, people can get mad.
When a website has natural links and their competitors win with bad links, people can get mad.
Website Punishment is Not The Answer
It makes no sense to punish a website for links, there has to be a better way. Punish the webmaster, not the website.
You preach for webmasters not to worry about links, however, if one can be punished by them and one can inherit a site that has them (knowing or not?), falling in rankings can seriously make people worry. Links are a webmasters responsibility, not businesses, the business should have no tie to a link profile, the webmaster should.
The way things are today when an uneducated webmaster doesn’t check a backlink profile, he’s in jeopardy of wasting a lot of time and money.
Suggestion for Google Search
License Webmasters, make webmasters take credibility for their own links. How? Make every business that wants to rank in Google, get their license to Google (Current webmaster can have a timeframe).
A license to Google should require some solid form of identity: social security number, a copy of a passport, license number, EIN, IDK something. Once webmasters are accountable for their own links, they would refrain from building manipulative links and they will think carefully before linking to someone. Unlicensed users links shouldn’t count. Google can help the search community without punishment. Isn’t the goal to create a better user experience?
Top 5 ranking sites should receive a congratulations letter with a Google Webmaster License request,
“Congratulation your website has made it into Google’s top 5 for several awesome terms in your market.
[You rank for your brand, more terms!]
Keep up the great work!
Notice: In order to maintain your credibility, Google asks that you add your Google License number into your webmaster tools account. Don’t have a Google license? Get one here”
Encourage us to do better and reward us for good work, don’t punish.
In the real world, people incorporate their businesses, it helps consumers from being cheated and protects people. In this case, it will encourage better user experience for all.
Transparency – we are with our personal information. Can you imagine working on a project for an entire year only to find out the previous webmaster created a crappy link profile, it’s a bummer.
Punish the culprit, not everyone else!
Perhaps my suggestions are not the right solutions, but I can tell you that punishing people isn’t right either.
Yours Truly.