Of links sluts and whores…

Excellent article by Eric Ward Are You A Link Whore? Could it be that taking the moral high ground is starting to pay off?

I have the same experiences as Eric; companies ask me to get them links too:

I received an RFP from a company that ought to know better that wanted to know how much I’d charge to get their site 500 one-way Pagerank 2 or better links. Another company wanted to know how long it would take me to seed 1,000 blogs with a link to their site in the blog comment field. And another wanted to know how many links I could buy for their site for $25,000.

I always refuse link-getting gigs, because:

* it’s a p in the a because it’s BORING. Go hire your teenage son or daughter to do it;

* it’s easily fiddled by the company providing the link (yes, we’ll give you a link they say, but four months later they still haven’t provided the link);

* so what?! Are you converting your traffic? Let’s say you’ve got 5000 links and you’re #1. Who cares if you’re #1 in the SERPs and STILL can’t get anyone to buy what you’re selling? Make better products, and go and DO SOMETHING to market them, rather than trying to game a system;

However, the primary reason I don’t accept “get me links” gigs is the Web itself. I’m a Web-hugger. I love being able to sit at my computer and find stuff that I need for research, usually within seconds. Link whoring and similar practices add nothing to the Web, they’re Web graffiti and pollution.

There are a thousand ways you can market anything, online or offline. Get creative. Market your stuff.

OTOH, I’m not rabid about link-building or anything else. I know how little I know. Heck, when I bought my gorgeous little Apple IIe with 48KB of memory in 1981 I thought it would do everything I needed to do on a computer. So I know notheeng… (said in Manual of Fawlty Towers’s voice.)

Technorati Tags: links, link building, link graffiti, Web pollution, Web SEO

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