Something i found (Some should learn from it)

[Micheal Pannell Realtor]

http://www.linksmanager.com/best_wor...practices.html

Article by Dirk Johnson, LinkStrategy.com

Let's recall that the primary goal here is to earn as many links as possible back to your website. What's fascinating are the many policies and practices that people deploy that actually thwart that objective. All with the best of intentions, of course.

In many cases, people are taking the advice of a "linking expert" when they develop these policies. It is important to realize that many of the books and websites about linking were written years ago. The "best practices" have changed over the years. Worse, some people develop their own odd strategies, based on the hysteria that is commonly found on webmaster/linking discussion boards.

Let's discuss the most common of these situations in detail, with some explanations as to why many of these policies actually backfire, often without the site owner being aware of it.

Also, it is necessary to keep in mind that a lot of site owners, webmasters, search engine optimization services, and link management services manage the link directories for several domain names, even dozens, in some cases. The volume of linking work that they deal with means that they just can't accommodate annoying link partners. It's much easier to just avoid them. Being a pest can be quite costly, in terms of links earned.

Keep it Simple

First of all, always keep this work as simple as possible. The best linking practices derive from realizing that there is a real, live person at the other end of a link request. They can make or break your linking efforts. You need them, maybe more than they need you. At least that's how you should approach it.

So that means using gracious language, patience, and humility when corresponding with these people. And also realize that the first priority in their life may not be dealing with a link request. Usually, they'll get around to it, except for those who manage to annoy them first. Cut them some slack.

If you approach this work in that way, you'll probably earn links from just about anyone else who is remotely relevant to your own site. You get the maximum impact, and that's the goal.

The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Now, let's talk about the many ways that we could induce bad linking karma. Here are several scenarios that each can result in outright refusals to link, or even worse, losing links that have already been earned, while also being removed from future consideration on other sites.

"The best linking practices derive from realizing that there is a real, live person at the other end of a link request."

Keep your linking relevant to what is of interest to your end users

If your site sells Christmas ornaments, do not link to sites that offer loan consolidation. Link to sites that would interest your target audience. Publishing related links on your website increases the value of your own website. When you publish relevant links, you create content, value, and interactivity with your users. In addition, neatly organized links pages full of interesting links will result in increased repeat traffic as your visitors return to your website.

Not using online submission forms

If a site provides an online form for link submissions, there's a very good chance that they will also ignore every link request that is emailed to them. About 30% of all sites provide online forms, and that number is growing. These are also the sites with the most actively and professionally-managed link directories. By ignoring them, you can figure that nearly 30% of your requests are going nowhere except the trash bin.

Placing Time Limits

Some people ask for a link, and they also tell the prospect that there is a time limit for them to comply with the demand that they link back, or else they'll unceremoniously take down the link. Miss Manners would not approve of this boorish behavior. This "tough-talk" is a worn out approach that everyone ignores. Skip the threats.

Taking down links

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous error. If a link is removed prematurely, and the prospective site finally does update their links pages and can't find their link, that is actually a lost link opportunity. Patience wins this game. Twelve months is not too long to wait. Un-reciprocated links actually do more good than harm. Get over it. It takes time to remove links. I advise that you focus your linking work looking forward, toward earning new links, and not look backward, fretting over those who won't.

Sending unwarranted "Link Deleted" email

Here's a situation where the link has already been earned, but it's not yet being recognized as reciprocating. So the natural reaction is to send the prospective link partner a "can't find our link" email, right? Wrong. The odds of sending these notices incorrectly is extremely high, not matter what tool you use to check links. Sites that send these notices get categorized as annoying pests. It's not worth losing links already earned, or a lot of future links, just to try to get links from other sites that may never link back anyhow. Again, work forward, not backward.

I'll link to you when your PR is over (insert a number here)

Oh, really? Just realize that you may not get a second chance, if and when the site does meet the threshold. The higher the threshold you set, the more you stand to get tagged as a troublemaker. A link should be judged on the quality of the website it links to, and its relevancy to your own website - not on PR or any other number.

Please link to all of these sites first

Another site may not want to link to all 20 sites run by the same business. "All or nothing" can easily end up as nothing. Plus, listing 20 sites looks like link farming, and people will avoid it.

