Friday, May 3, 2013

Sneaky Link Builders

I Found Your Web Site

That's what the subject line said in the email that one of customers got. The author of the email said they had checked out the site and that they wanted to talk about linking to each other. So, I decided to go see what the site was all about to see if it was worth linking to. I like to consider options reasonably.  Here is what I found.

I followed the link to the 'page' that the person cited in the email and what do you know, it went to a legitimate page on the site. However, the page took a while to load, which makes me think that the page was not really a unique page that exists but is one that is used to produce a generic page with filled in parameters that could be used for baiting someone into linking to the site, after which they make a legitimate page.

The other thing I noticed is that while the page is there when you follow the link, there is no way to click to it on the web site. It isn't included in any navigation, or used in any page copy that I could find on the site by browsing.

What that means is, I don't see how the link the author of the site is offering can benefit my customer. I cannot see how a search engine will find the page since there isn't a link to it on the site. So the link they say they have 'given' is really not valuable at all.

What I am saying is this:

The amount of effort the author took to set up this 'trick' (for lack of a better word) could have just as easily been used to actually help the site visitors find what they are looking for by creating an actual page for fashion jewelry or something like that and leaving it at that.

But instead, in my opinion it doesn't look beneficial at this point. Why do I say that? Because there is a page, but unless a search engine finds that page, it won't ever generate traffic.