Link Exchange/SEO/I've had it!

Uhm.... kill the link exchange program. It isn't doing you any good according to Google (only 16 links). It isn't good advice to run a link exchange unless you can drive high-quality links through it (I.E., through an established customer or client base)

It would be much better to establish a link program through your own professional network.

The reason you are getting so many spam requests are that hundreds of companies have automated scripts searching for "link partner" text... and they are finding it on your site.

Don't feel bad deleting it, it should never have been there to start. ;)

Link exchanges were useful tools around a decade ago, now they're pretty much pointless.

You could become a supporting member of Biznik and then every time you post, you get a link on here going back to your website like me :) I think its better to get quality links rather than just any o'l link. I've been trying BlogRush lately. Its "ok" so far. Not tons of traffic off it, but some. The nice thing is that I don't have to do any admin on it, once the code was on my page....just like Adsense.

Well you do have to have links in order to rank, but random low-quality links that do not have the right relevant authority actually hurt your search engine placement.

The are dozens of free sites out there with valuable profiles like Biznik, ranging from Linkedin to Meetup.com that can have your information on them and add to a link-building campaign.

rebecca,

what john is referring to regarding a biznik supporting membership does not necessarily refer to using biznik to get found. rather biznik is viewed by google as an "authority site"..in fact biznik currently has a page rank of 5..which is pretty good. btw your site currently has a page rank of 3 which isnt bad.. ok so i am going to venture my theory on how this stuff works..

every time a supporting member makes a post on a biztalk thread they pick up a link in their sig line. often they post several to a page. each biztalk page borrows its page rank from biznik's page rank of 5 while at same remaining an independant page to itself.. the effect is as each page gets "spidered" and google subsequently sees all these links pointing to your site (from the sig line if you are a supporting member) and these links are coming from several pages google thinks is very credible.. presto you are getting a major boost.

since dan and john launched the sig line feature (shortly after i became a supporting member..whoohoo good timing) i have watched my site climb in numerous keyword search results.

Rebecca, i really love ya..you are super sweet. my advice to you as a fellow web site operator is...before you buy anything else for you biz.. find the 25$ a month for supporting membership..it's less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day, and the benefits (especially for you as a consistent poster) will be immeasurable.

also don't discount the value of having your profile found in the SE's as you have one of the best page rankings of any other member for your profile(currently a 4..one of the only one's i have found as high as mine!)..remember there is a link to your site right on it and hopefully a number. it could definitely land you a client..maybe even a pretty big one. keep your channels clear for cash reception!

another cool suggestion..if you like how i can lookup page rankings and link concentrations) i highly recommend the SEO plug in for Mozilla Firefox. it lets you analyze a page from right inside your browser. I have to thank fellow Biznik Andrey the Penguin Guy for turning me on to it! it rocks!

Justin / others - the PR rank on the profiles is actually dependent on the age of the profile and a few links coming into it. For the most part it would be impossible to rank a profile higher than the main domain at 5, but it is possible to do so. (I have a 4 too :P )

The per-page posting for paid membership is somewhat correct, having the link on profile pages may be currently getting read as independent links every time you post, but it is only a matter of time before the sig line is identified as a sig line as in any other forum (if it hasn't been already) and then there will be a singular benefit based upon the highest relevance of a page within the network.

For everyone interested in getting a free PR 2-6 by putting a resume profile at Jobster.com (my PR there ranks from 5-6)

thanks! that's a pretty cool tip Barry! i'll check into that..

say one can pick up a quality link just by posting on industry relavent blog with a decent rank right?

Blah! PR PR PR! The PR might have been dependent on the age of the profile. Months ago and before...? Or maybe never?

It seems that almost a year has passed since google "paid out" PR. This has changed last month when Google paid out PR. Young Biznik profiles such as 2 months old received PR [I got PR 3]. Even some profile tabs that are rarely viewed.. but do have internal Biznik links... received 1-2 PR. [Those profiles that didn't have a lot of backlinks, traffic, or unique information probably didn't receive PR.]

My own websites were paid out... young and old pages... but not every page of course. Google changed their algorithm and they will change it again.

Don't bow to Google but do play by their rules. Submit your sitemap to Google and update it as your website evolves, its almost a guaranteed crawl from Google.

What worked last year, month, yesterday might not work tomorrow.

I bet that... when you become a supporting member and add your signature... you will have about 300 links pointing to your website. You should have PR 1-3 by the end of the next 90 days -- If google updates the PR by that time. You should also appear on the first page of Biznik's members page and members/1 pages when you're a supporting member [Because you are a very active member]. Two more valuable links [PR 5 and 3] to your profile! =] The more PR that your profile has, the more valuable is the link that points to your website from your profile.

PS: Your Biznik profile has PR4 and your blog PR3!

Good luck!

-Andrey

[I couldn't edit my post to add this]

Your website homepage has PR3! =]

It's not all about PR, you need to also focus on titling your links correctly. Don't title your links as "www.countrymeadowltd.com" but instead something like "Natural skin care and spa products."

Lol the search countrymeadowltd.com brings up your website as #1... but the search for "Natural skin care and spa products" doesn't even show you in the 100+ results. Titling you links with keywords that pertain to your business will help bring up your website in the search results.

-Andrey

Barry and other SEO gurus,

I am currently building a online publisher's network service and is very relevant to this thread and wanted to get your take on this service.

