Forum Moderators: martinibuster
So this guide is to learn how to do this the proper way and get new sites off to a flying start.
Linking for PageRank
The PR is Google's way of 'grading' a site's worth and is taken as a sign of status - with every site awarded a number (rank) that ascends with time and not solely based on content. PageRank is generally accepted as some sort of 'award' and although it's not official, apart from Alexa it's currently the only thing available with which to grade a site.
Many place great authority with the foolbar, and some trade, exchange and only deal with sites of a certain rank eg: PR6 and above, this is very foolish as a site can be really awful, possess little content or usefulness and still be given a fairly high PR (I've seen sites with PR 6 that are no more than shells)
not to mention missing out on real good quality traffic because of a bad judgement based on the little green bar. Some site owners refuse to exchange with sites lower than PR4, so it will largly depend on how desperate you are for links. The foolbar needs to be thought of more like a 'reward bar' as sites rise in rank and are given a higher rank with the passing of time, usually every 3 months or so. So a higher rank should give you some better status, and thus make it easier to obtain links, if human nature and incentive is anything to go by.
Linking for Traffic
Traffic is the most important and the main reason for linking. At the end of the day a website needs traffic to build more traffic, sales, reputation and presence on the web, and swapping links is the best way of doing it. For one thing it's free and the only cost is the time it takes to perform the exchange. The benefits are that links get spidered and can generate additional links, some sites will approach you and some will just link without your immediate knowledge. But not all links are equal in PR or traffic levels, so any unknown links may be untargeted and not favourable.
Try and get links on targeted sites as this will provide both sets of visitors with useful information and make life a bit easier for everyone. I'm always thankful for webmasters who go to the trouble of setting up a few pages of extra links that point me in the right direction and your visitors will like this too.
Approaching and asking for links
This is quite easy, well the approaching bit anyway - but it's harder to convince the bigger sites to link with you, if they are more established. Good sites just don't always link easily, and why should they give you a link when they can charge for it.
If you managed to get a few PR6's to link with you, then I say that's an achievement, but it's near impossible to get PR 7 and above to grant you that favour, especially when you are the new site on the block! As earlier stated, PR is given according to the time a site has spent on the web, so a new site can't expect to be a PR 4 status right away - it has to pay it's dues and EARN that PR.
How to approach webmasters
All you need is a simple email. Just ask politely saying their site is nice looking, targeted and would be useful to your needs and place a link to their site first. This normally does the trick - I've gotten hundreds of exchanges this way, and it works very well.
But some will refuse, or insist that your PR be higher before they exchange (even though their site has lower value), and some will even insist they get a homepage link in return for a recip page placement from them (yes, these parasites do exist) but most webmasters are kind hearted folks and are usually chuffed you approached them!
A word of warning though - DON'T use link exchanges paid or free! They only ever send untargeted and desperate pleas for links that won't provide decent traffic or refferals, and once signed up with these exchanges, it's very tough to cancel or unsubscribe from the emails and offers. Just beware that's all.
You mean because the paid links aren't 'votes'?
Actually, you can find out if a domain has been blacklisted, check the IP it is hosted on (and what other sites are on that IP), the whois history, check if the domain has dmoz or Yahoo listings, etc.
>>> married
LOL, nope. I don't "fight" with him - I just am not afraid to speak my mind (which can often get me into trouble) and call fallacies and contradictions.
The guy who is truly blessed with that honor (ha ha) is "one of us" - we're one of those geeky webmaster world couples. ;-)
I've seen how this works. I say, "No, they're not real votes", then you say, "Well, reciprocal links aren't either", and then WE get into a whole word war. Aint gonna do it! That's for you and sugarrae! ;)
Sure, as far as SEs are concerned, paid links are votes; as are reciprocal links -- albeit arguably not with as much weight. I meant fake from an ethical point of view. Someone links to you because you pay them to do so, whereas reciprocal linking (if done correctly) is mutually beneficial and helps both parties towards better rankings.
If people are prepared to pay for links, then there's nothing wrong with that. But the title of this post was "Link Exchange Guide: Doing it the right way", so that issue seems a little off subject IMO.
Whois queryThis only tells you the length of time a domain has been bought for and any personal details about the owner. Name, Address etc
Apart from that, what use is it?
If you type whois dot sc forward slash example.com into your URL address field you'll not only get back reg information but you will also get info on other sites hosted on that server, plus complete dmoz and yahoo directory listings. And for those who watch this sort of thing, it also tells you the site's Alexa ranking and traffic trendwatch. Last but not least you can see how many times this record's been requested, which can give you an idea of notoriety the site has with webmasters (as it's got to be mostly nosy webmasters checking the whois info, right?), which could be the starting or ending point for digging further to figure out why so many webmasters are interested in this website's whois. Could be any number of innocent or not so innocent reasons.
It's a shame the internet is full of junk info about linking practices. Most of this info is either too slow for minimal gain, or it's the same old stuff doing the rounds. I just checked about 20 articles about link development from About (a resource I usually find respectable) and wasn't surprised to find the same link advice doing the rounds - justlike the rest of the web. These articles are written by non-experts in marketing, pr, communications, advertising etc, and are still believed, and labelled as experts when quite clearly their not.
These articles are full of damaging, unproductive and overused 'techniques' which will outgrow their usefulness once they've served the very basic purpose -and that's a fact.
(I've read them and that's why I can say this.)
I've thought about this quite a lot, and think the main reasons why anyone would use these time consuming methods are because they don't know how else to do this, or they don't have money or resources to make the techniques work. It's just wrong to fool people into thinking the link building process is that simple, and I think we all secretly know it's not.
