The whole idea of link trades, is in a sense, a bit of gamble. I mean, to begin with, many sites agree to link with you, but then later, they drop your link, or they add a ‘no follow’ tag to your link, so you get absolutely NO BENEFIT.
WARNING: Have a potty break, this is another lengthy one.
Now, keep in mind, your staff is limited, in most cases. Some of the more bigger sites actually employ people, whose job is to check on links, to make trades. There are also some who are technically advanced enought, to run a script of some kind, that goes to your site, to verify that their link is in place, and is coded correctly.
CHEATING MAY PAY OFF IN THE SHORT TERM, BUT FOR LONG TERM GROWTH, IT NEVER PAYS OFF.
The most basic link trade, is Site A links to Site B, that in turns links back to Site A. It is the most common, is generally a blogroll approach.
Another common approach is where Site A links to your Site B, and YOUR Site C then links to their Site A. Most commonly referred to as ABC Linking.
Obviously, for this type of linking strategy to work, YOU need to have more than one site, or the one you are linking to, does. It isn’t complicated, however, you also need to keep track of these links. I mean you may trade a link with my short story site, in return I provide a link to you, from my book site.
If you don’t keep track, you may check and see I don’t have your link up at the story site. That can lead to some bad feelings, so keeping yourself organized, in regards to links, is essential. Most use Excel, as the standard way to keep track of their link trades.
Basically you should record the names of the sites you are linking to, that are linking to you, and a notation of what type of trade you are engaged in. Having the date, contact info of the webmaster you are dealing with, is also a help.
Obviously, if it isn’t a simple reciprocal link, you need to have those details as well. Keeping track of other essential details, such as the keywords, the anchor text, description text, should also be kept on the same sheet, in line with the sites.
AND YOU THOUGHT BEING A WEBMASTER WAS A BREEZE?
Now don’t go getting your knickers in a knot. It may sound difficult, and yes, it is indeed time consuming, but over the long term, it can save you a lot of grief. Seriously, you need to know who you link to, who links to you, so that you can insure those links are always valid. Why would you want to have links going to someone else, without any benefit to you?
Things happen too, such as site redesigns, that can suddenly find your links gone. With a good Excel Sheet, you can easily re-establish those missing links, or cut them. Hell, even when you redesign your own site, it’s a way to insure YOU don’t mess up.
And believe me, I wish I had done that myself, as my record keeping sucks big time. It has cost me incoming links, because when I redid my site layouts, I missed some of those links. It happens, but if I had followed this advice back then, well, the problem would have been less stressful. It also would have meant LESS WORK.
TIP:
Having a good spreadsheet program, like Microsoft’s Excel, is essential to operating a good business, either online, or in the real world.
On Theme Links is another good one, that I think many confuse. Now there are some who figure, well my site is Adult, and the site linking to me is Adult, so they are On Theme. I DON’T THINK SO!
To me, being on theme, is a lot more refined than that. It is about being more specific, so that while it appears the incoming link is from a competitor, who else is going to be similar to you? I mean, the idea that we can’t all get along, and benefit each other, is just, well, silly.
The goal is to get rankings, so yes, on theme links can seem like they are helping the other guy, but again, keep in mind the ABC Strategy. For example, I have a book site, a short story site. Now they are related, as they both deal with fiction, with the written work. So an incoming link to one, is going to add a benefit to me, so what if I give back an equally good one?
The idea is, you have to determine which is the main site you want to promote, while the other site, becomes a sort of by product, or accessory. It is an appendage, that can be more useful to provide outgoing links, so you can get better incoming links to the other site.
I know, it is confusing, in a sense. However, think about it. If you run several similar sites, it makes sense that not all of them are going to do great. Some will, simply make a few sales, while others can be block busters. SO WHY NOT MAXIMIZE THAT ONE SITE WITH ON THEME INCOMING LINKS?
Keep in mind, we are talking about using these links, not for clicking by our customers, but for the Search Engines to crawl, to record. That means that essentially, they are NOT PROMINENTLY DISPLAYED ON YOUR PAGE. Unlike a blogroll, they can be smaller in font size, or located basically anywhere on the page. It is a crawler, that reads it, which is all that is important.
TIP:
In many ways, an ” On Theme Link ” is desired, versus the other kinds, because it can also appear as a natural link. In other words, if it is listed in your actual page text, as part of a larger commentary, it can be very significant, in helping your rankings.
You have to understand, that the Search Engines make their money from advertising. To get better rates to charge their customers, they need lots of people using their services. The best way to have that happen, is to give them what they want, which in this case, means listings of sites, that fit their search criteria.
Obviously, if they deliver shit results, people will go elsewhere to look for the sites they want, and that means lower revenues. So you can bet, they are particular about the tactics webmaster’s use to get listings. Who wants to search for big boobs and get a ton of sites showing big cocks?
Keep that in mind, next time you want to fudge your linking strategies. After all, if you sell memberships to a big cock site, how many do you think you’ll sell if the people coming to your site, are looking for big boobed women? You may be number one for the term, but it isn’t going to help your profit margin.
to be continued…
Apr 01st by Malcontent