HOW IT WORKS:

It is basically a way for online publishers to easily find relevant articles written by sites in their network while composing a new article or blog post. The links to the relevant articles are then returned and the publisher can place these links into the content of the article.

Everyone in the network would do the same while composing a new article or blog post on his site.

RESULT:

Every member of the network gets quality inbound links based on content.

**

That's the executive summary with all the technical talk stripped out.

Putting links on your website just gives the person a place to go away from your page. Why not create a another webpage and link them together?

Rich

Putting links on a page does provide an exit point, but a key to organic community growth is useful information. I may be a prolific idea source, but even I have my dry spells... having a method of collecting easy to use data for article writing and informational purposes could be good.

The problem is not to create a massive leak of traffic through out-going links. This could be compared the once massive tactic of link-farms and web rings that were in the 90s.

The is a secondary problem with making sure that such a closed circle of information doesn't produce duplicate content on a great scale, as it would eventually trigger a site wide exclusion from being indexed by the search engines. (For instance I could copy all of the material here on Biznik into another blog platform and violate copyright, but also cause significant problems to a site's indexing for content)

If users of a community don't have very specific rules not to duplicate content, the whole thing could go to hell in a heartbeat. (I'm sure Dan and Lara would beat me to death and ban me if I started posting duplicate entries everywhere on Biznik based on other people's posts)

What I would do is... from the Blog, link to the store website with a link title of relevant keywords pertaining to the store. I would also have a link on the store website [maybe also in the footer of every page] linking to the Blog with a link title of relevant keywords pertaining to the store.

1. Blah blah blah Spa Blog
2. Natural Spa products blah blah

Your store will help the Blog and the Blog will help the store.

Good luck!

-Andrey

This page looks like some good info that you might find useful: http://www.seobook.com/bloggers

Posting duplicate content is definitely a problem. We're about to launch a new feature of Biznik, called Learn, which allows members to post articles and tips about indie business. It'll be an awesome way to build your reputation, and a great way to participate in Biznik short of attending or hosting events. it'll also add a ton of helpful content to the site. The point you make Barry about duplicate content is well taken in this regard - do you think we should launch this new feature with a policy that all content uploaded must be original, and not originating somewhere else? Seems to me that if someone wants to repurpose an article they wrote in their own blog here it would be OK, and give them some extra visibility for their work. Thoughts?

Barry,

Thank you for pointing out the possible problem of article duplication. Since my service will crawl and index all pages from all domains in the network, I will build in the mechanism to match new articles with existing articles. Duplicate articles will not show up as possible content based links when others are publishing so as to not give any incentives. Maybe, those who are caught with many duplicate articles in the network will have their membership suspended as a result.

Do you think that would smother the problem you raised? Thanks.

Dan/Everyone, I would like to weight in on the issue of duplicate content on several levels. First, and most important, Google will not penalize you for posting on your blog and then posting here. What they will do is pick on of the versions they think is most relevant and weed out the others. I've seen this a lot with some of the articles that I've syndicated. They don't always pick the one from your main site. I'm not sure I care though just as long as the article clearly links back to my main site. Second, I'm not sure how many people here have the time to write for their own blog(s) and still create high quality content that's worthy of a post here. You might end up getting a bunch of junk where people just try to crank out something just to get published. Your system to push these articles down the chain will help but ultimately I'm betting that you'll have less quality content if you don't allow users to post content that's already published elsewhere. Speaking of my blog, this sounds like a good topic to write about!

Regarding the issue of duplicate content, I completed a blog post on the issue that offers up thoughts from Google and a few of my "opinions" on the subject. It would be cool if we could get more thoughts on this issue here or on the article on my site. I've heard a lot about people praising the value of distributing your content in the hope that it will boost your ranking. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me but what the heck to do know? What I do know is that Google doesn't kill your content in their listings if it's duplicated on another site and that's a good thing. http://www.quickstartseo.com/duplicate-content/

I've studied the duplicate content / syndication effect very heavily (LoL, thats what I do). Unfortunately posting here on Biznik and also on your own site for people without well-established sites is problematic.

I can do so simply because my site has as much weight as Biznik. That allows me to not worry as heavily about duplicate penalties on my site.

For a new site, having duplicate penalty can drown it's rating very quickly. Just like the secondary index, Google can label your site as a syndication site even if it is the original.

I would recommend that unless you know what you are doing and where / how your current site ranks, to not post duplicate content on another site such as Biznik. It should be original to prevent from submarining your efforts.

Dan- I would say that Biznik should have an "original work" policy. Otherwise syndicating a site may eventually get them listed in the search engines as being a spam syndication site.

Biznik is somewhat protected from this, as 99% of what is on the site has been original. That track record helps a lot.

If your site is under six months old, you should not duplicate content on other sites or you risk doing some bad things to yourself.

Barry, Erin Pierce is building joehageonline.com (under construction, placeholder there for now) for me. I'll post my blog there.

I wrote a book review that I planned to post on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, my site and Biznik (as a featured article).

Are you suggesting that my site would suffer as a result? I'd have asked you offline, but think the broader community could benefit from your insight.

If so, what would you recommend as a better way to get my content out there?

Great discussion guys, [-Votes- for Original content only!] but... I feel bad for Rebecca Wood...

Shame on you guys for hijacking her topic. ;]

How about we start a new topic? =]

-Andrey