Keeping track of link partners

How do you do it?

[bonanza]

As I make linking a more active part of my strategy (vs. natural passive linking that occurs without my trying), I find that it's important, if not critical, to keep track of the actions taken and the big picture:

What websites are good potential link partners?
What websites have been contacted?
What websites have replied back yes or no?
What websites are linking back?
Do I link to them?

The engineer/web developer in me wants to create a database application that keeps track of all this, sends emails, feeds the database of my websites with links in them, even checks to make sure that sites are linking back.

The time manager in me thinks I might be able to get away with a simple spreadsheet and some elbow grease. ;)

I know there are actual software packages that can be purchased to do this.

Are there any open source PHP/MySql projects out there tackling this?

What do you do?

[Mohamed_E]

> What do you do?

Simple spreadsheet.

[gsx]

And you could have a field which states the page that they link back to you with. A simple Perl/PHP script could be written to read the pages in regularly and check that they are linking to you.

[Shak]

We have just had such a tool written in-house, havent started using it yet (waiting for the next project)

didnt take too long, 2 days or so if I remember correctly.

covers items such as:

date of submission
date of inclusion
method of contact (email, web, phone)
url of links page
site name

etc etc

Shak

[The Contractor]

We use an inexpensive directory script/software and setup custom fields as Shak mentioned above. Each category is the client name,each subcategory is the client site, and each listing is actually the linking site name with the hyperlink leading to the page where the link is located. Search feature and "add-url" form is just icing-on-the-cake. This keeps things very organized and also counts the links ;)

We have this directory password protected and blocked to keep the info private.

[Shak]

I forgot to add that our tool is web based so multiple users/bountee hunters can work at the same time on a project, and be upto date on who/what has already been approached.

seemed a good way if outside people are doing the work for us.

Shak

[SEO practioner]

Shak: Sounds like a very neat / cool application you have there... Was it really hard to do? We are looking into doing something similar too.

Thanks for any help

[Shak]

I am sure if "jPJones" is logged on over the weekend he will share some of the technicalities of it.

I just told him what in an ideal world I would like, and he went away and did the bits n pieces required.

Shak

[SEO practioner]

Shak, your programmer is obviously a fairly good and efficient one I think.

:-)

[lorax]

Shak,
That's a very good idea. Did you set it up so that when the hired guns log in they only see the projects they have permissions to see or are they allowed to see all of the projects?

[universetoday]

I've got an Access database that I built. It's super lightweight, but keeps tracks of all the contacts, links, reciprocal link location, link category, etc. I've sort of jury-rigged it to actually generate the HTML for all the link pages.

I'd say it's absolutely critical to maintain this. Once you've got a baseline of links in your system, you want to set up a routine of re-contacting your partners and confirming their contact information every 3 months or so. This is a great way to build a relationship with your partners.

What I have is an upgrade path for marketing partners. From a simple link to a link partnership to a more complex cooperative marketing relationship. It's a giant numbers game. If you contact enough people, you start to rub shoulders with some amazing, like-minded people who can really help you move your business forward.

[DarkFriend]

Bonanza:

There are both downloadable scripts on the net as well as online services that let you maintain a database of links, check for reciprocation, and better organize. We've used a few and settled on one that does about 90% of what we need done. Good luck!

[jpjones]

Following up on Shaks' post, a brief outline of what the software we wrote in-house does -

Uses MySQL database
Allows multiple projects
Allows multiple users
Specific users can be assigned to specific projects (so they don't see the whole list)

Defaults set on a per-project basis (e.g. default email address, default URL etc)

Shows last X numer of URLs submitted

URL Addition form has input for Link URL, Submission Method, entered Title, entered Description (if listed in directory), destination URL (useful if doing some form of tracking via logs), general comments, date when link was requested, and date link added. Oh, and the PR too ;)

Also added a little bookmarklet which is added to the browser links panel, as a time saving function. Once you're at a page you want a link back from, clicking on this brings up a window prefilled with the link URL, and the other defaults set.

It works, though no doubt it could benefit from a couple more features, such as "which websites are linking back to us?"

What it doesn't do is send out emails requesting links etc - it's a tracker only, not a spammer. :)

JP

[mil2k]

I know some of the Top Guns who use bots to do this work. It's a tricky thing to do bcoz your link-partners may not appreciate this.

[HyperGeek]

We have a script/spider/bot/goonywidget that validates whether or not our link still exists in it's specified form on the index page of affiliate sites.

Works well and took about three hours to write. You may even be able to find a non-proprietary script that you can modify.

[seoRank]

To handle the problem of link management, we search and send out emails to webmasters of prospect reciprocal link sites and invite them to fill up a form on our (client) site in order to offer them a reciprocal link. Further, we have developed an online application in-house, which is installed on the client server and it does the following –

1. It has an admin control panel to check all new link requests. The admin can review the link requests data and details.

2. The link request comes in 2 types – people who have made a reciprocal link active before applying (as detailed in the form) or they can choose to activate their link once our side of the link is active.

3. The admin can select the request and ‘Activate’ it or ‘Decline’ it.

4. If the admin selects to activate the link, the application automatically creates a link for the requested party and sends out an email to the partner.

5. If the admin selects to ‘decline’ the request, an email is automatically sent to the link requestor detailing the ‘selected’ reason for decline.

6. The application checks for the live link on the partner site at a frequency set by the admin in the control panel.

7. If the link scan module of the application reports an inactive link on partner site, the application sends an email alert to the admin and the partner requesting the link restoration.

8. If the link is detected to be inactive for consecutive 10 days, the application automatically deletes the partner link from the site and informs the partner.

9. The admin can create multiple template pages and categories from the control panel so that links per page can be limited to desired numbers (this is set from admin control panel) to avoid spammy looking link pages. Each of these categories also automatically appear in the link request submit form.

10. Email alerts and triggers are set on almost all possible events to keep the admin and the partner informed. The system generates periodic reports for admin to give details of new link requests, total live links, total inactive links, category wise listing etc.

11. The admin also has an emailing interface to send customized email to the active or inactive partner members or on partial list selection basis.

Overall, this makes the life of the admin (webmaster) much easier for link management. The major difference of this application with some offline software is that offline software are ‘reactive’ in nature – you need to operate and baby-site them to use them. Whereas, our application is ‘proactive’ which means it does its task 24 hours a day without any ‘running’ required – all from the client server and also keeps the webmaster up to date with the status. He does not need to be online on limited bandwidth to make this work. Also, the features of application are much more powerful than offline software.

We have currently developed this in Windows-ASP-Flat-file system so that it can work even on servers not having SQL2000. Other versions on Linux-PHP-MySQL and ASP-MSSQL are under development.

The above can be a good guide of features for someone who wants to develop this application in-house.

Cheers!