Forum Moderators: buckworks
I've always found it pretty easy to grow links which point to blogs and other sites but I'm finding it particularly challenging to grow links to an ecommerce website, mostly because the site is so blatantly commercial.
Any ideas on this subject about links and ecommerce, it's importance or non-importance, would really be appreciated.
A couple of thoughts on how I approach getting links:
Vendor links are important for us - they generate direct sales, and their sites are generally well linked themselves.
Providing review products to related media companies is a good way to get a bit of coverage and a link. If you don't think you're quite ready to crack the New York Times, have a look for small but well respected sites/blogs in your niche, there's a good chance they will be receptive.
And there's always the old standby of writing good content and attracting organic links. If you're selling something you probably know a lot more about it than most of your potential customers - write some useful articals, guides or FAQs, and hopefully people will start linking to them spontaniously.
That used to be a golden way to obtain links, now the media outlets are not as free with the links. They are hip to page rank and stuff now.
[edited by: Rugles at 6:29 pm (utc) on Oct. 17, 2006]
You can also partially refund your customer order for a link from their site.
Google [ Matt C. ] talked about mutual admiration societies and the low value of them a couple of years ago at the Florida Pubcon.
During the Big Daddy update these type of pages were devaluated. Not sure if it was a part of Big Daddy or a separate signal update.
If you think about it, it was a pretty easy algo change. A page that has many outbounds, but has few or zero inbounds should pass little or no value.
Are you talking about linking to a forum, or specific types of links?
Thanks.
At its core, I think a site is likely to attract links for the same reasons that it's likely to suceed overall: it has a clear USP. "Why would someone (organically) link to your site?" is a very similar question to "why would someone buy from you once they've found you?"
This statement came be made for every site on the web including adwords absense informational sites that provide a bunch of so called information.
I have an ecommerce site going on 4 years and I am still active in trading links.
bwnbwn said
"A better way to phrase it is to be careful of "all" sites as they come and go like fire ants."
I have found a very good way to check a site. Ecommerce or other in my field
I get a link request and upon review my link is active they look like a site that will come along, clean good nav etc. I will save the request and revisit the site in a month or so.
If my link is gone deleted I will request an exchange from them as I see they are a site that will police their work and am confidant they will remain a good partner.
I use this is on newer sites not all sites fall in this as we all know, some I am very happy to put their link up.
I check manually all my links at least once a year for sites that have gone bad. I go over them and look for the bad stuff.
You can use automated exchanges that check to make sure your link is live but to me that is not the problem bad sites is the real problem.
I really love the new linfrom on msn as I can see why some sites are doing much better than they really should blocking all outbound links but active in link trading.
Snakes everywere....
Jack_Hughes, could you explain this a bit: "anything that make it easy for someone to answer a post on a forum works best I've found."
well, an awful lot of people on forums want to look the expert, but without doing a whole lot of work. so, typically they will do a search on google for a link or two that answers a particular query. say, blue widgets vs grey widgets or blue widget introduction or some such thing where somebody has asked on a forum what the difference is between blue and grey widgets. or what blue widgets are and so on...
now that's not to say that forum links count for much. they don't but if you've got those links and your competitors don't then that is a signal of quality for your site. the link will also be to content deep inside your site another nice vote of confidence for your site. it also adds to having a nice natural linking pattern to your site. a few probably paid for links from directories, dmoz, yahoo directory a spattering of forum posts, the odd blog post referring to your site, a few press releases with embedded links etc etc.
all things that make google think that theres something on your site that people have voted for with links, so there must be something good there.
it just takes a modest amount of creativity to come up with the article ideas and then to write them. not all of the articles will be hits, but it only takes one or two and you are away.
