Forum Moderators: martinibuster
[webmasterworld.com...]
I've written a piece of software that quite a few people have installed. This has given me many thousands of inbound links from sites unrelated to mine.
freejung wrote:
>>That's probably not a good idea. I'm in favor of reciprocal linking, but you should be looking at the sites you link to... do you mean that you link to them as well, or that they only link to you?
They only link to me.
>>Anyway, such a schame is unlikely to help you and may hurt. It's better to do old-fashioned reciprocal links by actually emailing the webmaster.
No offense taken, but I don't think it's a scam. It's a legitimate piece of software that webmasters choose to use (for free). They agree not to modify my copyright at the bottom which includes a link to my home page. Since this script generates thousands of pages of *real* content (forum post archives), Google rightfully takes it all in.. and my link is at the bottom of all of these pages.
I didn't do it originally (two years ago) as a plan to get PR, it just happened that way. It's the same effect that a software company like Jelsoft gets for producing the vBulletin product. Every forum page on every site using vBulletin links right back to the Jelsoft homepage (PR8).
Many scripts/programs that are offered for free keep a footer with a link to the developers site. I think this helps spread the word of the software. I see no problem with it. Look at pretty much any forum, including this one as well as UBB sites.
I'm not sure it's necessary to put a link on every page but as you suggest with the example here with BestBBS v3.11 it's not been a problem for any software company I know. It's a similar discussion to designers and a link back from each page of a clients site. Overkill? Perhaps, but it hasn't hurt anyone that I know of.
