Link Vault Disappears from Google: A Link Building Strategy Gone Awry?

Rustybrick at Search Engine Roundtable is reporting that Link-Vault.com has been banned from Google:

"It appears that a major link network named Link Vault has been banned from Google. Conducting a search on www.link-vault.com brings up no results. Doing a site command brings up one result. Other data centers have the link-vault.com domain listed as well."

Link Vault provides a platform enabling website owners to exchange links with each other in an effort to increase each site's link popularity. Here is how Link Vault describes their service on their FAQ:

"By joining Link Vault you allocate a certain number of advert / link spaces on your website for Link Vault to place links, and in return Link Vault's other members display your adverts and links. This is an automated service that costs you nothing."

One of the important factors Google uses to determine how high to rank web pages for a given search is the number if inbound links relative to other pages using the given search terms. This works off the assumption that each inbound link is something similar to an endorsement of the site being linked to, so the more inbound links your site has, the more authoritative the site becomes.

However, link exchanges bend the rules a bit. Participating sites are no longer linking to sites because they find them valuable. They're simply doing so on a quid pro quo basis in order to artificially boost the link popularity of each participant's site. This causes issues for search engines relying on accurate link popularity metrics and forces them to look for artificial linking patterns. Why? Because a search engine's number one concern is to provide relevant search results to their users so they keep coming back (and occasionally clicking on the ads).

A few guidelines for successful link building.

1. Using search engine optimization (SEO) tactics that are in competition with the goals of search engines is risky business.
2. The most important link building strategy is to first build a great website people will to link to unsolicited.
3. There are many ways to build links to your site that don't involve link exchanges.

4. If the only way to get people to link to your site is through link exchanges, see #2.

Related News

Loren Baker at SearchEngineJournal is speculating that members of the Digital Point COOP maybe next in line for a Google slap.
Jamie Sirovich of SEOEggHead came the the same conclusion as Baker.

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