Photography Backlinking Project

<p>Hi everyone,<br /><br />I've developed a backlinking project for photographers. Basically you submit your info to the website, and it creates a .html file with links to other photographers for you to upload to your website. You then link to that .html file from your homepage. The link can be sneaky by giving it innocuous anchor text like "Copyright 2012," but it has to be on your homepage. Make sure it's where you say it is, though. Because a bot will randomly inspect to make sure.<br /><br />You then get backlinks to your website through the same system. Pretty cool eh? Nobody links to anyone that is linking to them, and everyone gets 13 links. A nice little SEO boost.<br /><br />This should be within the confines of Google's best practices. It's along the lines of a webring.<br /><br />This is still in testing, so please email me <a href="mailto:tim@papertigermedia.ca">tim@papertigermedia.ca</a> with any bugs. Don't post them on here, it'll just get too confusing. Thanks!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.papertigermedia.ca/infinitelink.html" target="_blank">http://www.papertigermedia.ca/infinitelink.html</a></p>

<p>I'd have submitted this post to the moderators with a spam flag (really, just joined PN today, and this is the OP's first intertaction with members here?), but it seems like a good chance to provide a cautionary note to PN members who might actually think it's a good idea.<br /><br />I can't imagine a faster way to <em>lose </em>one's legitimate page rank than by thinking that Google can't spot this sort of thing. Not to mention that Google has already crawled this page (really, <strong><a href="http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=Photography+Backlinking+Project&pbx=1&oq=Photography+Backlinking+Project&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=408l408l0l867l1l1l0l0l0l0l108l108l0.1l1l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=79a914ef1cf0f6d4&biw=1006&bih=659">click here</a></strong> and watch what happens), and knows that you've dropped the words "SEO" and "sneaky" on the same page, while actually recommending that you falsely lable a link (Google <em>does</em> actually parse the words between the anchor tags, you know?). <br /><br />Be very careful with your reputation when trying to fake up credibility. There are people with doctorates in information theory sitting at Google HQ, right now, focusing every moment of their day on not only preventing this sort of thing from gaming the system, but also on spanking people who try it, by down/de-listing them. Just think twice before pulling the trigger, that's all.</p>

Way to go, Matt. Thanks.

<p>Yeah, I did sign up today. It's certainly not my first time on the site, nor the forum. I've just never felt the need to post before.<br>

<br /> There are other examples of these systems that work very well. I've personally been the benefactor of similar linking sites. I just thought I'd try my hand in writing one myself.<br>

<br /> And yeah, maybe the system won't work and it all crashes and burns. That's just a risk you'd have to be willing to take.<br /> Anyway, I am a real photographer (I've hosted this project off my own website, which is possibly a bad idea for this sort of thing).<br>

<br /> I appreciate any input though.</p>

<p>T</p>

I agree with Matt.

 

I would add that one reason I use Google is that it does a good job of giving me the most

relevant links, not the ones to the cleverest SEO practitioners. So anything that tampers with

Google's version of the truth does a disservice to me and to everyone else.

<p>Thinking that the top results in Google are the most relevant entirely based on its content is naive. If you searched for "wedding photographer in New York" there will be 1000s of results with identical content and keyword combinations. The only reason the top 20 results are there is because of SEO backlinking techniques. Do some research on the top websites for a keyword. You'll find 99% of the time that these sites have been generating backlinks to increase their page rank and domain authority. <br>

Look up the top result for a competitor in a keyword you'd like to rank for with http://www.opensiteexplorer.org. I'll guarantee there are some links through a similar practice as what I've created.</p>

<p>I'm no expert on SEO, but Page Rank obviously looks at a number of different factors. I looked into third party SEO services for a business I run and they are quite expensive, so I read about some of the techniques involved and applied about 7 or 8 to the business's website, and hey presto about 2 to 3 weeks later the business ranking has increased for certain keywords and it now comes in first or second page of results, sometimes in the top 3 links returned (for specific keywords). An element of this is backlinks, but its not the whole story, and there are other ways of getting backlinks, which may also have a better rating than a webring.</p>

<p>Tim, it might be worth mentioning that a factor which I think increases the usefulness of backlinks is the words in link. You probably already know this, but it might be worth spelling this out in your instructions or on the form.</p>

<p>So, for example, if you're are running Acme Photography which specialises in pack shots for widgets in New York, the link should be:</p>

<p><code><a href="http://www.acmephoto.com">widget pack shots New York</a></code></p>

<p>not:</p>

<p><code><a href="http://www.acmephoto.com">Acme Photography</a></code></p>

<p>the keywords in the link then get associated with your site. Actually it would also have been better to register the domain as "acme-photography.com" or even "widget-shots-new-york.com" but maybe that is going to far...?</p>

<p>You're absolutely correct Rob, but you may be confusing the term page rank with SERPs. Backlinks are just one of a million processes in SEO. This is just a way for people to automate the process of getting links from similar websites with minimal work involved. The non-backlink related techniques for SEO will only work if you already have backlinks to your website to justify ranking high in Google results for a keyword. If you and 100 other websites have similar keywords, Google will show the websites with the best page ranks/domain authorities -> backlinks.<br>

As for the link anchor text, I intended to spell that out better, but it completely slipped my mind. Thanks for reminding me. I'm just going to make it the keyword you'd like to rank for.<br>

Having the keyword as your domain name is big. If you had the domain "newyorkphotographer.com" you'd have a big leg up. But it shows (check the Google results) that this isn't a golden ticket, and it's kind of a weird domain to have for your business.</p>