I Hate Link Trains
…..and all those spammish link train derivatives.
Take the ‘U Comment, I Follow’ campaign for example. If you read my article a few days ago entitled ‘Do you want to remove the ‘No Follow’ tag from your Wordpress Blog?‘, you will know that i am not a 100% devotee.
In short, the campaign is to remove the ‘nofollow’ tag from commentators links so that google will follow the website addresses of those who comment. I was reluctant to even discuss this again however i have read about it on several blogs now so its clearly gaining some momentum. Plus David Culpepper, added BloggingTips to his thread Join the DoFollow Revolution because i removed the nofollow tag from my site. (for the record, i like reading Davids blog, i just hope he stops promoting these link systems!)
As i said, BloggingTips has removed the ‘nofllow’ tag here so google will follow the website link of every every commentator who leaves a comment on this blog however i am not a huge fan of this movement.
Reason why i dont think this is an amazing campaign
Ive already covered this in my ‘Do you want to remove the ‘No Follow’ tag from your Wordpress Blog?‘ post however ill repeat it here.
What benefit will you really get from the search engines from leaving a comment on a page with 50 comments from other websites. Surely the benefit is from readers enjoying what you contribute to a site and then going to your blog because they are interested in what you have to say. Page Rank benefit, if any, is very low.
Reason why i think that this campaign is starting to go Tits Up!
Now im sure this campaign started off with good intent. However, it seems to involved into a link exchange system. It’s no different from the current ‘Technorati Favorites Train’ campaign or the ‘Review my site and ill link back’ campaign.
I’m gonna have to say this before i explode
i absolutely detest them. Please, please dont jump on this bandwgaon. And if you have….please jump off it. Who is really benefiting from these posts?
Think about why people come to your blog. Think about why they decide to stop by your site and pay attention to what you write. Think about how much value these posts will be for your readers in 6 month time. I do want to talk about current events (such as this one) but i do hope that if someone reads a post of mine in 6 months time it’s as helpful to them then as it is just now.
There are so many reasons why i hate this latest link train fad. First off, its putting me off reading blogs from people who are intelligent and have something to say.
Take John Chow and his ‘review me and ill link back‘ campaign. Now, i have criticized John Chow in a previous post because every review he adds to his site is always 100% towards the advertiser. However, he comes across as a nice guy, he’s a great writer, he knows how to make money and all in all he runs a great blog. His ‘review me’ campaign is now at batch 57 and hes already completed batch 59. Yes, thats 57 posts on his blog where he has posted a list of links to sites who linked to him. These posts can hardly be called quality and i for one skip these.
Due to the volume of traffic he receives, dozens of sites have scrambled to take part in this campaign. Most of the reasons given for doing this sound something like ‘Johns site is great plus ill get some clicks through your site’. Thing is, they’re right. Johns site is a great blog and you will get some visits through taking part in his link train though what real benefit will you get from taking part. You might get a hundred extra visits that day but do you expect those 100 visitors to come back to your blog every day? Surely your blog will benefit much more by spending some more time and writing an original post or even solving a difficult problem or something for your readers.
There is something in the real world which is similar to this new link fad. It’s called A Pyramid Scheme. Im sure you all realise how they work. The person who starts the pyramid scheme gets rich whilst those at the bottom get nothing. The only winner in Johns Campaign was John. He successfully got higher in the search engine rankings for a competitive term and everyone else was happy because their traffic spiked for a day.
Why do these campaigns bother you so much?
There are a lot of new bloggers and webmasters out there who believe that these linking schemes will make their blog popular or get them to the top of digg or technorati etc etc etc.. The best you can hope for is a short spike in traffic. This kind of thing isn’t going to give you any sort of long term value. In essence, get rich quick type schemes which seem too good to be true usually are, certainly when theres thousands doing the same thing!
Most of these link trains and link exchange schemes are aiming to get your site higher in the search engines or at least increase your traffic from search engines. The thing is, Search Engine Optimisation isn’t rocket science. Particularly if you own a blog. All you need to do is concentrate on writing quality original articles and you will do well in the search engines.
I recognise the short term traffic benefits that participating in link exchange systems can do for your blog, however i feel very strongly that reducing the volume of quality original posts has a much higher negative effect. Is the blogosphere doomed to hundreds of thousands of posts paying back links to bloggers who linked to them?
