Linking Scams

Linking Scams
By Vickie J. Scanlon

If you are contemplating looking at other avenues of linking, or you have been approached by another webmaster that's wants to exchange links, then keep these little tips in the back of your mind. Some have happened to me, and let me say, I was not too pleased.

1. The link on the home page to the link directory remains but when you click on the link you get a template style page with a page with no directory content – or some other site. (Cloaking)

2. Changing the click status of a link – What once was a clickable link, is now replaced with bold type, no hyperlink, and thus, not clickable.

3. Your links exists, and are counted by the Search Engines, but the links are not visible or clickable. No value to you.

4. A request for reciprocal links – when you first exchange the links, your link is placed in a heavy traffic area web page– great exposure. But soon, it is buried in the mass of links in some obscure web page that few, if any visitors visit, or it is deleted.

And their link that you so graciously placed on your site -- is sitting on a page that gives them good ranking and exposure. Their link went from reciprocal to a one-way link. Well, I fell for that one – I can honestly say I was not too happy about it – but as always – I learned.

5. Trading links with a high-ranking site – The site puts your link onto their web page directory with one small hitch, there is no link to the directory on any of the pages, and specifically not on their index page. If visitors cannot get to your link – your linking strategies are down the toilet.

6. Watch out for link exchanges. If they offer to give you 1500 links for a nominal fee, don’t bite -- your site will end up being banned by the Search Engines. Investigate thoroughly before entering into an agreement. More times then not, your link may be placed in an obscure place or deleted.

7. You have created a link with a partner and you did a visual check on the site. Everything looks good. Better check behind the web page at the source. (Right click in the body of the copy, and click on “View Source”. If you see “noindex” in the Meta tags this is telling the Search Engines to ignore the page and the links on the page. If you see “nofollow” in the Meta tags – this tells the Search Engines not to count this page in their Page Ranking. Either case will not help you.

8. Using Meta Tag Masking – allows only the Search Engines the ability to see what is behind the masking. You are clueless as to whether they have allowed your link to be seen by the Search Engine or if it is in fact a “nofollow” or “noindex” page.

9. Your link is constantly being moved from one page to another. So when the Search Engines visit – the relevancy of the link can, and probably will change or, possibly will be ignored completely by the Search Engines. If you link is being moved about, you can figure that the Search Engines will ignore the link.

10. Your link is placed in hodge-podge order – For example: Your site is about Affiliate Marketing, the site listed above you is about Cats and the site listed below is about Cars. – Your link has lost any and all relevancy and is of no value to you in the linking process.

11. The cache page is 6 months old or older– meaning that the web page have not been visited by the Search Engines for a long time – and more than likely will not be visited by the Search Engines in the near future.

These are just some of the linking scams out there. If you are starting a linking program, you should try to keep track of what is going on with your links. My suggestion is to do a search in Google for a “Link Management Software” tool to keep track of your links, or if you feel comfortable working with Excel, place all your links into an Excel spreadsheet.