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Never has competition been so
difficult in the Internet world. Google and Yahoo keep
indexing more and more pages, into the millions upon
millions, and yet more and more people are creating super
quickie links pages that are supposed to get other
webmasters to want to trade links with them.
I still trade links with other webmasters, but I've gotten
more particular as the link trade offers get worse and
worse.
First of all, nobody uses title tags correctly anymore.
Just for example, a directory page for cars should have a
automotive keyword in the title tag, not "ACME Soap
washes your odor away guaranteed!". Would I want my
hot rod site listed on a page with that for a title tag?
Remember, if by some miracle that page got listed in
Google the link would read "ACME Soap washes your
odor away guaranteed!". More than likely the page
wouldn't even come up under any searches for cars or hot
rods, even if all the links on the page were automotive
related. Now, this example was a good links directory
compared to most today.
Most people who want to trade links have links directory
consisting of nothing but miscellaneous links. I mean
nothing but links. I've seen a lot with no design
whatsoever and no title tag at all. A page of links with
no theme whatsoever is worthless for my site and yours.
The hidden links page is also a big frustration of mine.
You've got to love it. One webmaster said you shouldn't
need a magnifying glass and a GPS system to find a link to
the directory. Webmasters need to start treating their
links pages as though they were as important as the rest
of their site.
A lot has been said about link trades being a lot less
effective these days. Could the problems we've covered
here be the cause?
A Good Directory
A good links directory has title tags that relate to
the content of the page, is organized neatly by theme, is
easy to find, and is as close to your website's main theme
as possible. In other words, the more related the site is
to your site's content, the more the link trade is going
to be valuable to your site. This is regardless of whether
or not you get a higher search engine ranking. The best
possible link trade for overall increases in traffic are
ones that are going to boost your traffic with or without
search engines, and if the links directory is a resource
to the public you will get traffic from it. It would be
much more probable that you would get a boost from such a
site.
The basic moral of the story is if you want good sites to
link to you then make a good professional looking links
directory, and please no more title tags that do nothing
but repeat your business name.
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