Link Development[2]

[shaijujose]

Hi all,

Really my eyes opened. Thanks for all advices/suggestions/
comments.
My special thanks to: dougs, rogend, mohammed, nakulgoyal, and mack.

Kindly clear these too
1.
What meant by "good links". My understanding is relevant links.
For ex: Technology forums

Good links means: Technology sites having good page rank in google. Right?

2. Whom before I am, in charge of this section was submitted our link in a lot of FFAs. Now the site has the page rank of 3 in google. Not getting much traffic from search engines. I checked the visitors data, getting traffic from ~ 20 main search engines ie submitted in 20 search engines. If I submit in medium and small search engines like searchhippo.com, what will be the output? Will get good results or wastage of time? what are your experiences?
Any good list of search engines and directories that allow free "link submission" cordialy welcome.

Again thanks for information. Expect reply to above queries.

Regards,
Shaiju Jose

[fathom]

1.
What meant by "good links". My understanding is relevant links.
For ex: Technology forums

Good links means: Technology sites having good page rank in google. Right?

Good links can mean different things to different people. But generally (as you have indicated) links from sites that share the same topics as yours will have the best overall effect. Also links from directories both general (all topics) and industry or regionally specific will help a great deal.

2. Whom before I am, in charge of this section was submitted our link in a lot of FFAs. Now the site has the page rank of 3 in google. Not getting much traffic from search engines. I checked the visitors data, getting traffic from ~ 20 main search engines ie submitted in 20 search engines. If I submit in medium and small search engines like searchhippo.com, what will be the output? Will get good results or wastage of time? what are your experiences?
Any good list of search engines and directories that allow free "link submission" cordialy welcome.

DMOZ is a good place to start but it will likely take some time to get listed. Some of these are paid for, others may not apply to you but:

Josh.nu
Jayde.com
Whatuseek.com
Arielis.com
Yakeo.com
Ranks.com
Galaxy.com
Phatoz.com
JoeAnt.com
Fly2net.com
Blakkat.com
Imarvel.com
Gimpsy.com
SoMuch.com
SeekOn.com
1st-Spot.Net
Patient.co.uk
Directory.net
Re-Quest.net
7in1web.com
Myallfish.com
Townnet.com
GoGuides.org
SurfPoint.com
Peekaboo.net
Lifestyle.co.uk
Microwho.com
Smartlinks.org
123World.com
SuperPages.ca
Linkopedia.com
SunSteam.com
Fitnesspros.net
Rex.Skyline.net
Psychnet-uk.com
Canadopedia.com
Travelbritain.co.uk
Allwebdirectories.com
microwho.com/general/sites.html
travelbritain.co.uk
patient.co.uk/topics.asp
lifestyle.co.uk/index.htm
psychnet-uk.com
directory.net
webdirectory.com
smartlinks.org
rex.skyline.net
imarvel.com/best/web-sites.html
re-quest.net
fly2net.com
townnet.com
phatoz.com
arielis.com
pharos-search.com
achoo.com
wwwomen.com
dcpages.ari.net
onemission.com
webworldindex.com
proudlycanadian.net

[rogerd]

Shaiju, one definition of a "good link" is a site that isn't carrying a Google penalty. There has always been concern that linking out (even unwittingly) to penalized sites could be dangerous. (The old "bad neighborhood" advice from GG.) With the toolbar oddness right now, though, it's tougher to spot penalized sites. Stay away from obvious link schemes and spammers and you should be fine.

When you are submitting to directories, it's not a bad idea to check for clean linkage - some may call a CGI script with a code number that won't help you with any SE that counts linkage.

[mikeshen]

Hi fathom,
If I add my site to all sites in the list.
Will my site be banned by Main Search Engine?

Mike

[topr8]

>>If I add my site to all sites in the list.
Will my site be banned by Main Search Engine?

no, although i doubt you'll get accepted by all in that list.

[rogerd]

Mike, some of the directories are specialized for a particular topic. Others may have weird script links that won't help you with SEs, although it may still be worth submitting. In some cases, your topic may be buried so deep that neither googlebot nor human visitors will find it.

There should be no risk in submitting to any legitimate directory. Watch out for any "directories" that require you to add links to your site or give any other indication of some kind of link scheme. Otherwise, no worries.

[lloyd]

Rogerd, how do you check for clean linkage?

Please let me know.

[mcavill]

If you roll your cursor over the link and it simply displays your url in the status bar (bottom left in IE) - www.linkdomain.com then its a clean link

If the status bar says something like www.domain.com/cgi-bin/cc_goodbye.cgi?www.linkdomain.com - or - www.domain.com/cgi-bin/cc_goodbye.cgi?exit2 it's not a clean link - and won't overly help your backward link count with the searchengines.

