SEO Discovery and Plan of attack.

[herbalclicks]

I have been studying SEO for my new hoodia diet pill site and have come upon an interesting process one of my competitors has used to get #1 ranking in Google and #3 ranking in Yahoo.

After doing a search of who is linking to the competitor, I found that they are employing the services of free-counter-plus.com.

This free counter service is on literally thousands of sites. If you mouse over the counter it links directly to my competitor's hoodia site.

So basically they have developed 1000's of one-way inbound links to their site. I am pretty sure it is impossible to bump the current advertiser out of the counter program as they have been with them for a long time and have much more money for advertising than I do.

I have been trying to develop a plan of attack on how to get massive amount of inbound links to my site. The only way I have thought of so far is to try and contact as many webmasters as possible and ask them to link the word "Hoodia" to my site and I will pay them $5 for the link and also $1 for every friend they refer to me. I figure I can get 100 inbound links to my site for $500, well worth it I would say. I will even allow them to put the link at the bottom of thier page is small type if they want.

If anyone can think of a better way to do this, or if you see any pitfalls with this plan please post them here.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi herbalclicks,

I can see where you came up with the conclusion but I think it's a wrong one.

1) Google does NOT like a sudden influx of 1000s of links and it can get you banned.

2) SE are not influenced much by that type of inbound link. They count relevant links from quality sites in your niche much higher. That's why you can get a ton of inbounds from forums and they don't do much. Tell me I know. I have THOUSANDS of posts on high PR forums and my PR has been stuck at 5 forever!
(PS I don't post for links or PR, I post to help people and to get real visitors to 5 star.)

3) Natural and gradual is the way to go. Check the DigitalPoint link sales forum and see if you can find some high PR links from health or diet related sites.

[joycee]

Linda, I'm not sure this is the right place to put this, but what do you think of sitemaps? I've heard all sorts of conflicting information. Some seem to think it will help you to get your whole site indexed, and then others seem to beleive they have been penalized for having them and are taking the sitemaps back off. Them seem to have quite compelling evidence they are indexed more quickly and more of their pages are indexed as a whole when they don't have a sitemap. Do you have an opinion?

[sarahk]

I'd be interested to see the evidence of harm caused by them.

I'm a staunch believer in anything that will help a search engine get a full appreciation of my sites. I have no evidence of it particularly helping though

That said, I've moved my blog onto it's own domain and I've undergone none of the pain I expected. Could it be that sitemaps helped?

[freetraff]

Linda, I'm not sure this is the right place to put this, but what do you think of sitemaps? I've heard all sorts of conflicting information. Some seem to think it will help you to get your whole site indexed, and then others seem to beleive they have been penalized for having them and are taking the sitemaps back off.

Up to now have experienced nothing but help from the sitemaps (Google sitemaps) with over 6 months of actively using them. Big help with indexing. But sitemaps love if your site gets some fresh content on regular basis - they *love to see* the work on the site.

Google does NOT like a sudden influx of 1000s of links and it can get you banned.

100% sure no good. Think of it. Can a natural business get so many links that quickly? It can, if the business is well-known and promotes something like crazy. And if Google goes to your site and sees that hm, these guys are not BMW or WorldCup site, I don't trust that they could get 1000s of links within few days naturally => they are spamming.

I am not talking about your site, but talk they way Google can see that. I would suggest staying under 100 per week. And surely the links MUST BE RELEVANT, otherwise this is suicide and you get to the top only for a short split of a second.

[bcowan]

Like many others I invested a good deal of time and effort developing a program of link exchanges. After a while though I had a good look at this and decided to dump the entire process. Why?

1. I didn't get any traffic from the links in my exchange, mainly I suspect because many 'hide', or at least don't have prominent paths to their link directory.

2. Most of the link requests I received came from completely unrelated sites simply wanting to exchange with the 'any link is a good link...' mentality.

3. Most of my 'link' traffic (99%) came from high quality, high rank sites directly relating to my niche.

Anyway, I dumped the link exchange program and never looked back. My only efforts with link exchange now consist of site reviews, article exchange with specially selected quality 'partners'. In other words, steadily improving link quality naturally through site activities.

Just my thoughts.... hope it helps.

[freetraff]

Originally Posted by bcowan

1. I didn't get any traffic from the links in my exchange, mainly I suspect because many 'hide', or at least don't have prominent paths to their link directory.

That is why most probably you will never link to them. Silly they made such a silly mistake.

2. Most of the link requests I received came from completely unrelated sites simply wanting to exchange with the 'any link is a good link...' mentality.

Yes, this is a real problem. Believe me, it is very hard to construct professional and effective search algo that finds you relevant partners. The automated searches that do simple keyword stuffing into Google and compare with meta = waste of time.

The good link searching algo is a real masterpiece. But if 2 guys invented algo for the search of sites, it is possible to invent another algo that takes important factors and gives relevant sites, putting irrelevant to the trash bin.

3. Most of my 'link' traffic (99%) came from high quality, high rank sites directly relating to my niche.

Exactly. Why should anyone do other type of link exchange? Those who do it just for the sake of quantity of links don't understand what is link exchange.

In terms of business, link exchange is establishing reputable online business relationships with the site. And this absorbs anything you have mentioned as your successful experience.