Come along and join the link page (google spider is here)

[ink4-u]

Hello Jay here
can everyone that wants a better result in google come along and join my links page, and put me on yours. I would be greatful for the help and im happy to help by having your link.

I had this little brain wave to ask you all because 1 it will boost our search yes, but 2 the google spider has been spending hours on my site for days. so i thought lets take advantage now.

Cheers
Jay :idea:

http://www.ink4-u.co.uk/links_submit.php

[MarkPearson]

Hi Jay,

Happy new year.

I am no expert in the area but

Are you aware that one way links (not link sharing) are seen by google as better than returned links.

Also your site and link page as yet has no pagerank with google, when it does this will class links coming from your site as better (in googles eyes)

Once it does and the higher this rank is that will make linking more worth while.

[ink4-u]

my site doesnt force a return link, it would be nice to have one but it doesnt force it.

[MarkPearson]

Would be interesting to see other people views on what google looks for when rating sites by the quality of its links to and from it.

[Enigma121]

Would be interesting to see other people views on what google looks for when rating sites by the quality of its links to and from it.

Thanks to Google's recent "Jagger" update, outbound links provide a level of devaluation of the inbound link. This means that from Google's point of view one way links are better than reciprocal links (you will rank better with 10 one way inbound links than you will with 10 reciprocal links).

HOWEVER:

There are some very important points to note here

There are more search engines out there than Google. Some notable examples are MSN, Yahoo, Teoma (Ask Jeeves), Lycos. Any one of these could generate more inbound traffic than the average site can handle (if correctly optimised).

Links of any sort provide traffic, therefore cutting out the middleman of the search engine altogether. This is a very good thing, don't give it up!

Google doesn't penalise you for having reciprocal links. It just doesn't give the ranking boost that it used to for such links.


It's fair to say that the recent Google update has made optimising for Google a more difficult and intensive activity. Other than that, the advice is still build as many links as you see fit.

[Magsite]

Once you've submitted the link, where does it appear?

I can't find a links page

Cheers

Lisa

[Enigma121]

Once you've submitted the link, where does it appear?

I can't find a links page

Cheers

Lisa

Lisa,

The theory at least is that once a link is posted then other members will add that link to their site. This leads to a minor problem in that many members either choose not to add it, or don't check regularly for new links.

You can tell those that have using our old friends at MSN. http://uk.msn.com

Enter the following query to check your number of backlinks (other folks can enter their own site URL instead).

link:http://www.promotelotto.co.uk

So everybody has the option of manually adding links and keeping them up to date.

To get around this problem and avoid the hassle yourself you have a couple of options. Which you use depends on your site provider and the type of server you have.

Firstly Matrixx has posted a link to an include file that he provides. This allows you to automatically include the links as part of your page without needing to update it. This will require PHP support or server side includes.

Alternatively if your server has more advanced dynamic site support such as JSP or ASP (perhaps PHP), you can use the RSS feed which we look after. This feed contains categorised links, so adds additional info which can be included on your page. You can also choose to filter so that you are only hosting related links, which is important for good SEO.

I've posted a link recently where you can browse the RSS feed through newsgator.

Hope this helps.

[mattk]

I'm afriad I'm with Mark on this one.

Firstly - How many users who are browsing an ink cartridge site are suddenly going to decide they need personalised roses, just because they've seen a text link for them? A banner might be slightly more tempting, but it's still tenuous at best.

Secondly - the whole site has a PR of zero, so any link will be of little or no value in the eyes of the search engines.

Linking is all well and good, but you are better off going for quality than quantity.

Just my 2p worth.

[Enigma121]

I'm afriad I'm with Mark on this one.

Firstly - How many users who are browsing an ink cartridge site are suddenly going to decide they need personalised roses, just because they've seen a text link for them? A banner might be slightly more tempting, but it's still tenuous at best.

Secondly - the whole site has a PR of zero, so any link will be of little or no value in the eyes of the search engines.

Linking is all well and good, but you are better off going for quality than quantity.

Just my 2p worth.

Once again PR has only any relevance to Google. It's their metric on page importance. Other engines use other criteria. Personally I tend to ignore PR as at best it's only a guide to page popularity.

The roses by design example is probably the worst you could have chosen. It doesn't really fit into a niche and has wide appeal to a great number of audiences. Most of us have mums, wives or girlfriends after all. So it's stands to reason that wide exposure on a large number of unrelated sites will help sales.

I think the point is that a link isn't really hurting you if it doesn't generate a vast quantity of traffic. There is always the possibility it will be clicked on / followed by a search engine bot sometime either now or in the future.

Links to avoid are to / from sites in "bad neighbourhoods" such as gambling, porn or viagra sellers.

