I have been doing alot of thinking about linking strategies lately, considering the Google PR bomb a month ago.

I am trying to figure out a few things. First, what is it that triggers the pagerank penalty for selling links? And second, what is a safe method of link building from here forward.

I have been looking at a number of sites trying to develop a theory regarding linking. Google has said Dont Sell Links. The first problem with this is that I have seen a number of sites that dont sell links penalized. A good example of this is vBulletin.com. vBulletin does not sell links, period. Neither does vBulletin.org. However, both took a PR hit. vBulletin.com has been a PR 7 for as long as I can remember and now is a PR 6, and vB.org has been a PR 6 and was reduced to a PR 5.

However, vBadvanced.com also was a PR 7, and managed to keep it’s pagerank level.

Why?

It’s a mystery to me.

vBulletin.com does have a scrolling bar on the left where they feature forums owned by it’s customers. You cannot buy your way into this list, they have to select you. They generally list you if they consider you to be a good customer with a solid and popular forum. But they also keep this list short. (I have 2 of my forums listed in that list, vBulletin-faq.com and lincolnvscadillac.com) They title this list "Featured Forums".

vBadvanced.com has a similar sidebar list where only a handful of forums are listed (vBulletin-faq.com is also listed from there) - This list is simply of other related sites of interest, which they label "Links of Interest".

vBulletin.org ONLY links to a few other official vBulletin sites. No other external links at all.

There is one other factor to consider. The PR of incoming links. When Google implemented this penalty many sites took a pagerank loss. Some more then others. But regardless, their PR strength was reduced and the sites they link to naturally took reductions in PR strength.

Now, lets turn to statscounter.com. This site was a PR 9 before the penalty. They sold a handful of links on their homepage. They reduced to a PR 6 when the penalty was implemented. They placed nofollow tags on their outgoing  links and almost immediately received a PR 10.

SO, this is a real puzzle. I am having a hard time figuring out this one. What concerns me most isnt the ability to sell links. It’s the ability to effectively obtain links to my sites.

More to come…   Please leave comments about your thoughts and theories.

Share This

 I thought I would let everyone in on a pretty good hosting odeal I just came across.

IPOWER hosting is offering a winter special.

IPOWER Pro Plan at $4.95/month for both 1 and 2 year plans. You can lock in 2 years at under $5 a month!

Share This

I posted about selling banner ads a few days ago. Now I thought I would explain a little more about how I do it.

Forums, blogs, etc all can use this same method for selling banner ads on your site. First thing you want to do is create an advertising page that explains your advertising rates and ad spot positions as well as things such as payment methods.

I prefer to sell ads on an annual basis, but you can sell them any way you like, monthly, weekly, quarterly, etc. I prefer an annual basis because its less work for me, and it gives the advertiser a more attractive price. You dont lose money on giving a more attractive price because if you sell monthly you will have some advertisers who only want a one month ad and they will balance out with the advertisers who pay full price for an annual ad. It all equals out, more or less but ends up with less work for you if you sell annually.

There are 2 basic types of banner ads. Static ads that are present every time the page is viewed and rotating ads that change between a number of advertisers every time the page is viewed. It is good to offer both kinds of ads so you have a range of pricing available for advertisers. Some advertisers sell products that are inexpensive and they must sell a large volume of product to pay for an ad. If you offer them an ad in rotation, they will have a lower cost since you can split the cost of the ad space among several advertisers for the same spot.

Determining price really is a guessing game in some respects. I look at similar sites with similar traffic and a similar topic and try to determine what a good price will be. All of this goes into my advertising information page.

So now you’ve made your advertising information page.  How do you find advertisers? There are 3 simple ways. First, look at similar sites and contact people who advertise on those sites. Contact them via email and link to your advertising information page. Dont forget to include a little about your site and why advertising on your site is a good idea for them. Remember, your selling. Be a salesman. The second way I find advertisers is to check the Google Adwords ads that come up on a Google search for your particular topic. These above 2 ways are good because these companies are already advertising on the web, so you know they are interested in advertising, you just have to sell them on your site. The third way is to ask your forum members for leads. You simply make a post asking your members to tell you the best places to get the products your site is based on. They will often tell you all you want to know. Now you email those companies as well.

Remember, be professional in your correspondence. Dont be spammy. You’ll get better results and you’ll find advertisers stick around much longer if they think they are dealing with a professional.

Share This

Yep, you read that correctly. Being a forum administrator means that sometimes you need to ignore the suggestions or advice of your forum members in order to be successful.

This might seem to be a strange piece of advice, but its true for one real simple reason. Your goals and needs for the site are sometimes different then the goals and needs of a particular or even a group of your members. They want what makes sense for them at that moment, your interests lie in the long term health and growth of the community. For example, a member tell you publically, that they want you to have less individual forum catagories. However, while that might look good at the moment, you need to think of the long term health of your community and realize that a new member might not post about a particular topic if there is no forum catagory for it.

This is something I am facing right now on Chicago Velocity. I am preparing to add and remove some forum catagories to that site soon. One of the forums I intend to add is a politics forum. I have posted on Chicago Velocity about doing this to see the kind of response I get from the membership, and some if it has been of the "dont do it" attitude.

Now, a politics forum can be heated and intense, but I have learned over time that if they are moderated correctly, they have a great ability to bring members back to your site frequently and to keep members posting about a particular topic. Even if your forum is not generally about politics, they are very helpful because your forum topic might not be a topic that commands members to return often.

A good example is a car forum. Some members only return to your site when they have to ask a repair question. Since cars (hopefully) dont break down every day, you cant expect much activity from that member. Having a forum for topics such as politics will get members talking to one another about other things and help create and make a feeling of a "community" — This brings them back over and over again, helping you keep activity up. And active forums are more attractive for new members and advertisers.

I have also had occasions where members made a suggestion that I do something, which, while looking good on paper, I know from experience just doesnt work well. A good example of this is vBulletin’s reputation system. I never enable that on my forums because it only leads to bad feelings. Moreover, those bad feelings are not toward another member but toward the site and community in general. This is because the reputation is given anonomously, so there isnt a single person to blame. Additionally, friends tend to give other friends positive rep just because of friendship. So the reputation score really isnt a good indicator of much. As such, it has no real upside to the growth and health of the site, but easily can chase members away.

In fact, my motivation for this blog post comes from a recent email I received from a member of a forum I used to own (but sold). This member has now started his own forum and made the comment in his email that he is starting to realize all that is invilved with owning a forum community.  In his email he made the statement:

I didnt want to see some of the changes you wanted, and now that I have my own forum, god I understand where you were coming from. I apologize on behalf of the members at DSMP(the only good ones from T2G)     —    (T2G was my old site, DSMP is his new forum)

So, think things through before you do them. Don’t just do something or not do something because your members agree or disagree. Try to get them on board, but ultimately it’s your site and the decisions you make will affect the success or failure of the site in the long term. That is my advice.

Share This