Id like to hear from those who are taking part in any link scheme similar to what i have spoken about. Do you feel you benefited from it? Would you participate in one again? Im interested in hearing other peoples view on this
Kevin
Joshua Dorkin | April 17th, 2007 at 10:53 am #
You hate it, but you are now a part of it . . . a bit ironic? I’m not ripping on you . . . just looking at what’s happening. I hear you on the link trains, though. Instead of gimmicks, a blog’s success will be based on the quality of its posts. I went through many of the sites on the d-list and saw no benefit to getting involved. There is no connection between my sites and theirs.
In the end, it is quality of content that counts . . . the gimmicks can only get you so far.
Kevin | April 17th, 2007 at 11:00 am #
i dont think im on any kind of link train now haha. i linked to two articles in the post but i also link to posts/articles which i am referring to
A link train is when i would post a list of links etc
maybe i should clarify. im discouraging bloggers to post lists of links to other websites in the hope of getting a link back.
thing is, i have and always will link to sites and articles which i like. However, i see no benefit to the reader if i post a link showing all the sites that linked to me.
:):)
Chris Merriman | April 26th, 2007 at 4:55 am #
I came across this post via the pingback on John’s batch 57 ;>
Different system, I obviously understand, but I’d not have found you if I hadn’t checked his batch for my link.
Not trying to say your argument is incorrect, just attempting to add some info to it.
Denise | April 26th, 2007 at 12:44 pm #
I heartily agree, and thank you for wonderfully honest post!
Domestic Geek | April 28th, 2007 at 12:10 am #
I am so glad I am not the only one that hates all this stuff. It’s disturbingly reminiscent of high school popularity games.
A well-meaning friend added me to that Do Follow thing going around and I really wished she hadn’t. I use a CMS that doesn’t put a no follow in my comments in the first place. I’ll be glad when that whole movement dies.
I also refuse to participate in link exchanges. If people find me, great. If not, I won’t lose sleep over it. I personally don’t write for “the masses.”
Kevin | April 28th, 2007 at 12:49 am #
well i removed the no follow tag from here ages ago. its not something im concerned about but to many commentators it is. So it will keep tham happy haha
the thing that i dont like about the no follow campaign is that people were putting more effort into getting links to their blog than actually promoting the idea of the no follow tag.
these things will give you a short burst of traffic for about a day if your lucky. i hope it was worth alienating their readers
also - just to say, your blog has a fantastic design. very nice
Tara | May 1st, 2007 at 3:41 am #
I removed the no follow to get more commentors, I admit it. Why, because a blog is not very interesting if its only the blog writers opinion and no discussion and if if helps the commentators too thats great. I also like finding out who is reading my blog so I can check out theirs. If a comment seems to much like spam you can always delete it.
Regarding the Technorati link train, I didn’t partake in it as I wasn’t prepared to favourite sites that I perhaps hadn’t even visited or didn’t like. Anyway thats just my 2 pence worth.
Analyst | June 16th, 2007 at 9:44 am #
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2.I have benefitted by exchanging links.
3.Personal mail requested for removing no follow tag.
Analyst | June 16th, 2007 at 10:00 am #
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Dave Starr --- Mr. GPS | June 16th, 2007 at 6:45 pm #
Funny that you mention John and Pyramid schemes in the same paragraph, Kevin. I like John and I read him every day but I also watch to see what he is doing to earn those bucks. And the truth is, he’s continually pyramiding. The ‘Net is populated with a lot of people who either have very little common sense or else suspend theier brain when surfing.
I participated in John’s “revie me” campaign just to see what would hapen. Got perhaps 100 visitors over a couple days … and of course no clicks, because John’s readers pride themselves on never clicking.
I have given up on several new blogs I was going to become a regular on because the blogger started cluttering their space with thes useless “trains”
TANSTAAFL … for those who don’t know the acronym,Google it. “trains”, pyramid schemes, even those idiotic Nigerian bank scams make hundreds ot thousands a year from otherwise intelligent people who just can’t seem to understand that trying to something for nothing normally yields … nothing.
Kevin | June 16th, 2007 at 9:04 pm #
very good comment dave. the quicker the blogosphere gets away from these poor promotion techniques the better
Rene Kriest@ProBloggerWorld.de | July 2nd, 2007 at 11:44 am #
Pretty cool wrath.
I just don’t get why there is so much fuzz, envy, emotion and arguing in a world of freedom about a link?
Does John really do any harm? Is it correct to give out the Apple iPhone only to AT/T customers? And why is the iPod so damn expensice? Why do we have to die?
I think I’ll stop here because I need to do some quality work for my blog instead of wasting time about anyone’s decision to link/not link, do-follow/no-follow etc.
Regards,
Ren