13 replies to this topic

[ttweb]

Jill - allinurl: came up empty. Despair.

Leann -

Being search number 548,000 or or even 72 doesn't get traffic to your site.

Of course you are right. I realize that the only list that really matters is the first 30 or so to be found/ranked. It is certainly my intent to try to move up, but I am frustrated that I cannot seem to get to first base, even with this forum's great advice.

Anyway, I did some of the queries you recommended and came across www.links4trade.com. I'm intrigued. Any idea how well they work?

Thanks again.

Edited by Jill, 02 September 2004 - 05:56 PM.

[Scottie]

Of course you are right.? I realize that the only list that really matters is the first 30 or so to be found/ranked. It is certainly my intent to try to move up, but I am frustrated that I cannot seem to get to first base, even with this forum's great advice.

More like the first 20 for targeted keyphrases- basically the first 2 pages of results. As to your frustration- remember it takes time. Keep adding content, keep looking for great link partners.

Anyway, I did some of the queries you recommended and came across www.links4trade.com.? I'm intrigued.? Any idea how well they work?

Don't know anything about them but from what I read on their site:

Links4Trade works by remotely hosting your link trade page. When you sign up with Links4Trade you create a new link trade page on Links4Trade servers. You can easily configure the link trade page to exactly resemble the look and feel of your website including headers, footers, site navigation, etc? You link to the new link trade page from other pages on your website as if the link trade page were on the same server with the rest of your pages.

This won't help your link popularity- only Links4Trade! As a traffic-generating idea, it may be fine. But it won't do anything for SEO.

[ttweb]

This won't help your link popularity- only Links4Trade!

Scottie - I may have read a little deeper... or maybe I am just mistaken. I drilled down to some of their customers' sites. Each site had a "Links" page where the site owner had apparently picked related businesses to link to.

So, the appearance is that the related businesses have links on the L4T customer's site. Doesn't this raise the link popularity of the related businesses sites? I cannot tell by looking at any of the URLs that L4T is any where in the navigation, but some of the URLs are a bit complicated and may be redirecting.

Are you saying that since all the links pages might be physically served off of a single L4T IP address that they don't count toward link popularity?

If that's the way it works, then I can see why it would help traffic, but not popularity. Am I getting it right? Or just confused?

[Scottie]

I went back and dug through it a little more; here is my understanding of it:

Your site links to a page at L4T that looks like your page. But it's not your page. You now have placed a spiderable link to the L4T site on your site, contributing to their link popularity.

Now, they are going to find other sites to link to you. All of those links will be coming from a page on L4T, right? So, if they find 50 sites to link to you, all of those links will be coming from different "links" pages within the L4T site. Are those links pages spiderable? I would hope so- I haven't seen one to know for sure.

That may or may not be OK with Google. I really don't know. My personal opinion is that when and if Google comes across this scheme, they may apply manual changes to links from that domain... they may penalize your site for linking to a bad neighborhood if they decide that is what it is. Again, I don't know that. It doesn't appear to be a bad neighborhood now... it has PR5.

But in the future, if they do decide they don't like this company manipulating links on their client's behalf, you could have all of your incoming links (from them) ignored or devalued. Not a good situation to be in.

You can easily see that (assuming these are all relevant companies who would have linked to you anyway) you would be much better off with a link coming from each of their sites, instead of a bunch of links coming from a single site.

I want to make it clear- I don't know what Google thinks of this service. This is just my opinion.

[qwerty]

They also charge a monthly fee: $7.95/month plus .10 per link (although anything beyond the 400th is free )

If you do it yourself, you avoid the potential problems Scottie described, and you save a few bucks.

[Leann_Pass]

Oh no! Now, I can only speak for myself but I would never get involved there!
Best to find individual sites that handle their own link partnerships!

I would check out each site I linked with and make sure they are on the up and up.

It is kind of a pain but a few real quality links are worth tons more than a whole lot of junk.

Just a thought, but looking through sites that are complimentary to yours, you may find some linking opportunities that aren't so apparent on the surface.

[Leann_Pass]

ttweb,

I just did a quick google search for "gourmet food exchange links" and found a good number of sites that do their own linking and that appear to have fair linking techniques. Check it out =)

I also noticed that you don't have a page for links on your site? You know if that is a problem and you only want a few links........then you can put them on the bottom of whatever page they are most relevant for.

If you want to do alot of link partnering, ya gotta have a page for them somewhere =)

I'm sure you already knew that!

Night all!

[ttweb]

The value that I see is that it would be much simpler to manage the links page... I would have a catalog of potentially related sites that I can turn on/off. Rather than having to search, contact each site, get agreement, then edit my page. I don't see why use of such a service should penalize a site. Google is concerned about quality of links, right? So why would making it easier to pick/change links be counter to this goal. Makes adding links too easy, perhaps?

Still, I understand the quality vs. quantity issue. And basic QA would have to be done whether I have to exchange messages and edit the pages, or just click one on.

Jerry - Thanks for the encouragement.

Leanne - Thanks for the help. You've taught me to fish. BTW, I do have a links page, it just suffers two problems... first, it is cleverly labeled "Partners" (at the bottom of my pages) and second, it does not yet have any links.

Thanks again all!

[Scottie]

Google sees a link to your site as a "vote" for your site- we like this site, it's a good one.

When a third party manages and arranges the links, it is really still a quality vote? Maybe... maybe not. And when all those links come from the same domain, what happens if Google "turns off" PR from those links?

Again, it could drive real traffic, and the link popularity may not matter to you. In that case, I'd try it out.

Otherwise, from a technical angle, I don't think it will help you much in the long run. If you could get the linking partners in the program to link to you from their real sites as well, then you would have something! But I imagine, like you, many are looking to streamline the process and wouldn't be open to that.

If you sign up, let us know how it works!

[kepa]

Read this, Links4Trade is mentioned (as well as Jill )

[http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=367069] - Google Answers

[De-linked live link per Forums Rules - Randy]

Edited by Randy, 02 September 2004 - 05:55 PM.

[Randy]

Kinda makes a person want to start answering questions there for a fee instead of free doesn't it Jill?

[Jill]

I find it amusing that people think those google answer people actually work for google and that their posts are the definitive answer!

[Debra]

ttweb - there is a quick, easy way to check to see if those links pages are housed on the links4u or the client site.

Find the link page and right click. Go down to properties and read the URL - it will tell you where the page is coming from. Going through the L4T directory I found the ones I checked hosted on links4trade pages not the clients site.

Which makes perfect sense after what Qwerty said, they have to track their revenue generation somehow.

Might be good for traffic, not good for link pop.

[powerofeyes]

AFAIK Links4trade doesnt work the way some people think of, When a person registers for their services they are assigned a sub domain type of site for their links page, These links pages dont get benefit nor give benefit to links4trade.com Only the bottom link on the links page is a benefit for links4trade, other than that all link popularity transfer and Pagerank transfer happens from the client domain, Though they are hosted in a different server it just acts like a links page hosted on an other site,

This search explains that,

http://www.google.co...ade&btnG=Search

This is the same way linksmanager works, Even they do all reciprocal link verification, registration and all other stuff on their own server, Only the links are hosted in client's site, But for links4trade.com links are hosted on sub domains( completely different sites according to search engines),

I am not giving a review for linksmanager and links4trade , Just thought ill clear some doubt in people's mind,

Personally i love manual link exchange for all our clients, Manual link exchange do wonders finding relevant site, Checking whether they offer link exchange and sending link exchange request, Response rate is very high when we have a quality site for link building,