Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am currently working on a new commercial website for a <topical> company and for the first time i've added a links page.
I have split the links page into 2 areas.
>Topical Links
>Other Useful Links
What are peoples thoughts on doing a links page like this?.
The idea of including a Other useful Links section, was i thought to maybe trade links with other people here who have proper websites but are not specifically of a same topic nature.
Is this considered acceptable?.
<snip>
Thoughts?
[edited by: Marcia at 1:51 pm (utc) on Sep. 15, 2003]
This site is for the mutual education of its users, not for doing business. So it is not used for link swapping.
Your idea of splitting the links page is interesting. I assume that what it amounts to is putting the links that are likely to be of use to your visitors on one page, and segregating the links obtained for PR on a separate one. Seems like a reasonable idea to me.
Purists might argue that if a link is of no use to your users it should not be there. But in the real world things are sometimes different :)
Note that if your on-topic links get numerous you'll want to organize them, too. I've never figured out the purpose of a links page that has 300 links in a long column - entirely useless to visitors.
I've never figured out the purpose of a links page that has 300 links in a long column - entirely useless to visitors.
Couldn't agree more. :)
I have split the links page into 2 areas.
Not bad. You could further divide the Other Useful Links into various sub topics like a directory.
Yep thanks for the input, already done this.
Re. my original post. My apologies to the moderators. I did not realise i couldnt not give any specific site details and ask directly about reciprocal linking.
Thank you for editing my post.
My apologies to the moderators. I did not realise ...
Don't worry, you are far from alone! In a perfect world we would all carefully read the terms of service before making our first post. In the real world, on the other hand ...
Regarding link organization. I've done it both ways. Originally I had my links divided by "related" and "other useful". This got out of control as each of those categories grew. Not to useful for the sites I'm linking to or my visitors.
My current method just divides everything into categories. Within each category I try to keep the number of links reasonable so a visitor doesn't get lost in a bunch of links. I have commercial links all grouped together at the bottom of my page. Since my page is not commercial in nature, I want to emphasize personal and hobby related links, rather than commercial sites.
It seems to work well for me as long as I stay on top of who I'm linking to and continue to be selective about links (especially in the commercial section!).
Kris
Any thoughts?
Clueless
A short while ago, I had someone refuse my link request because I have a directory style link page.
I know a person who got a reply that
we do not link to link farmsbecause he was maintaining a links directory.
If I ever get such a reply I direct the person to forum 12 of Webmasterworld to have a good healthy debate over this issue. Also it helps to have the urls of a few good threads of this forum discussing the merits of link directory and mail them to the hesitant person.
My experience suggests that it's more efficient to move on to someone else rather than try to convince a skeptic that you are legit. Unless the link opportunity truly justifies further effort, I suggest you cut your losses and move on. Perhaps you can contact them again in six months and you'll find they have a new webmaster.
Your link pages should stay on topic with your website. Think of a link page as a resource for your visitors. What would they like to see on your link pages? Would they want to see camping links on a website that sold books? Probably not. There are usually plenty of same topic websites to trade links with.
rogerd <I suggest you cut your losses and move on.>
I am glad to hear that, since that is what I did. I figured one link isn't worth getting heartburn over, or getting into a big debate. If I thought they were likely to drive a lot of traffic to my site I would probably fight, but it wasn't too likely in this case. I did try to "educate" once with a pr-1 site who didn't want to link to me because my links page was only pr-4, but I am not sure why I bothered.
Thanks again,
Clueless
move on.
Maybe I am too adamant :)
I keep a separate folder in my mailbox for the sceptics. And as far as convincing others is concerned ... I feel its necessary to spread the knowledge ;)
Thanks,
Clueless
