Smart Strategy or Something Google Would Punish Me For?

[AdamF24]

Tell me is this a smart strategy or something google would punish me for..

Putting "follow" links of every post on my website in the footer of my blog (so every single page on the site has these links on the footer), but naming the link just as "." instead of the post title, and coloring these links the same color as the background.

In essence, this goal is to spread page rank of my website evenly to all posts and pages. But I'm just linking them in a hidden way, naming them as just a period, and coloring them the same color as the background.

Is this a smart strategy or does Google frown on this?

[AdamF24]

anyone know?

[Lil Chris]

Coloring them the same color as the background will offend google (or at least it used to years ago) I would not do it.

[Curtis2011]

Originally Posted by AdamF24

Tell me is this a smart strategy or something google would punish me for..

Putting "follow" links of every post on my website in the footer of my blog (so every single page on the site has these links on the footer), but naming the link just as "." instead of the post title, and coloring these links the same color as the background.

In essence, this goal is to spread page rank of my website evenly to all posts and pages. But I'm just linking them in a hidden way, naming them as just a period, and coloring them the same color as the background.

Is this a smart strategy or does Google frown on this?

I wouldn't do this. In general, anything that is trying to "outsmart" Google will end up hurting you in the long run as they improve their algorithm.

Also, to "spread out" your page rank sounds like something that some would-be SEO'er made up in his head. I doubt inter-linking your site with links that don't even contain keywords will help any of them rank higher at all anyways.

And as the above poster said, never cloak links by matching their color with background color. Google has been punishing websites that do this for years now, and they explicitly have said that this is something they look down on.



All that aside, I would say it may be a good thing to inter-link between your website pages with genuine links that contain the correct keywords. This may help Google recognize the keywords of your pages. No guarantees, though.

[Sansone]

Your site would almost definitely get thrown off the results pages if you did that.

Anchor text and content are worth much more than PR anyway. You need to decide what words/phrases you want to rank for, research the competition, and work from that angle.

[waizen]

Yep, I'll throw in my 'me too' here.

Google has over two hundred different criteria it looks at with each site during each search and performs all of that in the short seconds it takes to get your search results (actually it's almost in real time now). Most of those criteria are proprietary and change periodically by Google as part of their never-ending fight against SEO players.

In general, DO NOT try to game the system with Google (or any of the major search engines for that matter). They have thousands of brilliant and well-paid employees who have seen and experienced it all when it comes to being played.

Offer the site visitor a good and honest experience with solid content and you'll be better off. Offer links that reveal what they are linking to. Link to relevant sites.

Oh, and stay away from link sculpting, whereby you use 'rel=nofollow' in an attempt to give or take away link juice/rank in a strategic way within or outside your site.

Seriously, Google is really good at seeing behind all the crap and more that we don't know about.

[Divajules]

Yep, I agree with the others. Google will slap you for it, I am pretty sure!

It's not nice to fool "mother google", LOL!

[Porphyos]

It's against the rules to have text or links that are the same color as the background. You will not be found in the search engines.