Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I suggested in another thread that it unfair to link to someone who emails you in this way, because you are rewarding them for spamming you. I'd far rather reward websites who've not spammed me by giving them a link!
Perhaps the solution is something like a cross between Digg and DMOZ but without any attempt at quality or pre-review. New websites would add themselves (one add per domain name per year) to the appropriate category and it would be there for a week.
The week-long listing wouldn't be for SEO benefit, but to enable other webmasters to see new sites in their category, and decide if they should write about them or link to them. No pressure, no spam, and everyone on an even footing. If you're a good site then you'll pick up some links there. If you don't then you'd best spend the next year making your site worth linking to and resubmit then.
recommend that you contact suitable websites to ask for links, but to many webmasters such requests are clearly spam.
The problem is that the majority of link requests are not sent to suitable sites. Unsuitable, brainless link requests are seen as spam because they ARE spam.
If you are in a competitive environment, a link is next to impossible to get from related websites, in the same business. Would YOU link to the opposite team? No. You would want them to get buried under a very heavy stone, even if they were a hundred times better than you. It's just about money.
If you are in a collaborative environment, a link is possible if you have the contents to match the claims. Even if it's just "the worst website on the internet" - people will link it, if you send it to the right environments. It's just about traffic.
There's plenty of other possibilities to reach people, and stuff, but figure it out for yourself, do some research, what sites do you like to go to yourself? perhaps a good option, you're most likely not alone on the internet.
Perhaps the solution is something like a cross between Digg and DMOZ but without any attempt at quality or pre-review.
You mean, like your email inbox but with it's junk mail filter turned off?
How many minutes do you think it would take for every category to become spammed out with pages and pages of hideous scraper sites? Who would take the time to go through those links searching for a nice site?
Unsuitable, brainless link requests are seen as spam because they ARE spam.
Almost 100% of the link request letters I receive sound exactly the same and use the same templates I've seen. When I get that rare gem that sounds like someone actually took the time to look at my site and write a personalized message that clearly shows how our sites are related and why I would want to link to the site, then I will actually consider the request.
But most of the time I can safely delete the messages before I finish the second sentence.
What I really hate is when I get a message from some person with a canned message asking for a link exchange with my site A. Then 10 minutes later I get the exact same message, except that Site A was replaced with Site B. Then another with Site C, etc.
