97 Professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO)8.1.3 The effect of co-citation on your rankings
The effect of co-citation is often overlooked by search engine optimizers. The other
websites to which your link partners link can influence your search engine rankings.Here's an example: websites 1, 2, 3 and 4 all link to websites A, B, C and D. Although
A, B, C and D don't link to each other, search engines think that A, B, C and D are
related to each other because the same websites link to them:If A, B, C and D are all linked by 1, 2, 3 and 4 they might be related to one another,
even though they don’t directly link to each other. If A, B, C and D are all linked by
many other websites, they have a strong relationship. The more websites they are
linked by, the stronger the relationship.If your website is website A, you should make sure that websites B, C and D are
related to your site.- Co-citation and bad link pages
If you are listed on a website that links to gambling sites, viagra sites and your shoe
store then search engines might think that your website is related to gambling and
viagra.The search engines look at the link pages and check to which other websites the pages
link. If the other pages are gambling and viagra sites then search engines think that
your website is also related to gambling and viagra.That means that it might be difficult to get high rankings for search terms that are
about shoes.