[ink4-u]

well as i keep saying you dont have to link back to me

[Tin]

Just my 2p worth but...
Links from 'any old place' are nowhere near as useful as links from related industries so for a site selling flowers it needs to gain links from flower/flowers/florists/ related sites. One way to do this is to use a Google operator which forces the search engine to deliver search results aimed at reducing the work needed to find such sites. Example follows;

Going to Google and typing in (including inverted commas)
"add_url" + "florists" yields over 1000 sources of highly relevant link possibilities. There are lots of other ways to find links and also lots of things to watch out for when submitting links. To locate links for other industries simply change the second parameter of the search string (florists) to one more suitable. The first parameter can also be modified like
"add_site" or "submit_site" etc etc.
This way of sourcing links often helps rankings better than simple link exchange methods and more importantly it also allows you to submit internal pages of your site instead of just the root or home page. Over a period of time links can be built using this method which really can help rankings across all pages of a site.

Vigorous spidering of a site by Googlebot does not have a direct bearing on rankings, this cannot be considered an indicator of such and can be attribute to a number of causes such as age of site, rapidly changing content, unusual spike in the amount of backlinks, sitewide links being paid for and added in one foul swoop, etc.

Mattk makes the point that links on an ink cartridge site to a roses site are unlikely to generate much business and I wholeheartedly agree with this (visitors may at some time in the future want personalised roses but not when they are looking for ink refills) I'd guess a conversion here would be extremely small.
I do however disagree with Mattk regarding sites with a zero PR value being of little value as PR is constantly factored in by Google and is perpetually ongoing and changing. Therefore, it is easily possible that a site with no or little PR can have acquired a high PR link which, once PR is updated by Google can turn a zero PR page into a PR5,6 or whatever.

Regarding the recent Jagger update at Google I personally do not see the optimisation work involved for high placement on Google as having changed. In my mind it's not so much a case of Google penalising sites that don't conform to industry standards at algo updates but more that it rewards sites that it finds always operate within it's guidelines.
Link building within acceptable limits isn't generally frowned upon through algo changes.

Yes, there are more engines out there than Google but as the UK uses Google (in some form or another) as the 'main' provider of either organic or content related search info then rankings on it are a primary requirement towards success. The other way to look at engine rankings is that occasionally Google goes 'potty' for a few weeks at a time so if you've got your 'bases covered' on other engines then it matters little if you disappear from Google rankings for a little while.

Quality links based or related to your targeted page/s are best, anything else is inferior so why settle for it?

Ray

[mattk]

Just my 2p worth but...

I do however disagree with Mattk regarding sites with a zero PR value being of little value as PR is constantly factored in by Google and is perpetually ongoing and changing. Therefore, it is easily possible that a site with no or little PR can have acquired a high PR link which, once PR is updated by Google can turn a zero PR page into a PR5,6 or whatever.

Ray

I know what you're saying here, but I think site owners would be better off concentrating their efforts on more valuble links. How many sites are listed on DMOZ? IMO a link from DMOZ is worth a million links from a links page on a random e-commerce site. There is a possibility that a site can go from PR0 to PR5/6, but given sites like DMOZ already have a PR of 9, isn't that where site owners should be concentrating their efforts?

[Tin]

but I think site owners would be better off concentrating their efforts on more valuble links

I wasn't suggesting otherwise, I was merely pointing out that you should not rule out links from sites because they have a low PR.

How many sites are listed on DMOZ?

I don't know, do you? A link on Dmoz can be of great help for obvious reasons but I know sites that appear on page 1 of Google that aren't in Dmoz and sites that are nowhere in Google despite the fact they've been in Dmoz for ages. If you check out the Dmoz forum you'll see plenty of unhappy comments from site owners.
There's also the little but well know fact that it can take years to even get into Dmoz, plus when you finally do get in they mess with your site description tag no end. Whether it's worth a million other links... hmm!
There's also other directories that are very highly regarded by Google and other engines such as Gimpsy and Joeant. A link from these is very worthwhile.

but given sites like DMOZ already have a PR of 9, isn't that where site owners should be concentrating their efforts
PR 9 homepage yes, but in general most of the actual pages containing links range from PR 5's 4's and 2's.
So yes, accepting the issues involved with Dmoz it is very worthwhile trying to get in there but it's only one quality resource, there are others.
Quality & related links is what I thought my post was about?

[www.t6c.co.uk]

I think the actual answer is 10X as complex, take a look at www.ihelpyouservices.com and you will see posts going into this in much more depth.

[MarkPearson]

Just to note I was only making Jay aware that currently the site and link would not be seen a very much.

This does not mean this will change in the month to come or also does not mean the links are not worth taking.

Jay does state that links are free and no return links are required, but if you want to help him then link back :-)