Our link must appear exactly as "Blah Blah Blah", before we'll reciprocate

If someone has linked to your site and is requesting a link back, then the proper response here is a simple, "Thank you, and we'll post your link ASAP!". You've earned the link. Unless the link text is egregiously improper, then just leave it alone. I'll repeat: work forward, not backward.

Using a link relationship as an excuse to blast out newsletters and spam

Remarkably, I have seen some so-called "linking experts" promote this ridiculous practice, under the guise that there is an established "relationship". It's also a relationship that's about to come to an abrupt end. Linking pros who manage multiple sites are extraordinarily annoyed by this game, since they can end up getting multiple copies of a newsletter they did not want in the first place. This can be a very costly error.

Failure to use a top-level domain

If you are serious about your website, then get your own domain name. Free-hosted and ISP-hosted "member" sites cannot easily be identified by the root domain name. This causes all kinds of complications when it comes to link verification, duplication, etc. Pros avoid linking to free-hosted sites like the plague, for a lot of reasons, and this is the biggest one.

Free-hosted email accounts

If your free-hosted email account fills up because a friend sent you a huge digital image of their new puppy, then your other email will bounce back to other senders as undeliverable. You'll become road-kill in everyone's link prospect database. Better yet, to avoid all of this, just provide an online form for submissions, and you can avoid the emailed link requests altogether.

Poorly-organized links directories

These days, people will avoid linking into an uncategorized mess, because a reasonable person will never find their link. Also, these kinds of pages may be scrutinized as "free for all" pages by search engines. Putting up a well-categorized and organized link directory shows that you care about linking, and care about your website.

Being a pain

A lot of people enter into linking with a mistaken concept that the world will gladly comply with their odd demands and narrow definitions of what constitutes appropriate link partners. Linking success is not about narrow focus. It's about broad cooperation among people who want to be well established. The most successful at this tend to be rather open-minded about it all. Those who purposely make things difficult for others will forever wonder why they never seem to catch up with their competition.

Overall, keep this simple, straightforward, gracious, and cooperative, and you'll succeed. If you put up barriers, become annoying, and make bothersome demands, people will begin to take down your links and avoid you, going forward. Some of those people could cost you an awful lot of links, over time, since they manage a lot of sites. And most of all, this is a people-to-people business, and not a transaction between machines. Keep that in mind, and you'll do well.

[judyo]

OK, so you're the person I've been having an e-mail debate with since you sent me the link to this same article. BTW, someone else might chime in that you should never copy & paste an entire article but just give a link but I'm still not 100% sure about that since you did give the source of the article.

As I said, it's a good but very basic article. If you've read through some of the reciprocal link debates we've had lately you'll see that this article is pretty much basic fluff. It still doesn't speak about Google's devaluing of reciprocal links or how trading with unindexed pages is not something you should do.

In fact, if you want to read a good debate on reciprocal linking spend some time reading through this thread:
http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/thread10794.html

[DomainDrivers]

Article by Dirk Johnson, LinkStrategy.com

I just would like to point out that Dirk is my partner at DomainDrivers. We still use the old company name since it has great link pop.

Judy, do you have any factual evidence that G devalues recips? I would love to see it.

[judyo]

Rich,

Please read through the link I provided as some of the posts have quoted Matt Cutts & other G employees as stating as much. If you don't agree that peer to peer reciprocal linking has been devalued since the Big Daddy update then that is your interpretation. I tend to lean on the side of the many respected seo webmasters who feel peer to peer reciprocal linking is being devalued and have since changed my linking strategies.

For those that don't think peer to peer linking is devalued, continue trading with each other. I'll spend my time getting good one-ways and building up my sites with unique content.

I still stand behind (which is really what started my post here) the waste of linking between unindexed pages.

[DomainDrivers]

Oh. I'm very familiar with that thread.

[judyo]

Rich,

LOL! Maybe you've posted in it - I haven't read it in a few days and it became so long I can't remember everyone who participated in it. These debates about linking are popping up more & more, another one started today in the Google forum.

[DomainDrivers]

Judy, I have. The debates are raging and we at DomainDrivers jump in all the time. We spend alot of time debating in LED Digest and RealTalk. I just get sensistive to all the anti-recip talk because everyone just speculates. Anyway, I think it's all very healthy because it makes the gamers think twice about fooling the SEs.