Building links is real hard, time consuming work, and the successful ones (the few) aren't going to tell the world how 'they' managed to secure eg: 10'000 links - they just aren't. I certainly wouldn't share with people I've never met in the flesh before - and I'm pretty sure I still wouldn't let them know even then. A lot of these link development articles are purely written so writers can add their link, the article is merely a 'tool' for people to click links, quality isn't a priority.
I've seen too many articles with the very familiar titles such as:
Promotion is the Key
Boost your web profits with Links
Submit using links
10 New ways to get a traffic Rush
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(the above article headings are made up by me)
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The disturbing thing about this Linking info/advice is why is it being repeated, when there's ample supply of it easily accessible - times up on that guess hehe.
Most of this advice on Linking has been done to death by most by now, and the writers only want to give readers the bare minimum knowledge as it's my theory they don't want competitors catching them up, equalling their efforts or stealing their hard won traffic. That's helpful to the writer as his/her link gets another visitor, but the content is too basic to help the reader to get to that next stage in Link development.
The information/advice seems to be based on common categories:
How To Articles
Basic Linking Strategy
but hardly any mention on advanced techniques or proof of existence of what they say works. I've seen a lot of linking hints and tips and advice on the basics but little else to make me think the writers are Link Strategy experts, infact the more basic stuff they write, the more convinced I'll be to not accept them as experts - and I'm sure others take me point on this.
These link advice promoters say things like "Well you need to do this, and write articles regularly and submit to directories" But they don't tell you how to go about it step by step, or give thorough detailed explanation about why it works, or doesn't if that's the case. There's too much of this - yeah, do this as I've done and you'll get success. But what they advise is so basic and general it can't possibly fit in with everyone's web site plans or strategy - and thus must be pretty useless - 'it's a one size fits all' thing, and is why it will fail.
But they won't tell you how THEY got to where they are, and the problem with the web and link advice in particular, is that so many desperately want to make a million that they buy into anything that might make that tiny bit of difference. The site owner hopes it'll propel them closer to the desired level of traffic and the link advice promoter gets his/her recognition - plus a valuable weblink back to their site (I wonder which one is the most useful hmmmm).
Because linking is one of the few options that is genuinely FREE, everyone seeks this advice with a vengence, hopefully finding that 'Gold', the gold doesn't exist, and if it does the owners of the gold aren't telling. People know these basics by now and have used many of them and (I'm guessing as this info has been utilised), due to the basic nature of the techniques involved they must become obsolete at some point and reach a certain success rate or form of usefulness eg:
recommend us forms - The form has served it's purpose and that's reached it's 'life', okay, this is just one technique.
Others are:
Link swap forms
Auto submit programs
email swap mailings
viral
etc. but they are all basic and have their limits to what can be achieved by using them. For instance email letters only have a 4% success rate and depends on the size of each list held. Most webmasters cannot afford £20'000 agency fees, or afford to rent lists to aid them or have the amount of contacts needed to make link emailing the success it needs to be.
The problem with most of these non-costly methods is once these are been placed on a site, the techniques alone aren't enough to give the advantage needed to get a surge of traffic to the site, and each method needs another method to promote that). I bet they don't tell you that when writing their advice.
People want fast results and major traffic, all the techniques I've mentioned (apart from viral) won't give that unless money is available to roll out what works on a larger scale. So naturally, people seek free options, but they are uncertain about what to use and all there is to go on at present is the very basic advice floating around the web. The reason why nobody's written some massive guide about these 'secrets' is either they don't know or their simply protecting themselves from theft and nearest competition etc.
Another thing I've noticed is that to give the correct advice, one must know a lot about the advice seeker's website - so the advice can be tailored, but that's impossible to do in an article or forum, and is why these articles are so general. Link building is so very personal and has to be tailored to an individual's requirements or it'll fail - er not deliver the precise results. It's the results that count, and so much lack of 'what is' the result exists, and will be different for many and impossible to advise on this without the full details of each case.
I think that's why these link development mail shots fail - as I cannot see anyone replying back to an untargeted mailing. Most webmasters that engage in this mailing practise probably haven't even checked out the sites in question, and have extracted a bunch of mail addresses, in the hope the site gets a load of traffic that may be of benefit to them. I always prefer to view a site before linking, it helps me get a feel for who and what I'm linking to.
In short there's way too much rehashed info about linking, but little to help really make that level of difference many seek from the web. Not surprisingly, the web can't deliever as the info doesn't exist.
I can't say this is fact - as the web is too big a place to be researched, but from what I've seen so far - it's disappointing. I'm saying don't hold on to the hope that maybe one day someone will release the secrets that made them rich and successful - I doubt it.
...there's way too much rehashed info about linking, but little to help really make that level of difference many seek from the web.
You forgot to add, "Except for when researching on WebmasterWorld." As it looks like you've learned a thing or two from this thread alone.
Webby sites get problems he.
Forgot that oops he. WebmasterWorld is one of the few resources I trust. It's nicely categorised so makes it faster when I want me info, but I miss the search facility sob.
i.e. find other areas that target the same people you are, but without targeting them with the same product.
>>>when almost every page 1-40 is just other competitors
Or, if you're willing to put forth some effort - if there really is nothing but commercial sites selling, then it seems you have identified a need with little competition - maybe fill it.
Turns out, the meta tag crammers became viewed by search engines as spammers. The same is happening with links. Google, Yahoo, MSN: link whores = spammers.
The simpletons hope that by blindly purchasing some links they are going to become millionaires. Hehe Dream On.
I go for mainly PR3's and PR4's, although I tend not to buy as I like free stuff. Yep, free is good.
But, the smart spammers have survivied and last I checked were eating well. I'm not saying to start spamming. Simply that recip linking needs to be done with strategy and smarts. Implementation is key.
