Help with links

[trainiac]

I have two questions:

1. How visible does my links page need to be? I'd like it to be very inconspicuous. If I just have a small link to it at the bottom of a less travelled page on my site, the spiders should still see it, right? Do I need to have a big LINKS button on all of my pages?

2. I'm building inbound links. I know I want them from highly rated sites. I find a lot of site that have a google page rank of 6 or 7 to their HOME page, but their LINKS page is rated 0. Should I get inbound links from them?

Thanks for your help.

[seobook]

I have two questions:

1. How visible does my links page need to be? I'd like it to be very inconspicuous. If I just have a small link to it at the bottom of a less travelled page on my site, the spiders should still see it, right? Do I need to have a big LINKS button on all of my pages?

2. I'm building inbound links. I know I want them from highly rated sites. I find a lot of site that have a google page rank of 6 or 7 to their HOME page, but their LINKS page is rated 0. Should I get inbound links from them?

Thanks for your help.

welcome to the forums trainiac :)
1. if you link to it from more locations it will likely have a higher pagerank and make it easier to trade links. frequently some of the best link trades occur when you include links to various related resources from within your normal content.

2. if it is a related page and you think that page gets traffic and you can get free links for it then why not. i would not necissarily trade links with people who made their links pages inaccessible to users AND search engine spiders though because usually those types of sites are ran by greedy people who are interested in quick buck short changing their site visitors in the same way that they do their link partners (at least it seems that way from my perspective of business ethics and common sense...).

[Nacho]

Before you go on any further, I think you need to read this thread: A Positive Step Forward in Link Strategies (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=530). Where you will learn that links.html (or similar) pages will most likely be filtered on the search engines as not valid link building structures. This goes for your outbound links and searching for external inbound links too.

Good luck with your campaign!

[rogerd]

Trainiac, if you focus on links to relevant, quality sites you won't need to bury them in an inconspicuous links page. And to get inbound links, it's a far better strategy to create a quality site that people want to link to than to hope to snag reciprocals. Good luck!

[debraM]

Every page on your website should be used to it's full potential in the promotion and sale of your services. Every page...that includes the links page.

You know that old saying..."first impressions count"? Same applies to last impressions. Add information, special offers, links to articles found within your site - whatever - so the last thing they see as they follow a link off your site is something ABOUT your site.

For example, if you sell running shoes.....and carry outbound links to track meets (on your links page) add a special eye cathching ad/promotion on the links page showcasing the running shoes you have on sale.

If you offer articles or an in-house library, be sure to offer links to those resources from the links page. Find an article in the library that compliments one of the outbound links and suggest visitors read the article before they click the link. Offer enough good stuff and they may not leave at all!

[debraM]

I'm building inbound links. I know I want them from highly rated sites. I find a lot of site that have a google page rank of 6 or 7 to their HOME page, but their LINKS page is rated 0. Should I get inbound links from them?

Couple of things could be making this happen - new page, page has robots txt, page isn't hosted on the URL. (Some of the link directory software out there causes the last one to happen. You don't want to link to those). :rolleyes:

Take a look through the site and find out why it's a 0. Shouldn't be hard to figure out. All else fails, ask the site owner. Generally sites with a PageRank score of 7 are doing something right.....you don't find too many spammy sites with rank like that.

I'd want links from highly rated sites WITHIN my industry niche. Otherwise they've probably end up doing you little good and you've spent precious time securing them.

[seobook]

Generally sites with a PageRank score of 7 are doing something right.....you don't find too many spammy sites with rank like that.

gotta disagree with that statement. many spammy sites have a PR7. if you know a link broker or two a PR7 is not that hard.

PR9 - 10 spammy site is a bit hard, but I do not think its too hard for like a PR7 or PR6 site to be really spammy

so long as you fit in the internet.commerce program terms and have some money a PR8 is easy.

[NFFC]

>so long as you fit in the internet.commerce program terms and have some money a PR8 is easy.

<-------- looks away.

[debraM]

if you know a link broker or two a PR7 is not that hard.

So....the PR7 links from a broker are....spammy? Ouch! ;)

[seobook]

So....the PR7 links from a broker are....spammy? Ouch! ;)

not all link brokers are spammy or bad guys. some of them are great guys (ex: Jarrod @ http://www.textlinkbrokers.com)

its just that their job is to sell link popularity in hopefully a mutually beneficial way to the content publishers and the people buying the ads.

PageRank has became part of that value system.

if the content publishers have topics that are close to some spammy (prescription drug or whatever) type topics or want to sell to some aggressively marketing webmasters then the link broker is just making the marketplace by meeting supply & demand.

I am saying that pagerank is not a good thing to entirely judge spam by, and even if you still have a certain pagerank that does not indicate for sure whether or not your site is spam...just whether or not google may be issuing certain spam penalties.

[debraM]

Generally sites with a PageRank score of 7 are doing something right.....

Understand what you're saying peanut butter, but I stand by what I said.