Thrilled to see these forums! I'm one of
the speakers at the Search Engine Strategies
shows. I'm part of the Link Building panel.

One topic I rarely see discussed is the difference
between and value of short term (ephemoral)
links vs. long term permanent links.

The classic example of an short term/ephemoral link
would be selection as a Yahoo Pick of the Day/Week
or USA Today Hot Site. There are hundreds of
these types of of venues out there, and most
of them are read via email in the form of a newsletter,
even though they also exist as web pages.

Sites selected receive a huge spike in traffic, which then
typically goes away as new sites are selected. And since
these URLs are typically static, they can NEVER impact pagerank.
See http://docs.yahoo.com/picks/
This URL is always the same, but the selected sites change.

Yet they are still incredibly valueable. I've condcuted
entire linking campaigns for PBS, Warner Bros, Dsicovery
and others that were targeted directly to short term link
targets, with great success.

But folks are obsessed with permanent links on web pages and
pagerank, and ignore these useful other links.

Anyone like to comment?

EricWard
EricWard.com
Link Building and Content Announcements Since 1994

I absolutely agree. I have a client for whom we send out announcements whenever the site is updated, and there's a Dutch site that will often pass that announcement on to their readership. For the one day that link is up (it used to be three, but I'm not complaining) they send a couple of thousand extra visitors to my client's site.

I would add that getting a temporary link up and in front of the right people can often lead to a few permanent links.

Another example of the short term link are links that
appear on blogs. Now some of these will impact
pagerank, but that's never the reason I pursue them.
Blogs are the natural evolution of the personal
hompeage from the good ol' geocities days.
If you find the blog that is run by the key influencer
in any given subject, and can gently obtain a link,
then that can have a nice --albeit short term--
effect on your traffic.

Eric Ward

Interesting post, Eric. And you're absolutely right about how overlooked the short-term link (to borrow your term) benefits are by many site owners. There's a status associated with PageRank, of course, and the focus always seems to be permanent links from other web sites, from web directories, etc.

Your mention of the newsletter publicity is interesting. There are so many questions asked about "Are there any directories I can submit to within my industry?" and the like, but I never see any questions -- or resources providing answers -- about newsletters that announce web sites and accept "submissions" like this. What resources are out there (aside from PR Newswire and the like) for finding newsletters and other sources of short-term links?

Any thoughts?

Great thread Eric.

Short term links can help sell product. I used to work as the SEO for O'Reilly & Associates. Everytime Slashdot mentioned O'Reilly in their blog, traffic shot up for that day due to the popularity of the Slashdot site. Some of that traffic equated to book sales. Short term links are definitely a good tool for product sales. As always, any publicity, short or long term, helps promote your website.