Blog Spamming or Not?

[cz]

I use Blogger to review my products occasionally and also post information that is intended to assist consumers in my niche.

It has a little PR of "4" and has two related reciprocal links plus a handful of inbound links from directories and other blogs.

My question in regard to Spamming is: I want to link to my related e-comm related site but don't want to sink it with too many inbounds. I have a single link to my e-comm site in the side navigation bar (there are a lot of them since it's a couple years old).

Would it be better to take the side navigation link down (leads to my e-comm site's index page) and instead of that, just use an IBL from the heart of the occasional post that describes the use of one of the products I sell and hyperlink those words (as anchor text) - from the blog to a product page on the e-comm site.

Is either method preferable - are both used simultaneously, ok? Thanks - your opinions are welcomed!

[untmarkb]

You said that you "don't want to sink it with too many inbounds". Why do you think inbound links are bad? That is what you want is inbound links to a site.

I would suggest leaving the link in the nav bar and also link your anchor text in your posts to the site. Make sure to not send them to the homepage but to the page of the product that you are reviewing. This will help spread the link juice using proper keyword anchors to the internal pages of your site, thus helping you rank better on these pages.

Also, linking the text in the blog post will possibly drive more visitors of the blog over to the e-commerce site. They will not have to look for a place to buy the product as it will be right in front of them. While you must think about how the search engines view a link, you must also keep the user in mind.

[coa]

I'll have 50c each way on this... depending on how many pages are in the blog.

IF you have hundreds of pages in your blog/site/whatever, then a new link in the global navigation could be seen as link spam by the search engines.

e.g. I linked to one site from the global navigation at the bottom of 5000 pages on another site recently (as part of an SEO contest) and noticed my position in google results plummet very quickly. It took weeks to fix.

If there are only a few pages in the blog, then by all means put the link in the nav bar... It's there for convenience to your visitors if they wish to explore further.

Remember to TEST anything you do like this, and watch Google closely over the next few days.

I'd definitely put the link in place with the actual post content. It's in context there, and people with an interest in that article/item are more likely to click through and take action at the other end.

Cheers
Stephen

[Tom O'Leary]

Link away. When linking to your products or services from within your blog posts, take advantage of the opportunity and use key word text as the hyperlink. So, rather than saying:

One of the best email marketing applications on the market is GroupMail

use

One of the best email marketing applications on the market is GroupMail.

All the best

Tom

[Tom O'Leary]

By the way, blog spam generally refers to unsolicited commercial content (spam) that finds its way into the comments section a blog(s) and has nothing to do with links on your site.

Happy Thanksgiving!

All the best

Tom

[cz]

Thank you all for your advice. My blog has about 200 pages and the (global) side nav link has always been there.

Using it "in" the posts (which target my products) - additionally - was what was kind of worrying me like Stephen mentioned although those 200 links of mine have been there for years, growing very slowly and not 1000's all at once - so I should be ok.

I am going to proceed and put one link to a product review like I used to and was suggested by Tom. I used to do this with great results but stopped because of Google "penalty paranoia."

Thanks Again!

[edhan]

Related inbound links are great! That will not be classified as spam.

[mnsandy]

There are two subjects picked up:

Site Wide linking (when site's all pages links to another site)

and

Blog Spam - when you use automated software to post 1000's of one way links from blog comments to your site.

You were asking about first one :)

[AuctionHugh]

The more inbound valid links the better!



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[incrediblehelp]

cz I dont see why both would not be ok.

[daxesh]

I think you don't need to be paranoid about link spam. Inward link spam is triggered only when there is sudden increase in huge amounts of inward links. In your case this is not the case.

I suggest you keep the navigation links in your blog and add links in the content to your ecomm site wherever it is relevant. Make sure on any page outward links does not exceed more then 100.

[cz]

Thank you all for contributing to this thread. Mnsandy, you're exactly right I got my terminology messed up - sorry!

Daxesh, thanks for the advice. Your figures are enough to make me smile - my blog displays each months contents on the main page until a new month begins. That usually means quite a few posts.

I was worrying about shooting a link out of a post to a relevant product maybe once or twice a month and I was sweating that a lot. With your advice I can take a little more license and use a link every couple of posts - which would make me more than happy!

Thank you all again for your advice and encouragement - it's great to get help here at WPW with so many diverse opinions, one tends to get a "check and balance system." I haven't heard anyone disagree which makes me feel a lot safer about my situation. :)