Checking for Cache when Link Building

Posted by Pixelhead

Sure it seems that Directory links are having less and less Google juice. Deep more relevant categories often are not cached by the deep Google spiders. So what can you do to ensure that you are getting the most Google juice for your buck or if the directory is free, for your time?

Before paying for a link, I always check to make sure that the page I am submitting to is cached. That is I copy the url, paste it into the Google search bar. If the page has been visited by the Google spiders, it will show up in the SERP’s.(Search Engine Result page). You can either submit to a page that Google has not visited and build links to the page so that you encourage Google to visit the page, or you can find a page that has been cached already.
What you can do is click around the different related categories of the directory, and copy and paste into the desired category page urls into the Google search bar until you find a cached page, or you can check the whole site to see what pages are cached using site:url. This will show you all the pages that are cached by Google. For example, putting site:http://www.pixelheadonline.com into the Google search bar, I see that 1,430 pages are cached in Google. Then all I need to do is page through the results and find an appropriate cached category page to submit my site.

1 more link building tip

If I go to the next level down in the directory, such as Business, and copy that url, and put in site:http://www.pixelheadonline.com/Business/ I can see that 17 sub-pages are cached. Using this method allows you to find cached subcategory pages in relevant categories without having to page through unrelated results.
So that is my tip for link building this post. Got any other link building tips you would like to share?

Update:

Check for cache with the site:url and with out the site:url. I believe that using the site:url returns pages that have been visited by the Google Spider that does deep searches, which are done with less frequency. If paying for links, I want to make sure that the links are cached by regular spiders as well as deep searching spiders for more Google juice for the link.

see Google Cache Update post for more current discussion.

Written by Pixelhead on October 2nd, 2007 with 18 comments.
Read more articles on Directories and Directory Submissions and Internet Tools and Link Building and Marketing and Uncategorized

HelpYouWork.com Review (August 9th, 2007)
Directory Links, Are They Crap (July 9th, 2007)
Link Building with Niche Directories (March 23rd, 2007)
Link Building (partII) (February 27th, 2007)
Link Building (February 21st, 2007)

18 comments

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tubelounge dude
#1. October 3rd, 2007, at 5:12 PM.

I definitely didn’t know about that. I’m constantly visiting directories and submitting sites, but never even thought of that. Really useful tip, I’m gonna start checking url’s from now on.

Pixelhead
#2. October 3rd, 2007, at 6:11 PM.

It will still take a lot of time, but your efforts will be a lot more effective.

Another tip which I have mentioned before:
It also doesn’t hurt to monitor the pages you have submitted your site to, and then click on your link. Many directories sort by hits. Some sort by PR and then Hits, so clicking on your site will move it towards the top with the same PR sites.
When you are doing your submissions I hope you keep track of them in an excel doc. If you do, make a column entitled sort, and list the method of sorting…this will let you know to visit the ones that sort by hits.

Bevelyn
#3. October 4th, 2007, at 4:44 PM.

Yes, I’ve heard that Google has less juice on directory links.
I’ve been submitting sites to directories too, but I’ve never know about that clicking the link to gain Hits. Oh my… I will use this tip for sure. ^_^
Thanks for the tips.

Pixelhead
#4. October 4th, 2007, at 4:49 PM.

Glad to have been of service Bevelyn.

MB Web Design
#5. October 5th, 2007, at 8:06 PM.

It’s an obvious tip, but one that too many people gloss over. Good on you for pointing it out.

Mark Atkins
#6. November 18th, 2007, at 8:16 PM.

If you want to browse around the full contents of Google’s cached version of a website, try using http://www.cached4you.com
eg. for this site try

http://www.cached4you.com/?URL=http://pixelheadonline.com

And you can go from cached page to cached page, without having to copy and paste the URL into Google’s search engine for each URL (compare this to typing cache:pixelheadonline.com into Google to see what I mean).

Pixelhead
#7. November 19th, 2007, at 2:15 AM.

Pretty groovy tool Mark, thanks for commenting.

Leonard
#8. November 19th, 2007, at 5:57 PM.

I can’t help but think that directories are a thing of the past, who still uses them? Anyway they’re still around and your point of checking if the directory and category that you want to list your site on has been cached (indexed) makes a lot of sense.

Another thing you can do is check the page rank of the category page because that adds to the link juice as far as I know.

TigerTom
#9. December 3rd, 2007, at 2:47 PM.

Don’t spend so much time on these. If you find a high PR category in one for $10, get it and move on.

A lot of these directories artificially inflate their PR by buying links themselves, or using link schemes. When the Google algo spots this, they get their PR reduced. I’ve seen it recently. Does this affect their ‘voting power’? Dunno yet.

I think they’re a good way of kicking a site off, but you need to find other sources.

No Win No Fee Solicitors
#10. January 23rd, 2008, at 12:47 PM.

I have to admit that I never thought of checking the cache. Rather I check how much cash the directory owner is asking for!

Pixelhead
#11. January 23rd, 2008, at 1:25 PM.

I do both. If I am using a clients cash for links, I always check for cache…not much of a link if it isn’t cached in Google.

kashif
#12. February 13th, 2008, at 1:09 PM.

I was not aware of this fact . I will surely use this from now on . Thanks pixlehead for this useful tip .

Pixelhead
#13. February 13th, 2008, at 2:09 PM.

Kashif, Google may have changed their algorithm again, but sometimes I have noticed that this works, but at other times, I will do the “site:” search, and find a result. But then when I check the link for cache without the “site:”, it comes up as not being cached. Perhaps the deep spider results are showing up differently?

Steve Elliott
#14. February 14th, 2008, at 12:22 AM.

I’ve seen some interesting (that’s the polite word I guess for a rank drop!) movement in my rankings on Google recently.

As well as the site: attribute, I also use an SEO plugin for Firefox that let’s you analyse search results and look at PR, Yahoo links and tons more.

What surprised me - although I am a novice - is that many of the sites that now outrank me have very few links and no PR. I guess that QUALITY of links AND content is what really counts?

Or is it Cache that is King !

Free i-Phone UK

Pixelhead
#15. February 14th, 2008, at 3:25 PM.

Steve, what is the SEO Plugin that you use?

Goran
#16. May 22nd, 2008, at 8:34 PM.

Directories are time consuming to do. We look at the referrers on the Google Analytics and only submit to those that generate visitors. 4-12 weeks to possibly be added to a directory is far too long. We submit our clients to about 20 links and thats it.

Free Directories
#17. August 3rd, 2008, at 10:50 PM.

That is great advice to check the cache. Many directories are not indexed well, so checking the page cache will save everyone money.

Engineering Colleges
#18. August 4th, 2008, at 2:51 PM.

I agree, the cache date give us a good idea of how important the site is to Google, I check this regularly on sites I am working on, and i also check the cache date when i do link building. it gives me ideas of the general health of the site.

Manish Kapoor

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