Links - importance and how to get them

[tedsudol]

Hi,
I've read that links are important. What links are important and how do you get them? About a year ago I was working with a web "expert" who's promise for assured success was to put up a bunch of websites and on each site put links to all of the other sites you put up. Since all of the sites were different I think the first strike against this strategy was that they weren't that relevant. Anyway that strategy wasn't very successful, he's disappeared from the web scene so time to try something else.

The next thing I tried on the basis of some "expert advice" was a variation on the same strategy. Putting up two dozen related sites and putting links on all of the sites for the others in the group - 23 instant links.

Well I've read that that strategy will actually hurt you because if the search engine sees all of your links coming from the same IP address it will not look kindly upon your site. Is that true?

But even it this is true when I when in to use some of the tools to analyze the site it came up and said there were zero links. I thought a link was when you had something on your site - a text link, a banner, a url and it took you to another site. Why was it showing zero.

So my question is what constitutes a link? How do you get them? Are some links more valuable than others? How do you include them on your page so they are recognized by the search engines.

Thanks in advance for your help.

All the best,
Ted Sudol

[nielsencl]

A lot of one questions for one post... :-)

You are right, a link is a link from one site to another OR to another page on the same site.

You can have a "relative" link on your own site (/contact.htm) or an "absolute" link (http ://www. somedomain.com/contact.htm).

Links to other sites have to be absolute. If you also use these on your site they seem to work better for linking, but I have no proof. And they are more work to maintain if you change things on your site.

I don't think the problems you describe with what was done before are so much to do with linking, but more with site design, content, and throwing together a bunch of sites quickly. If the sites are not good or somewhat the same in nature, that is easy to detect and get hurt for.

All your sites being on the same IP CAN be a factor, but we have 11 classified ads sites all on the some IP, all use the same basic site template, all link to each other. And all of the sites have PR4 and good traffic.

So why to they work? All of the sites have a lot of content and each site has different content. Each site has a directory of information for it's topic and classified ad content that is also for it's topic. The other thing is that the sites were not all launched at the same time. We built one and then worked on the next. I think it took us about a year to launch all 11.

If the IP factor was really important, all the sites that are hosted on a single IP at a hosting company would also be hurt...

So, as some that build lots of crappy little (or big) sites know, quantity does not always coount for much if you don't have any quality.

If you can go back to those sites you have and start working on each one to add content, change the design, or even put an whole new site that is better and start working on them like that I think you will have better results. This is in addition to SEO and submissions.

If you are curious about our sites, here is the list:
Auto repair equipment, mechanic's tools, auto body equipment, and car
Free RV, Motor Home, and Travel Trailer Classifieds
Free Heavy Equipment and construction equipment Classifieds
Free Home Medical Equipment Free Classifieds
Free Medical Equipment Photo Classifieds
Free Photography, Photographic Equipment, and Digital Camera Classifieds
Free race car classifieds to buy and sell cars, autos, performance parts
Free Restaurant Equipment Classifieds
Free Toy, Game, and Collectible Classified Ads
Go kart classifieds at GoKart2000.com - new & used go karts
Free Vending Machine Classifieds

[tedsudol]

Hi,
Thanks nielsencl for the time and thought your put into responding. I took a look at several of your sites and that I think illustrates the question I have.
I have about 30 sites up:
HotDotAuctions.com - the best in Domain Names
Headquarters for Ebay's Most Watched Auctions!
Rare Ferrari Ebay Auctions
GreatBaby.info -The Best for Your Great Baby!
JustConvertibles.info - convertible cars
HarleyDavidsonExperts.com
AudioAuctions.info
www.appleauctions.com
Ebay's Most Watched Auctions
www.TimeShareVactions.info
www.BudgetDisney.info]www.BudgetDisney.info

etc. Each one of the sites has a link to the other 29 that I wrote into the code on the page so for instance if someone is on www.BargainBeast and clicks on the link to Domain Name Auctions that will bring him to www.HotDotAuctions.

