Is It A Fair Link Exchange?

[Sheryl Loch]

Is It A Fair Link Exchange?

Are you doing the work horse end of building links and not getting the carrot?

We all need backlinks. We all want as many as possible while doing the least amount of work.

Think about this – You join a blog directory – they let you place 1 link to your site in their directory! You just got 1 link yea!

Now, they will only place a link on their site IF you place a banner (125, mini banner..) on your front page. That is a reciprocal link. They have to see that or they remove your 1 listing from their site.

You place the HTML widget box on the side of your blog & place their badge in it with a hot link to their site. No biggie, it’s 1 little box – or is it?

This badge and link to their site is on EVERY page of your blog! If you have 500 pages, they get 500 backlinks.

Would 500 links coming from 1 site count highly? Not real sure.

I can tell you that is how many of these sites, like blog directories, get MILLIONS of back links.

They give you 1 link, you in turn give them….. as many as you have pages on that site.

So, you really need to count how many targeted hits you get from that directory or are you just getting the shaft?

Sheryl Loch

[Brian Hawkins]

That's a great question Sheryl. One that I've had in the back of my mind for a while. I have removed those directory links from the Extreme Ezine. I did have a little group of directory buttons on my footer (image below) and like you said it showed on every page.



I will admit that when I had those buttons I had a Google PageRank of 05/10 but I think those links had very little to do with it. That was before I switched to blog format and I had a lot more traffic and backlinks then.

If Google is fair at all, to be consistent with their other rules, they would need to weaken or eliminate the weight of directory links if not penalize them. I'm not suggesting they do and I don't know how they treat such pages of links but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't count the backlink. I agree that the directory site owner gains the most from the exchange but that's how most sites work. I have no problem with that part.

The reason I pulled the directory images from my site was overall page size. When I went to blog format I wanted to reduce the page load time so I removed many of the old images. Even though the mico-banners are very small I didn't feel the benefit was work the added load time.

After all that I still haven't answered your question No, it's not a fair link exchange. If it were fair they would show our banners/links on their front page and on as many internal pages as we do. A backlink buried under dozens of pages with thousands of other sites for a front page (or whole site banner) isn't fair at all. I wouldn't even consider it a link exchange, just a place in a directory.

With that said, I see nothing wrong with site directories. I would recommend we only list our sites in directories that will benefit us outside of the link-exchange aspect. For example, if we were looking for joint ventures listing our site in a joint venture directory might be good. When I was selling ezine advertising I was listed in Charlie Page's Directory of Ezines and I did get advertising clients from the site.

Sorry, I'm very long-winded today

I get more traffic from sites like BlogCatalog that I ever did from traditional directories. BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog have taken the 'directory', added networking into it and created a pretty cool membership site.

Ok, I'm done. The Internet Marketers Guild brings out the smart in me

[Sheryl Loch]

Hey Brian,
I do agree that some Directories are a great place to be listed.
I think many of them are over rated. It may just be that no one cares to look at our blogs or we have not written a good enough description. I know that we get very few hits from any directories we are listed in - but, we have a link!

I partly wanted to make others aware of how these banners and buttons work for the directory.
I have come across blogs that have so many buttons & banners that it takes forever to load. Some people even put on badges from social networking sites like NING, Myspace, Linkedin....

When some people do not understand how they are loosing readers, it may be the clutter or the fact that the site is just to slow. I guess some people may think it is well worth it to be listed on a directory site. I just think that many that require a reciprocal link are not worth the clutter and drag.

I would think that the SE's would discount them at some point but, that may not matter when you have 50,000+ you are still getting a huge amount of backlink credit. I wonder how many of these are DoFollow?

Now, that is what I want! I'll put 1 link to people and they can give me hundreds! We have to make a plan, The Extreme Ezine - Sheryl Loch double button Required on all blogs.(Insert Evil Laugh)

[Brian Hawkins]

I'll take that deal Sheryl. Looks like we agree on directory buttons. I wouldn't be surprised if we did a little digging that some of them had those internal directory's pages blocked with robots.txt. or sitemap.xml. I'm not accusing anyone I'm just saying that's something to consider.

I was searching around directories a little and I noticed one that offers a do-follow link for a $5 fee and a featured link for $10. Last year I paid $10/month to another large blog directory for a featured listing. It was do-follow and as lazy as I am it took six months for me to take a look at the resulting benefit of my $60. In six months I had not received a single visit from the listing. On top of that I didn't seen a single Google Alert from that site. That tells me Google probably didn't bother spidering much of the directory's site or I am incredibly unlucky and my link was never there from the rotation every time Googlebot made an appearance. Either way, I can think of a thousand better uses of that money. Not to mention the whole 'paid links' Google issue.

I think the new directories that are also social networks work better but only if used properly and that takes time. By used properly I mean joining and participation in groups, commenting and reviewing blogs, adding friends, rating sites and broadcasting if available. The link by itself is a waste of time in my opinion.

You bring up a great point about the clutter. Page load time was a concern of mine but so was clutter. My sites tend to by far to 'busy' as it is and tossing in a bunch of little banners just adds to the confusion as well as the load time. I'm fortunate enough to have a broadband connection but not everyone has that luxury. Even with a broadband connection there a lot of sites that take forever to load. Directory buttons and banners would be one of the first things I would loose to reduce file size.

It looks like the answer to 'Is It A Fair Link Exchange?' is absolutely YES - if you own the directory

[Sheryl Loch]

I was listening to a podcast by Ed Dale & Gurubob, If I understood it correctly, they said it can take 6 months for your link in a blog directory to be indexed by Google.

I would tend to believe that because, I have submitted to blog directories & not seen them as a backlink for a long time (if ever). It may have to do with the size of the site or possibly so many links with very little text content.

I will say that I have never done a search for something and had a blog directory show up in the Google search results that would lead me to a blog or a list of blogs. I also do not go to a blog directory to search for information or other blogs. That would suggest to me that submitting to a blog directory is solely for the backlink.

I'm not sure if anyone searches at directories or if they just submit & leave only returning to check for their link.

Now, my brain will be in over drive pondering "what is the purpose of blog directories, other than a backlink?" That is the ones that do not have any community activities.

Sheryl

[Brian Hawkins]

You're right Sheryl, any time I want to search for a blog I do what everyone else does, Google it. Every now and then I'll go to Google blog search but I can't say I have ever gone to a blog directory to find a blog.

One exception I think could be specialized niche directories. I have had advertisers contact me from that ezine advertising directory and at one point I was in a JV directory. The JV directory was a place someone could list on and join to find potential JV partners and that seems to work until the spammers came in. In fact, I removed my site from the directory because it was beginning to create too much work with the requests. It became watered down with stuff like link requests and 'visit my site' messages.