7 Top Ways To Avoid Link Theft
Tony Simpson
If you have a link directory on a website, how do you stop link
theft by sites that don't link back, or trick you into thinking
they do?
Whether link theft is anything to get concerned about depends
on how many links your website has, the quality of those links
(Google Page Rank) and how many of those links you lose. Search
Engine Ranking is certainly something that's becoming more
dependent upon the links to your website.
You might be forgiven for thinking that when a website no
longer links back to you, that it was an accident your link was
removed from the link directory. Of course accidents happen as I
know from using some link manager software. Just one click in
the wrong box and a website link disappears the next time you
update your link directory. But the real link thieves are those
people that use methods to rob you of a link.
Here's 7 Top Ways Link Thieves work and how you can avoid being
their next victim.
1. If a website asks you to exchange links, don't link to them
until they have given you the URL location of your link in
their link directory. If you link to them first they may forget
to add your link.
2. Visually inspect your link by visiting the website page your
link has been placed on. In your web browser, view the source
code of the page. In Internet Explorer go to View then Source
and this will open up your default text editor.
Using the text editor search on the page for your website
domain and ensure when you find it that the link is a standard
text link of the form:
Link Title.
The target="_blank" just launches a new browser window when the
link is clicked.
The link should have no JavaScript code like:
Link Title.
Links like this JavaScript one can be made to look visually
identical when viewed in a web page browser, but to a search
engine it's as if this link is not there. Whilst a visual
inspection to catch this form of theft is always the best, you
can catch some, but not all of these types of links by using
reciprocal link manager checking software.
3. Check that your link on the other web sites page is not
being put through a redirect. By hovering your mouse over the
link, check what link text appears in the status bar of your
web browser.
If your link appears as:
"http://www.theirdomain.com/page.html" or
"http://www.theirdomain.com/redirect.asp?id=2273" and not
"http://www.yourdomain.com"
Then your link is on a redirect.
Any form of link that has theirdomain and not yourdomain in the
link URL is only of benefit to the other site owner and not you.
Links like this point to their domain and not yours which gives
the other site the link benefit in the eyes of the search
engines.
Don't link to this site if you want some search engine benefit
from the link.
If you just want traffic from visitors clicking on the link,
that's the only benefit you'll get.
4. If you want to get search engine link benefit, don't link to
web sites that have dynamically generated link pages. If your
link is on a dynamically generated link page the URL of that
page could be something like :
"http://www.theirdomain.com/links/index.php?&lk=5".
The fact that the URL has a ? or & in the URL means that most
search engines will never read that page, so they will never
see the link back to your site.
5. Use the Google Toolbar Page Rank Tool to check the PR of the
page your link is on.
If the PR is 0 but the PR of the home page is much better, this
could mean either the link directory is new ( not likely if it
has a lot of links ) or there could be something about the page
which is preventing Google from reaching it.
Using your web browser view the page code as in 2 above and
check for the robots meta tag at the top of the page between
the and tags.
If it says :
or
then all is OK.
If the tag says :
or
or
or
Then this page is not being given full access to the search
engines. Do not link to this sort of page.
6. If the robots meta tag you checked is OK but you still
suspect a problem with a low PR then you should check the sites
robots.txt file. To do this type the main URL of the site into a
web browser but add robots.txt for example:
"http://www.domainyourlinkingto.com/robots.txt"
The robots.txt file is read by the search engines and it tells
it the directory and files it can access. A simple robots.txt
file might look something like:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /forms
Disallow: /contact.html
If the URL of the page you were linking to was :
"http://www.domainyourlinkingto.com/dir/web-design.html"
Then you would want to be sure that in the robots.txt file you
should NOT see :
Disallow: /dir
Disallow: /dir/web-design.html
This is telling the search engine robot not to index or follow
the links in the link directory called dir and to ignore the
links page web-design.html.
And you should not see :
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
If you see :
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Then that's OK.
All sounds a bit complicated I know, but there is no easier way
to explain this sort of thing. Some reciprocal link manager
checking software will also detect the incorrect use of the
meta robots tag and also check the robots text file.
However some link manager software I have experienced,
incorrectly reported a link page as blocked by the robots text
file because it read "Disallow:" as prohibiting the search
engine when in fact it means allow (see above). It is
"Disallow: /" that would tell the search engine not to index
the site.
7. Once you've completed your link exchange and done the checks
to ensure you're not being cheated you must then check your
links at regular intervals. Once you have more than about 50
links you will soon find link checking becomes a time consuming
process. It's far better to build your link directory using some
form of link manager software that will automatically check your
links at intervals you specify.
Of course not all link theft is intentional, sometimes it's
just the webmaster not knowing that the way he has set up his
link directory will not provide search engine link benefit to
anyone that links to them.
However some link theft is intentional, the webmaster knows
exactly what they are doing and by following this advice you
can avoid being their next victim.
About The Author: Tony Simpson, has been into Website Design,
Promotion & Optimization for 5 years. He provides advice,
product reviews & products at
http://www.webpageaddons.com/ to
Make Automation of Your Web Site Work for You.A related article
is "10 Mistakes to Avoid When Setting Up a Link Directory" at
http://www.webpageaddons.com/link-manager-mistakes.htm!
<< ------------------End of Article --------------- >>
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