Do Article Links Beat Out Free Links From Link Directories?
 
The other day I forced myself to settle down to the rather boring task of dealing with pending link requests…I think at the time I had in excess of 500 pending requests.

Incidentally I had recently subconsciously made the decision to allot a certain amount of time each day in dealing with these links. Sigh! But as is the case with most wishes and decisions they are easier said than done!

 
Anyway as I struggled to sift through and evaluate which links to accept and which ones to reject it suddenly dawned on me that my time could be much better spent attaining links through writing articles.

Let me explain my reasoning by breaking down the hassles involved with attaining links from free link directories.

1. You Need To Make Sure The Link Directory Is Not A Link Farm. A link farm is a link directory that characteristically offers a ton of links for a small fee. Problem is all those links originate from the same IP (internet protocol) address thereby SCREAMING SCAM to the search engines.

Anyway assuming that this is a bonafide link directory the next step is to:

2. Evaluate the links. Before linking to any website within a link directory I refer to the home page or index page of that website to determine its page rank and whether the site is nothing more than an adsense spam site, made for adsense site (MFA) or the such like. Once you’ve got enough experience it is actually fairly easy to determine an adsense spam site despite the fact these days they comne all dressed up and rather elaborate looking!

Generally adsense spam sites consist of a single page liberally sprinkled with adsense all over and dotted aplenty with their targetted keyword within the furnished surrounding text. They may also have a couple of outbound external links and in rare cases boast a few inner pages.

Determing an adsense spam site requires you reviewing and evaluating the website.

 
Often times the text/content on adsense spam sites is automatically generated so you can bet it reads a tad awkward, to put it mildly!

3. How Deep Is Your Link. Another issue I have with link-directory link aggregation is that quite often your link gets inserted hundreds-of-pages deep! So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that if your link is situated hundreds of pages deep on a website that boasts all of a PR3 or less, it could take literally forever before the search engines ever get to find that link!

So let’s be honest here, what incentive is there for me to link to a low PR website where the webmaster of said website intends to insert my link deep deep DEEP at a point where for all intents and purpose it will be lost to the search engine robots.
 

However having said that I am not going to deny the fact that I still do link to such sites especially if they are topically related to my own website (in this case internet business) because linking to topically relevant or related websites falls under the purview of Google Web Paradise, or in other words is considered good website etiquette by Google.

4. Sharing Space In An Overcrowded Webpage. This used to be one of my big beefs with links from link directories; having my link on a webpage with thousands of other links! (yeah yeah, I know that’s an exaggeration.) Actually this issue isn’t that much of an issue anymore because as the search engines have evolved so have their techniques in weighing and evaluating links.

In other words the old school thinking of hoarding pagerank by restricting the number of outbound links or having none at all leading away from your webpage to any other site no longer carries favor with Google; in fact it is a practice that is pretty much frowned on by them these days.

The Advantages of Artcle Links.

Okay so I have waxed lyrical about the cons of link directories (but please do not interpret what I have said above about link directories as reason not to use them. On the contrary, the best linking strategy involves a multi-layered or multi-tiered approach which means incorporating all and any available linking avenues.)
 

So the question of the hour is what is the big hoopla with article based links? Well to me the biggest advantage of article links is that they are free, increase massively and exponetially in number over time and last but not least incorporate the anchor text of your choice in the inbound link!

Oh did I mention that they can also be highly relevant to the surrounding text and targeted destination too!

 
Article on link strategy written by Ba Kiwanuka