What are Linkless Mentions?

A web designer  has to go through the steps in optimizing a website properly to get good feedback from Google algorithms and get more views by increasing the website ranking in search results.

Linkless Mentions  is the name of a business or a name that is mentioned without any additional links or any reference without a link that is used to optimize the website in the search engine. The interesting point is that linkless-mentions have become so important these days.



In general, from the earliest days, the Google search engine has used links as a tool to determine the relevance and credibility of website pages. The more links you give to a page from a particular website, especially from reputable ones, the more important it is to Google in search.

In fact, generally, links are so important in SEO and show the trust of the user, and according to all these points mentioned,  SEO experts  try their best to increase the ranking of their website by acquiring links or buying them, which is one of the key factors in  SEO strategy  


Every year, Google provides valid and up-to-date algorithms for ranking websites based on different features of a website. The following section mentions three algorithms: Penguin, Google PageRank, and Fred, which measure websites according to the type of linking or penalize them for having too many unwanted links. This makes link creation much more specialized than before for SEO experts.

Penguin algorithm:

The  penguin algorithm  was created with the aim of identifying unnatural link building and spam; this algorithm pays a lot of attention to linking websites and tries to penalize websites that contain irrelevant backlinks and the ones which content is irrelevant to keywords.



In other words, the Penguin algorithm is a way to fight websites that want to gain high rankings by using unnatural methods such as spam linking. The Penguin algorithm is still an important and fundamental algorithm and is one of the main algorithms of Google.

This algorithm visits websites throughout the day and night and may penalize the websites if it detects signs of spam or other unnatural linking methods.



The goal of this algorithm is to reduce the effectiveness of black hat methods and let Google take control of the situation. With a better understanding of the linking process, the Penguin algorithm can raise the ranking of websites that received natural and credible links and downgrade websites that received spam and fake links.

Google PageRank Algorithm:

It is an algorithm for ranking web pages and website ranking, which considers as a score between zero and ten, that is measured through the  inbound links  of a website so that the more inbound links to a website, the more value it has in terms of Google. It will be considered a credible website. In other words, every link to a website is considered as a vote to  increase the ranking of that website, and another point is that if the linking website is valuable and credible, the vote will also be considered as a valuable one.



Page Rank was introduced by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford. PageRank is calculated by analyzing inbound links to a website. Larry Page defined the way he examines each link on a website. He considered it a privilege for each link; having links from popular websites is more valuable than regular ones.

FRED algorithm:

The  FRED algorithm  is an algorithm that searches for websites that have little profit for users but generate a lot of revenue through excessive advertising for website owners. In other words, this algorithm is looking for websites that have linked more than usual. They also have a lot of advertisements and, at the same time, have low-value content. Websites that seem to have no purpose other than  making money for the website owners  and do not have useful content for the users, so they only have advantages for site owners, which is contrary to the goal of the google search engine. These kinds of sites are identified by this algorithm more than any others.

In general, Google has introduced many algorithms, each of which was more similar to human intelligence than the previous one. In fact, over the past few years, search engines have been able to measure the credibility of the website by any reference to the brand and anywhere online, with the positive and negative idea that is mentioned.

How do Linkless-Mentions work?

All the algorithms described so far in this article used links to rank the website, especially the Google PageRank algorithm, which considered each link to a website as a vote. The more votes a page gets, especially from credible ones, will make the website more valuable.



Of course, these types of links are not the only factor in ranking the website, and given that  SEO experts  only tried to attract the attention of this algorithm by linking, after a while, in early 2016, Google officially removed PageRank from its toolbar to show everyone How to judge the credibility of a website has lots of points other than linking. It is quite clear that Google can understand the linkless mentions to a brand or website on the Internet and use it as a point for validation.



Many senior executives have pointed to the impact of linkless mentions on rankings, including in 2016, Bing product senior manager Duane Forrester said that linkless mentions could be considered as strong signals, same as backlinks. This statement confirms the theory that positive mentions of a brand can  increase the website's ranking.





Also, there is another opinion about linkless mentions:

"It means that once a connection is made by someone typing in a brand name or other search query and then clicking on a site, it creates a connection in Google's eyes. The search engine can then store that info and use it in the context of unlinked mentions around the web to help weight rankings of particular sites."







In general, if you publish quality content on your website and that content is shared continuously and extensively, Google can conclude that this content or your site generally contains useful and credible content. The website is valuable enough; sharing can be both in the form of links and linkless mentions to the content you want.

The Google search engine considers all the mentions to your website, whether they are links or linkless ones, and uses them as a key factor in measuring the value of your website.

How to use Linkless Mentions to optimize a website?

When your content or brand is widely shared on the Internet, your website gets more attention from search engines. There are different ways to make your website stand out, including the following, which can be used in optimizing a website:

1- Social Networks:

Today, due to the availability of social networks to the public and also due to the fact that users spend a lot of time in social media throughout the day and night, one of the basic ways to see the website name and its content is the social network.

2- Participate in Q&A:

Most of the websites use question and answer boxes to be aware of the positive and negative points of users about their websites; by eliminating the negative points as soon as possible, you can  make your website more valuable, therefore it gives you the opportunity of being more visible.

Also, when you participate in questions and answers from other websites and brands and give complete and comprehensive answers to the questions, your website will be more visible, and its credibility will increase.

3- Use PR:

PR, stands for Public Relations; it causes us to see the website name by inserting our brand name in the commercial publications. An SEO should pay more attention to the public relations section of the website to achieve this goal in a more powerful way.

4- Do not neglect the guest post:

When you write an article and create content on a website other than yours, it is called the guest post, it is equivalent to backlinks, and it helps you increase your ranking, so your content and website will be seen more.

Last word:

After using  linkless mentions, by using tools such as Google Alerts, Awario, Talkwalker Alerts, Mention, you can identify the mentions to your website on the Internet and use the linkless mentions as much as possible in optimizing your site.