About an hour ago I am sitting at my desk, all my employees are gone for the weekend, except one that is on the phone. The phone rings, and I answer and this guy named [name removed] introduces himself. He says he is from [name removed] and he is friends with some of my SEO friends. Ok, so he caught my attention. [name removed] then tells me about how he reads this blog often and is a big fan. Hmm..... He then goes on, about wanting me to link to him from this blog. He said that he has a mentioning of the blog on his site, but its not an active link. I then followed up, asking to look at his site. I go to it and see an ordinary SEO Company's Web site. I then ask [name removed] , do you have any tools or sections of interest on your site that would interest you guys (the reader)? He said yea but he wants a link of his choice. I said, that I do not do link exchanges - I said that if you think this site will be of value to your Web site visitor then link to it. I said if [name removed] or [name removed] has something of interest to the Search engine Roundtable reader, then I will link to it. He then said that "I do not work that way" and abruptly hung up the phone.
I then strongly thought about the call. It made me angry. This is the ONE reason why SEOs have a bad name. This SEO is not interested in his Web site visitor. He is only interested in traffic. When I link out, I do so with the intent that it is of use to the reader. You know, I frequently link out from here - simply because it makes it easier for you guys to get to what I am talking about. Of course we all want to rank well for particular keywords, but there is a professional method to do it.
I wrote many times on creative ways to get links, see: - One-Way Link Building - How To Guide - Slick Links - Building Links the Cool Way - Proactive Linking - WMW Conf 7 - Link Building and Referral Tracking - WMW Conf 7 - or do a search this site
For some reason, I think I can rank fairly high for [name removed]. Question is, how upset am I in a few days from now. This is probably the worst rant I ever did publicly, and I might just delete this soon. I am sorry if you feel this is uncalled for, but I really spent time thinking about this before posting.
