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Category: Web Marketing
Web Site Promotion

It's pretty amazing to me that this idea has yet to have been posted. Here browsing these forums we have many webmasters and web users. Here are some thoughts and maybe ideas on how we all can benefit from each other.

1. Google --- Google takes into consideration when ranking a site how many other sites link to it. Why don't we start some type of program here among ourselves, to promote each others sites (but not to take traffic away of course).

What is everyone's thoughts on this, yea, nay? Let's discuss it and see if there is anything that we can do to help each other out.

I like the idea. I wish I had a online store though. Anyway, let's do it. I think we could just put websites on a links page or something. Is this what you had in mind? Any other ideas?

1. Google --- Google takes into consideration when ranking a site how many other sites link to it. Why don't we start some type of program here among ourselves, to promote each others sites (but not to take traffic away of course).

I'm not sure if Google may not penalize sites that only make use of reciprocal links. There was a discussion about this some months ago on the webmasterworld forums, and the general feeling was that pages of reciprocal links was viewed dimly by Google.

/But, short of inside info from Google, non of this is certain/

Jalal I belive you are correct I saw the same thing somewhere. They are looking for links on sites that have the same content as yours and that is the most powerfull. I think we could do some type of linking but if it was not on sites that did not match it may not do any good. I work with a lot of puppetry sites and many of them link to each other and that does not seem to hurt and seems to help some.

It's unclear to me why google or any other would penalize you for linking to sites that didn't offer relevent content. And excactly how does google make that determination? What's irrevelent to one visitor may be very relevent to another. If you had a store that offered say outdoor gear why in the heck would you want to link to other like sites that were along the same lines? Wouldn't that undermine your ability to compete?

SJP

It's unclear to me why google or any other would penalize you for linking to sites that didn't offer relevent content. And excactly how does google make that determination?


This is called "search engine spam" and a lot of effort is being made to find automated ways to identify it.



What's irrevelent to one visitor may be very relevent to another. If you had a store that offered say outdoor gear why in the heck would you want to link to other like sites that were along the same lines? Wouldn't that undermine your ability to compete?


There are a lot of ways to cooperate with related but non-competitive sites.

I think the key here is to separate your sales site from your content site, the idea being that the latter drives traffic to the former. Your sales pages should have *no* outbound links, but your content site can share freely with the intent to benefit your customers.

In reply to Daj and his quest for knowledge on site promotion etc;
I would be interested in learning more about all this myself. I noticed the valueexchange site that Kerri Mackenzie has put up. Looks ok but is it relevant to a small biz in australia? ( i havent checked it out yet).

I have another question on search engine optimisation and its the usual, am i better teaching myself or paying someone to do it for me? Id like to learn but there are seemingly so many complex and different view points on approach.
The last i heard was all about mirror pages ...anyone know about these?

Thanks
Anna

I have another question on search engine optimisation and its the usual, am i better teaching myself or paying someone to do it for me?

Well I would have to say that I think it is always best to teach yourself. For one it is much cheaper. :)

When it comes to SEO there seems to be tons of thoughts on the subject out there. I belive the best thing you can do is to make sure you have good content and code that is formated correctly. Then you have to get out there and make sure folks know about your site. I take more of a grass roots approach since I try to be active on other sites that pertain to the subject that is the same as my sites. Links from other sites to yours that are of the same content are always a good way to spread the news about your site and get you listed. Also it takes time. I have folks that post saying thier site has been up for two weeks and is still not listed... well that is just not a very long time. It can take months for the "news" to spread. Yes I guess if you have a lot of money to burn there are services and ways to advertise but I don't think the average web site owner has those types of resources.

That is just my 2 cents.

WebmasterWorld has always been a good resource on SEO.

Following the DNS outage in October, they dumped WestHost for RackSpace. They also made some changes. As a result, I have been unable to view their forums, because my ISP has been banned due to abuse (either that, or they have made all forums viewable only on subscription, which is doubtful).

The owner of WMW has a companion site, SearchEngineWorld, which still says it is hosted at WestHost, and which is still viewable from my ISP. Unfortunately, SEW does not have the SEO resources of those at WMW.

Comments? Suggestions?

Wow. I didn't realize that WestHost had lost WebmasterWorld. They are one of the top 500 websites in the world.

Yeah, too bad. Troubles me as well, and it seemed to be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction on the part of Mr. Tabke. Although I have no idea what he went through in dealing with WH - maybe he reached a frustration point many have expressed and it was time to leave.

Temporarily, they went over to SearchEngineWorld. The long story of the changeover is explained here in this 34 page thread:

http://www.searchengineworld.com/forum911/1.htm

There were a number of posts around the web on various failsafes which could have been in place, such as mirror sites and redundant dns servers.

This thread has more on the cost of the failure:

http://www.searchengineworld.com/forum911/36.htm

This thread should describe the latest, although I can't verify that because I am blocked from access ("Either we require login from users from your ISP because of abuse, or the thread is marked members only."):

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum19/2958.htm

The thread was not marked for members only back in October, so my inability to read it is a new development.

BTW, I can view WMW pages opened from serp's, but can view none of them when linked from the WMW index. Anyone else encountered this block?

According to Mr. Tabke's last post on November 25, WebmasterWorld.com now requires cookie support (you need to be a member to view any post). This, he says is due to "rogue unceasing and merciless attacks" by robot programs.

hmm.. I;m not sure I was able to check some posts now..

Don't know when this happened, but I have been able to view public posts in the webmasterworld forum once again.

As usual, the "member supported" area is off limits to those not registered.

As of today, wmw does not list a host on wmw at the bottom.

Searchengineworld still lists Westhost as it's hosting provider.

Some negative posts on those forums about wh, saying wh outsources services.

As of today, wmw does not list a host on wmw at the bottom.

The provider is listed on the about page (http://www.webmasterworld.com/help.cgi?cat=about). It's Rackspace. Judging by their website (http://www.rackspace.com), it's probably one of those places where, if you have to ask how much, you can't afford it. :P

Torrin,

Thanks for the reply. This is as I expected.

Howard










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