Link Building: Dodge, Duck And Weave – Google Keeps On Dancing

I sometime wonder if Google sends their employees to a special dance school – the school of dodge, duck and weave! I also wonder why people keep banging the PageRank and link building drum. What I can understand is people constantly throwing questions in the hope that some tidbit escapes that they can use – although everything is done in a public forum so everyone else receives that tidbit at the same time.

The latest dodge, duck and weave comes again from Matt Cutts following a question that is asked, “Is PageRank Affected by Google Links”. The short video (1.27 min) from Matt really said nothing that addressed the question although he did confirm what many of have already reported when it comes to Google’s Knol.

It seems that some Knol authors who have proven to be trustworthy have had their Knols changed from no-follow to follow. Of course, there is nothing there to indicate how that trustworthiness was earned – but then that is a different question.

With no real answers to these questions, webmasters are far better off planning their link building around what is working now and what has worked in the past. Of course, you always need to keep an eye out for what may work in the future, but that is only going to be guesswork at best.

As for Google properties, use them where and when you need to. If creating a Knol, for example, helps to deliver traffic then traffic is your aim. If you gain a do-follow link, that’s a bonus to your link building program. It doesn’t hurt to have a presence in the Google property market – just don’t expect valuable links just because it’s “Google”. You can view the video from here if you want to see the Google Dance.