seojealous

remember that raffi song? if you spent time anywhere near a child in the 80’s, it’s likely you do: 

…and your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends. the more we get together, the happier we’ll be.

it’s a great message for a five-year-old, but we’ve seen plenty of evidence that it doesn’t make for a very effective linking strategy. sorry, realtors.

when google doles out penalties for reciprocal linking, small business owners are often in danger of feeling the wrath. that entrepreneurial spirit can make it difficult to let go of important projects, like internet marketing. they read the first 20 pages of seo for dummies, and learn that links are good. how, pray tell, should they go about getting people to link to their site?

they turn to their network, of course. small business owners know other small business owners; their blackberries are jam-packed with contacts. they send out a solicitation to business owners around the country, asking them to trade links back and forth. do they create massive reciprocal link rings with malicious intent to manipulate google’s algorithm, or are they simply applying the skills they’ve learned running a business to the online environment? in business, the more connected you are, the more successful you’ll be. just like raffi said, only grown-up.

i’m not saying business owners deserve to be rewarded for plucking the low-hanging fruit of reciprocal links. building reciprocal links requires little energy or creativity. but should major penalties be applied when business owners translate what they’ve been trained to do offline to the online sphere?