What to look out for when linking

[kjohnson5576]

When I first started my site, I eagerly grabbed links with any site that asked. It worked and my site rose in popularity and traffic. Over the course of a year though, links have been almost impossible to manage and the ethics of many linkers, and would be linkers, is something to be watched for.

My site, http://www.discount-leather.net currently receives approximately 10-15 requests per day for reciprical links. Here is one that came in today which I think illustrates the problem with not checking your link partners carefully.

Note, I'm using the requesters name and web site since the email wasn't marked confidential.

Here is the email I received:

Hi,

I looked at your web site - http://www.discount-leather.net - and I would really like to set up a partnership with you.

I own a site that offers leather jackets and other leather products - http://www.leather-jackets-briefcase...coat-gifts.com. Since our sites are related to each other, I would like to propose a link exchange partnership with your site.

My site gets a lot of traffic every day, so a link from my site to your site will bring in a decent amount of traffic to your site.

Also, as you probably already know, it will improve the link popularity and the search engine ranking of your site.

I have already added a link to your site from my site at http://www.leather-jackets-briefcase...resources.html
You can find the link to the resources page at the bottom of our index page.

I have used the following Title and Description for your site:

Title: Discount Leather Mart, QUALITY Leather Motorcycle and Clothing , Jackets, Pants, Coats & More Description: Free Shipping with your Quality Leather Clothing purchase featuring leather clothing of only the finest leather including Leather Jackets and Coats, Leather Pants, Leather Vests, Chaps, Leather Lingerie, Sexy Halter Tops, Leather Coats,
Biker leather, motorcycle leather coats and leather chaps, flag jackets, motorcyle vests biker hats and vests leather gloves, leather hats and Free Leather...

I would really appreciate it if you could add a link to my site in return.

Please use the following information for the link:

Title: Leather Jackets, Motorcycle Jackets, Wholesale Handbags Description: Great Leather Jackets offers motorcycle jackets and other leather items such as wholesale handbags and more.
URL: http://www.leather-jackets-briefcase...coat-gifts.com

Here's the HTML source code that you can copy and paste in your site:
Leather Jackets, Motorcycle Jackets, Wholesale Handbags - Great Leather Jackets offers motorcycle jackets and other leather items
such as wholesale handbags and more.

If you want me to make any changes to the Title or Description of your link in my site, or if you have any questions about my proposal, please feel free to send me an email.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best Regards,
Art Clark
http://www.leather-jackets-briefcase...coat-gifts.com


Sounds like a resonable link request doesn't it? Here is the real deal though. First I went to the home page. 1)noted no PR 2)He has an extreme tracking logo at the bottom of the page that keeps track of visitors and statistics. Here is what you learn from clicking on that logo:

A)Site has been tracked since June 11, 2004
B)Site has had only 105 unique visitors in the last 5 months.
C)Last week, the site had 9 visitors total

This pretty much disputes the third paragraph of the email (my site gets a lot of traffic everyday...)

3) I then checked the robots text file on this site and here is what was listed:

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /fahimmojawalla
Disallow: /resources.html
Disallow: /resources1.html
Disallow: /resources2.html
Disallow: /resources3.html
Disallow: /resources4.html
Disallow: /resources5.html
Disallow: /resources6.html
Disallow: /resources7.html
Disallow: /resources8.html
Disallow: /resources9.html
Disallow: /resources10.html
Disallow: /resources11.html

This is the most important finding and I've seen it with a lot of link exchange partners. The link pages are not allowed to be indexed by an search spiders. So essentially, if you exchange links with this site, they get a link, but you don't! At Least for the purposes of Page Rank and Popularity with Search Engines. Sure, someone may jump into the resources pages and click on your site, but it happens far and few between.

This demonstration has most of the key things to look out for when linking and it shows the type of ethics the owners of this site or their consultants have...little or no ethics. With ethics like that, would you want to purchase anything from this site??