So in my mind each of my sites has 29 links - one to each of my other sites.

However if I look in Alexa or in Google type links:Headquarters for Ebay's Most Watched Auctions! it will say no links in the case of Alexa or in the case of Google it will say not documents found (no links found) If I type in that same links:www.wellknowndomain.com for ebay or another well known domain it will come up with all of the links (hundreds or thousands)

Like me you have linked all of your sites together in your page code construction. However like me if you look in Alexa or google for any of your sites it says none found.

So my question is why aren't the links being recognized by the search engines. Like you my sites weren't done at the same time, but are all on the same host so same IP. If that doesn't make a difference what does?

I used one of the domain tools that analyzes your page for keywords, keyword density, links , etc. and it said there were no links.

Why do I think there are links on my page but no one else does. Am I missing something? Looking in the wrong place?

How do I get links on my page that are recognized by the search engines?

I appologize for the editing on the domain name list above- each one is a domain name - it brought up the subtitle and althought I've repeatedly tried to edit it out for clarity it keeps coming back so I must be doing something wrong.


All the best,
Ted Sudol

[nielsencl]

Hi,

I see that your first site you have listed was just registered in March:

Domain Name: HOTDOTAUCTIONS.COM
Created on: 18-Mar-07
Expires on: 18-Mar-08

Ok, this site has serious "problems" from what I can see. It only has a PageRank of 0 and that could be why. If you are trying things to get more advantage it may be working against you.

I'm not going to spend much time now, but I will mention two things that I would change on at least one site and see if that helps.

1) Your "body" tag is right after your HTML tag and there is no HEAD tag at all. You need to add the open and close HEAD tags and move the body tag the correct place.

2) You have a noframes tag with 50,000 links to justdropped.com:

<noframes><a href="http://www.justdropped.com/drops/031707us.html"></a>
<a href="http://www.justdropped.com/drops/031707org.html"></a>
<a href="http://www.justdropped.com/drops/031707net.html"></a>

Even if these links could help your site, there are too many of them, and putting them in a noframes tag is just asking for trouble. Also I don't see that your frame for wsmdomains.com is showing up, so I would consider fixiing that or removing it.

The other thing that is going to work against you here is that your site really has no content. It's only a lot of links to ebay. People may not realize that at first, but search engines will right away. I would consider either finding a script where you can have auctions on your site with links to ebay acutions, or add a blog to give your site some content, BUT you would have to post to the blog on a regular basis to make it work.

Sorry to be critical, and I'm not always right by any means, that that's my opinion of what I saw on this one site.

In order for the links to have any weight, the site that links must have some PageRank.

Hmm, I just looked at a couple of your other sites. Some do have some pagerank, but I only saw a back link in Google for audioauctions.com, and I don't think it was from your site.

Perhaps what is going on is this:
- Too few links from outside sites with any pagerank
- Little or no page rank from sites in your network
- They say pagerank is divided by the number of links from your site. Since you have so many outgoing links, and the sites have little or no PR to start with, you are unable to give any of your sites any PR.

My advice:

1) Remove the frames and all the noframes links.

2) Add the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks going to ebay.(WHY?).

3) Get some links from search engines, directories, and other sites.

4) Then consider my other recomendations about your page code and content.

If you have sites that are not working well, always think about what people and search engines might think about them and do they have the things that most "normal" sites have, like an "about" page and "contact" page. If they don't then they may just exist to get people to click on paid ads or affiliate links and good sites have more to offer than just that. :-)

[tedsudol]

Hi,
Thanks again nielsenlc again for your time and effort in looking at my site. I appreciate your comments. Don't worry at all if they are critical- those are often the most helpful because you learn the most.

All of the hundreds of JustDropped and ws domain links you see on the page were the result of an earlier "internet Guru" who said this was the way to drive tons of traffic to your site automatically. When I told him my stat counters didn't show more than 2 or 3 leads from his "secret code" he gave me the boot. So I'll certainly clean that up and eliminate those.

