This article comes about through my efforts to give my web-friend.com site a little shot in the arm.   I wanted to get a little boost to my traffic, and started looking into some of the search engine placement, site promotion, and exchanging links with a few folks.   My site does pretty well for a single user site and all, but let's face it, I'm not exactly as well known as Amazon or anything.  Anyway, what I found was, one of those things that make you go "hmmmmm".

First I first went to a few "Post Your Link Here" for free places.  Pretty neat, all I have to do is put a link on my site to them, and they do the same for me.  Some have worked well, but others didn't seem to show little return on the effort.  I noticed that while I had a link to them on an actual "html" page, what some did was allow me to enter my information into their database - it didn't get posted to a page.  What I mean by that is, if I searched on their site, sure it would pull up a link to my site, but ... and here is the trickery part - they used a "SQL" database, and using what's known as cgi calls, wrote the information to a dynamic page.  This boils down to a line of text listed in a database for them - and a hard link to their site on my html page.  Pages are what gets indexed in most search engines, not the data inside a database.  naaaaa..... not worth it for me.

Why?  Two reasons.  1. No one is ever going to see my site on their site unless they go there and actually search for my site.  If they know to search for my site, then they would just COME to my site.  2. Search engines look for web pages and review them, then list that information in a database for folks to find.  They'll find my page which lists a link to Mr. Database link, and rank him one point higher because someone has a link to him.  They will not find a "link" to my site when they search his pages.  Reason: Search engines do not include the data inside a database as a link on a page, only links on web-pages are considered a true "link".

Now I'm not knocking Mr. Database link, rather clever, and actually very good programming to be quite frank.  It keeps his bandwidth down, information compact, and encourages others to link to his site (which helps him look better to the world of the search engines).  It just doesn't return as much to me as it does to him.

Next I started visiting some of these link exchange places, where folks get together and exchange their links and all.  On the surface, it looked great.  And, if you pay attention to how the links are exchanged, and where, it can be a real boost.  More exposure for all involved.  At one place, I noticed that they seemed to pay their bills by selling a sister site that actually managed your links for you.  Still no problem.  I'll try the free stuff first, and I start contacting sites to see if they want to exchange links.  We exchange.  Still no problem - then I see a pattern with some of them.  Some DO use the "pay for" link manager, and with the exception of a directory name - my link is in ONE place, while I list FIVE separate links.

Let me break it down for you. 5 people: Person A, Person B, Person C, Me, and the Payfarm.  Now Payfarm is the site that offers to handle your links, he forwards requests for links, and posts your link page on his site.  Person A, B, and C use the services of the Payfarm.  Me (I) don't, I just want to exchange links.

Note: Payfarm is not an actual person, just a descriptive title I made up for the type of site it is. (actually when I check, I see that safeproxy.com owns it - and they are a very good proxy server.)

The links are posted as follows.  And remember, to use this service, you do post the obligatory link to payfarm.com on YOUR OWN site before you start.

Person A: payfarm.com/PersonA/links.html

Person B: payfarm.com/PersonB/links.html

Person C: payfarm.com/Person_C/his_links.html

Me: mysite.com/links.html

Payfarm: payfarm.com/their_own_stuff/links.html

Now when you look at it closely, and the search engines decide who is popular and so forth, this is what they will find.  Person's A, B, and C, have their own sites called persona.com, personb.com, and personc.com. They all link to and keep their link pages on Payfarm.com - so A, B, and C are not really putting a link to your site ON THEIR OWN SITES.  The result is this.

4 people link to payfarm: Person A, Person B, Person C, and Me
(and in return, they do link back to those people)

2 people link to Person A: Me, Payfarm

2 people link to Person B: Me, Payfarm

2 people link to Person C: Me, Payfarm

1 person links to me: Payfarm.com (the other links to me are all within the payfarm, just in different directories.)
I link back to 4 other people: person A.com, person B.com, Person C.com and Payfarm.com

Why does this matter? ... because many major search engines don't count directories as separate sites.  Although Persons A, B, and C all have their own directories - only the links outside the payfarm.com domain, are considered "different".

To be honest, there is nothing illegal about this - in fact, in a way it is a nice way to exchange links in hopes that someone will actually click on a link.  The problem here is, that once a link page gets so large, people don't really use it to click the links.  To be even more honest, I wish I would have thought of it.

But again - I think I'll pass on this one.

I know some do use a link manager, or dynamic databases, nothing wrong with that - just that it doesn't benefit the individual webmaster who posts links on individual 'html' pages as much as it does them.

Another item that has some questionable benefits is links to the free sites.  Many search engines view them as one entity.  So having my link on tripod.com/mary and then again on tripod.com/tom really only looks like tripod is linked to me.  Same with the site1.homestead.com and site2.homestead.com.  Some search engines do break it down - but not all.  And in fact, the really big sites (like Yahoo, and Tripod) have gotten their users sites individualized with some engines.

Are these "search engine scams"?  No, not in the truest sense of the word "scam".  Remember, you get what you pay for.  In fact, it can be a benefit to some who have the time and money to put into this type of work.

Well, that's about it for my "tips" on this whole "search and link" thing.  I've told you what NOT to look for.  As far as what you SHOULD look for - that's what I get paid for.  But I will leave you with this - nothing beats research and some honest hard work.  If you look around here enough - you might find a few valuable things to help you.  Maybe take a look at the webmaster tools if you're looking to improve your web mastering skills.

Remember, nothing beats finding another webmaster who will post a reciprocal link to you on his own html page that folks may actually click on.

And if you do actually have an html link page and want to exchange links with the web-friend.com domain ... click here.

Correction:  I have stated in the past that search engines did not spider and index php, asp, jsp, and some other various dynamic data-based pages.  While in the past this was true, however, in today's market - I was wrong.  While cgi calls to SQL databases are not very relevant to the search engines of today - many do in fact collect information on php, jsp, asp, etc. pages.  I still feel that these pages do not achieve the rankings and are not always given the proper placement in the search world due to the nature of the entire workings of these pages.  But, in fact, they are indexed and cataloged by most major search engines today.

Safe and Happy Surfing,
Ched

updated: 04.24.03		searchscams.html
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