Just to note, I've exchanged links with sites that at first seemed good, but in a month or two after the link campaign is over, they pull the robots.txt disallow scheme on their fellow linkers.

This is a beware arrticle. Normally I don't respond to scammers like this, but today, I really wanted to get it out. Here is my response sent to Art Clark by email:

You must think I'm a fool Art. First, I checked out the extreme tracking detail. If 8 people a day is a lot of traffic then you're living in a dream
world.

Then I checked out your robots.txt file. The robots aren't allowed to visit the resources pages making all the links on those pages moot.

Go hustle a someone who doesn't know any better!

Discount Leather Mart

[TheWebDoctor(tm)]

Well, let's start off by mentioning where the sender got that form letter you received.

That form letter comes from Sumantra Roy the famous SEO Reciprocal Link Guru and his LinkExplore program. Are you a member of that service?

Anyone considering reciprocal links should investigate the site. This is my checklist.

1> How many pages are on the site?
2> How many pages are listed in Google? (should have 100%, but no less than 95%)
3> How many pages are listed in Yahoo? (should have 70%, but no less than 68% depending upon age of the site)
4> What does the robots.txt file have?
5> Is there a robot tag on page?
6> Then I pull out my trusty software and go at it.

My software will tell me exactly how many pages are on the site. If any pages lack robot information. If any pages have broken links and to what page or pages. Additionally, I can get the age of the site - not just the date the domain was purchased.

If it fails any test then the link isn't worth having.

[incrediblehelp]

Nice recent article:

http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/...Sandboxed.html

[punto]

Fellas, you are asll extremely well-versed veterans and I have learned a great deal by just reading your posts. For that I thank you. My own specialty is Internet videos so I do not really know a lot about some of the more arcane topics you discuss. My question is this: Can anyone tell me how you go about reading the "robots.txt" file of a particular site? Do we need some spyware of our own? There is no end to this thing. Much obliged for your patience.

[kjohnson5576]

Easy, just type in the domain name, back slash and then enter robots.txt like so

http://www.domain.com/robots.txt

[punto]

Much obliged, partner. I sincerely appreciate your help with this. The Internet is one of theose places where you usually find the best in people.

[kjohnson5576]

I also forgot to mention, for those sites not using a robot.txt file, use the "view source" under the "View" browser icon to see what is allowed and what isn't based on the metatags

For instance, if <META NAME= "ROBOTS" CONTENT="NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW"> turn up in the meta tags, this is also not good. It's the same as a robots.txt disallow. Your link will not be indexed and followed back to your site by the spiders.

[kjohnson5576]

I forgot, for those who don't know, if you hit the "View Source" icon and nothing happens, go into "internet properties" and clear your Temporary Internet Files. In Windows XP, this may take up to 45 minutes to clear the files. Windows 98 performed this task in usually less than a minute.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by kjohnson5576

I forgot, for those who don't know, if you hit the "View Source" icon and nothing happens, go into "internet properties" and clear your Temporary Internet Files. In Windows XP, this may take up to 45 minutes to clear the files. Windows 98 performed this task in usually less than a minute.

I realized this was happening in XP a long time ago. Is it just a bug in XP?

[kjohnson5576]

Not sure if it's just an XP thing but it is pretty frustrating.

[ctabuk]

Originally Posted by kjohnson5576

I forgot, for those who don't know, if you hit the "View Source" icon and nothing happens, go into "internet properties" and clear your Temporary Internet Files. In Windows XP, this may take up to 45 minutes to clear the files. Windows 98 performed this task in usually less than a minute.

A huge THANK YOU, I can see again. I loved the bit on linking. It is extremely hard work building up links I use http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk.htm

I go to the Country link at the top of the page and travel around the planet finding sites similar to mine and then do a "links to" and follow through and submit mine, avoiding those who want reciprocals unless I see some milage in it. But this has been the best thread on promotion I have been in - thanks