Sometimes a website may hide that the url the link points to and the status bar may display a sentence or something, in which case, have a look at the source and find the <a href=""> tags and check whats between the quotes - as above if it simply points to the domain its a clean link.

hope that helps.

[fathom]

Rogerd, how do you check for clean linkage?

I add to all I can - my perspective is "link count" and "PageRank" are merely benefits of directory submission, your focus is visitation and sales.

A directory with no PageRank, JavaScript links, filtering through cgi, disallowing bots to the listed page, "noindex, follow" robot tag, or any other "stop" function can still send a "visitor", and thus a sale.

I would much rather get more sales than more link count. :)

[rogerd]

Sorry for the slow reply, lloyd, but it looks like the question has been well-answered. :) I'd check to see if the proposed link page was indexed (if not, perhaps there's a problem - robot exclusion, no links to the page, etc.). If it is, take a peek at Google's cache just to be sure the webmaster isn't cloaking something else. A page that is indexed but for which you can't view the cache could be a danger sign.

All in all, though, ultra-sophisticated link schemes to defraud reciprocal linkees aren't common. Most of the problems are fairly obvious and easy to spot, and more often can be blamed on stupidity than craftiness.

[moltar]

Want to add to mcavill's post.

Instead of looking in the source you can do the following:
Click on the link, but do not release the mouse button, and look in the status bar, that way you can see where link actually points. To avoid actually clicking on that link you just drag your mouse away from link *without releasing it*. Now you can release the button.

[utica]

Thanks for the list Fathom. It is a great place to start for my links campaign.

[DslLmi]

Thanks for that list.... IT helped me as well!

[Opportune Moment]

Who in their right mind would pay a single penny to added to any of the sites listed in that long list? It just makes me furious that these pathetic websites want money to be listed on a directory that NO ONE, absolutely NO ONE goes to. What a scam these sites.

[fathom]

Well everyone has an opinion Opportune_Moment.

I take a different perspective... who in there right mind would say "no I don't want to sell you something, you came from the wrong place". ;)

Assuming you paid -- and got nothing - you may have a leg to stand on and sound advice.

If you speak not from experience and only assume, then I believe the phrase is ass-out-of-u-and-me for listening.

If but a few sales materialized and you make some profit over the year then "why not"?

...are sales that good that you can turn some away? :)

[Opportune Moment]

Here's my point, have you ever frequented any of these sites? Ahh it's not worth my time to justify why these sites are a total waste of my money. Do they give you click/impression/any kind of data? Spending money where you cannot quantify results is just a bad business decision. But if you think paying for any of these sites is a good idea, well I have phrase for you.
"Want to buy some swamp land in Florida?"..it's a better investment.

[fathom]

"Want to buy some swamp land in Florida?"..it's a better investment.

Ya disney was built on swamp land - walt got it for $1,500.00 to!

[netcommr]

a few sales materialized and you make some profit ...

damn straight, blew my mind but ya get a once in a while visitor and they end up buying... I mean 3 hits a year from some and 1 sale, I'll take 30% return any day... I get a ton of listings on these little guys cause there all over the place, after a while you have so many small links out there bringing a few hits here and there. You can make a living at that!

AND, Opportune_Moment, its cheaper than just using Overture(if you know what to look for). It is another option for those people who take enough pride/value in their site to put the effort into it.

I tend not to just put all eggs in one basket, diversity rules any day.

[curryrivel]

lloyd

The best way to check for clean linkage is to hover over the link and right click, then select properties.

By just checking the status bar, this can be overwritten with javascript to make it look like a hard html link, when it is actually a redirect script and does hardly any good for your page ranking.

By selectively adding your site to directories, you may not gain many visitors from them directly, but you do build up PR which in turn gains extra traffic resulting from being higher in search results.

[edited by: tedster at 10:53 pm (utc) on Feb. 14, 2004]

[WebmasterFisherman]

Regarding clean linkage:
I have a footer link from a big directory site with over 30 pages with PR4 and up.

The link window.status is (#1) http://www.xyz.com/index.php?id=5&b=5 Anchor text is about 40 chars.

I have a strong feeling that index.php file variables (parameters) scare away GoogleBot from counting this as a backlink.
Another idea is that GoogleBot sees a long anchor text (+ suspects some sort of trap from index.php variables) and this is whay axes these links.

Yet another idea is the combination of two.

I personally saw links of the sort:

(#2) www.somebodyssite.com/rt.phtml?uid=1231&url=http://www.xyzzz.com

or

(#3) www.somebodyssite.com/cgi-bin/go.cgi?http://www.xyzzz.com

registered as a backlink for www.xyzzz.com

Programmingwise those three links look the same (especially #1 and #2).

Any other variables to consider?
Anything that I'm missing?