You are right about there being no content. They were basically set up as ebay affiliate sites so I'm directing people there and telling them it will be an ebay auction site. I could put some content on a back page it that would help with the Search engine rankings. I would think that people are coming there because of the auctions.

However you bring up an question. When I used one of the web page analysis tools it showed a whole bunch of broken ebay links. This is understandable since once an auction is over it is removed from the listing. Is this going to hurt me because although for people coming to the site they see the latest auctions. The search engines see a bunch of broken links.

Is there a better way to set these pages up from a search engines eye. Should I put a content page as the index and the auction page as one of the pages on the site?

Thanks again for your help.

All the best,
Ted Sudol

[daniel]

All of the hundreds of JustDropped and ws domain links you see on the page were the result of an earlier "internet Guru" who said this was the way to drive tons of traffic to your site automatically.

Who was that internet guru, we have found about ten sites this month using the same exact no frame linking? This method obviously does not work, i was curious who is pushing this method.. Thanks

[nielsencl]

Yeah, I think you should say who this person is, or at least let him know about this thread. If people are paying for this, and it doesn't work, and he keeps doing it knowing it doesn't work, he could be arrested for fraud! I would offer my services as an expert witness at the trial. :-)

If you are going to have a site like a directory, you can have tons of links and I think it does work. But having tons of links to one site is only going to benefit the site you link to, if there is any benefit at all...!

Yes, if you have broken links on your site, this is not good since it is the sign of a lazy or "bad" webmaster. :-)

If you are going to create those Auction links yourself, you will have to update them. A better idea might be to sign up for Auction Ads and you won't have to worry about the updating. Take a look at how we are using them here.

But AuctionAds also don't add any content to your site. So you should consider adding news from press releases, RSS feeds, or using an API to pull in the content. Associate-O-Matic :: Build a custom Amazon.com Associate Store with 1000's of items in minutes uses the API to pull Amazon content and there should be something like this for ebay... I have something I found somewhere, but it is for a Windows server using ASP. Free eBay software, ASP eBay listing software

I may have something of the same problem with EbayAuctionAds.com in that I have build the site around no-content affiliate links using AuctionAds, but I have created some other site pages and added a blog that I keep updated.

[nielsencl]

Hey Ted,

I think I might have something that would get you where you want to be. Take a look at this page: Shop - Sundew Search - Carnivorous Plant News Center.

This sub-site uses the free templates from RSSMini. You can create pages that pull different RSS feeds and convert it into page content. You just tell it what keyword to use and it does the rest.

What I did here though is later added my affiliate code from AuctionAds into the page code, and all the links to Ebay become my affiliate links. You could use something like this for your site, and the nice thing is that if you look at the page code, there is a small amount of text for each RSS link, which gives the page some content. You'll notice that this page Doesn't have any Pagerank, but it's better than nothing.... :-)

[nielsencl]

Ted,

You should complain to the guy that put that code on your site and demand your money back. He knows it's bogus yet he keeps selling it to people. I would also complain to ebay. He is committing fraud and will keep doing it until someone says something.

[tedsudol]

Hi,
Thanks for your responses nielsencl and Dan. My take on this was to just move on. You have some good experiences and some not so good and you just have to keep learning. I figured I already wasted enough time on this issue. Especially after he told me I was dumber than a turkey - well not in those exact words - and no offense to turkeys. But you get the idea.

But after your responses I did think it over. I sent him an email asking for my money back, pointing out I had called him several times saying that according to the stat counters I had on my sites his "secret code" wasn't working and asking him to check out the set-up which he confirmed was correct.

His response was to say that I had removed the stat code which allowed him to keep track of leads on site. Since he said he had 15 people who swore they were getting tons of traffic from the code, the implication was that I was lying. Since I had modified the code he said there was no refund.

However based on what you said, I did tell him if he continued to sell this code on ebay he could be held liable for fraud. So he's put on notice and I don't think he will sell it any more.

So let's just move on from here, help each other and make our sites better - and make money.

All the best,
Ted Sudol