• Search Engine Land, Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:45 PM

Eric Ward made a bold statement during a conference call he sticks to even now. He said: "In the same way the engines can evaluate the links pointing at your site and rank you in the top ten, they can also evaluate the links pointing at your site and determine you are link spamming and not rank your site anywhere."

Ward believes lowered rankings are wrongly interpreted as a penalty when what's really happening is a devaluation of an inbound link portfolio. Think of it this way: Something that once had value no longer does. He attempts to sort through the issue to provide clarity, but writes that when SEO experts start looking at this change as an evolutionary process the reasons will become clearer.

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