On Link Love, Link Baiting and Link Carelessness
I Make You Smile
and you give back so much!
I would like to thank Kim for the “You Make Me Smile” award and give back the link love.
And this reminds me to write an entry about blog awards… with their pros and cons – particularly why you should be careful with some of them. This will not be just an SEO perspective. It also has something to do with community and relationships.
Awards: Handle With Care
Some of the awards (I do not mean now the “You Make Me Smile” award and particularly I do not doubt Kim’s intentions – go forward to the pros and you will see what I am talking about) were created as a subtle method to gain links from other sites. They are “link bait” in disguise. And you have to be really careful when you display them on your website/ web blog, particularly when they come from people you don’t know and especially when they seem to appear out of the blue and have nothing to do with you or what you do.
We don’t talk too much about those little artworks and graphics we display on our sites with pride every once in a while. Maybe we should, because you see, receiving a “blog award” is not always a reason to celebrate and reciprocate. I could give you a long list of cons, but I will reduce it to five important points.
- Blog awards might be the cause behind search engines penalties and technorati penalties – as they are seen by both the SE and technorati as “linking schemes.” With all the linking scandals and with rumours amok that Google might even be manually penalizing link spamdexing (especially paid links, but who knows what they are up to next!) we should really handle link exchanging with care.
- The site giving you an award might be a spam site, a penalized site, a scrapper site, a MFA (made for AdSense) site or anything similar that is under Google surveillance. You do not want to take a risk like this with a link back to such a site. Call it guilt by association, but once you link to a spammer, you, in effect, approve the spammer and…you become a spammer. Remember: Google shows no mercy. So take a careful look at the site that gives you the award. Look at every page and if you see anything that raises suspicion, do not link back! Save the award image on your own server and link to that location if you care that much about showing an award no one really cares about. If you do link back, check out that link once a week. They may be setting you up for a future spam attack, so be warned!
- Meme-type blog awards usually send out two link votes : one to the blogger that nominated you and one to the creator – because the image source leads usually to the original source of the award. In theory, it’s good to know where the award really comes from, but are you sure you want to give a vote to that site? Are you sure you want to associate your name with it? Sometimes you just have to bury your pride to stop your site from being deep-sixed.
- Blog awards can make your site look messy and unprofessional, especially when they do not match the site’s theme, color scheme and design.
- Using blog awards on private blogs is not that bad, but displaying them randomly on business blogs will seriously affect your credibility. Why? Because they are usually unrelated to your business, they lead your visitors to sites of questionable value. They are there to pet your ego and don’t usually add value for the users.
It’s not all about cons. In the blogosphere, these awards have a social role too, especially among amateur bloggers. They do not care about your high business standards and they ARE YOUR READERS too. If they choose to show their admiration through a blog award, it’s your social duty to respond and take the award as it came: from the heart.
Meme-type blog awards have more social pros than SEO pros.
- Most of them are a genuine sign of admiration and respect - especially when they come from your faithful readers and your online friends.
- They create buzz about you and your blog (especially when a trustworthy blogger like Kim decides to introduce you to her readers) and give you valuable, relevant traffic.
- They remind you to go back to your friend’s (reader’s) blog and see what’s new. For example, I have no idea when Kim changed the design on her blog, so obviously I needed a reminder to go visit.
- They make a great communications bridge – people love seeing they received an award and they will come to say “thank you”, link back to you (as long as they don’t read my cons) and so on.
- They make you smile… (I needed this last point for symmetry).
And now, to Mig’s personal pointers. Remember, these are just my tips. Take them as personal opinions and do as you please.
- If you are to display awards on your pages, display one award at a time, in separate entries. Do not transform your blog into a confusing showcase of animated gifs and graphics, with no continuity in topic, style, color, design. Make each award topic specific and that will increase the SEO value of your entry, and help you rank even for the link love you give… because the keywords you use in that link will also be topic specific.
- If you don’t want to link back to the site that gave you the award, don’t! Linking back should not be mandatory.
- If you create an award do not force people to copy a code from your site and paste it into the code of their sites “as is”. Every webmaster has the right to change code to ensure that his/her site remains standards compliant.
- Also, if you give an award, do as Kim did: be specific. Tell exactly why you are giving it. After all, when you give away that award, you’re telling your readers: “Look, this is a site I approve of. This is a blogger I really like.” Don’t disappoint your readers.
- If you really want to show your appreciation, it’s better link to entries you really like than giving away an award people will probably ignore.
For example, here are a few links you might enjoy, closely related to this topic:
Before You Ask for that Link, Know I’m a Relationship Blogger- Liz Strauss
Dear Emperor: A Test for Your Next Link Post - Liz Strauss… again
Why You Want To Link To Other Blogs – Dawud Miracle
Are You Abusing and Misusing Tags? – Lorelle VanFossen
On Linking Ethics – Richard Nokes
What an excellent article. I admit to not having thought about the link baiting aspect of awards as those that I have received have all come from people I know and trust.
I view these type of awards as more of a social/community building gesture less than link-love and definitely not link baiting. For many bloggers social networking is more use than SEO methods of receiving visitors and more valuable in retaining readers.
One tip about award graphic overkill on a front page – feature the award in the post but then if you want them in a permanent position use a separate page.
Very good tip, Sue. Many companies create special pages to showcase their awards. With blogs, particularly wordpress blogs, it is easy to create and update new pages. I think the only problem we still face is that the awards come in so many different shapes and styles…
Terrific article Mig…..and thank you for the great advice…..
great suggestion from Sue…and I started transferring my awards over to another page just before I overhauled my blogs…..and like Sue most of the awards I have received have been from friends…..
and now that I have finally revamped my blogs I am going to work on my awards page haha..
Indeed, Kim – an awards page is better than a cluttered home page. Sue’s blog has a very clean, professional design. I like that.
My awards have been from friends too. I suppose that, in order to receive an “official” award you have to apply for it. And I forgot to mention on of the most important advices related to blog awards:
NEVER pay an entrance fee to receive an award
I have to admit I haven’t thought of blog awards from this perspective before first seeing your post on memes and the thinking blogger award. When such and award or meme comes from friends, we tend to overlook the creator, his/her purpose and other possible downsides.
About award design, Liz is one of my favorites with her SOB badges which come in so many colors.
I think the separate page is a good idea when you have several awards. but for one or two, I guess it’s easier, at least for me, to edit them a little if needed or pick colors and shapes that fit with the design.
I agree with you a 100% and a separate page is what I have been thinking about for some time, actually talked about it too.. but what worries me is your first suggestion to post one entry per blog! I have made two posts when awards had been accumulating and making a separate entry would have driven just about everyone away! and they are stacking up once again … I find it hard to continue to brag in each post!
what to do?
Great and thought-provoking post! Very informative….Thank you!!!
Excellent advice Mihaela. I’ve often felt concern about the purpose of these awards by the creators myself, and don’t link back to them, nor have I kept the codes intact. I simply copy the image and pass it on as such to those I’ve bestowed the awards on.
Most have come from friends, but some were from those I’ve met in passing on social sites. It always warms my heart to receive from those I know, but makes me wonder if the purpose from those I barely know is simply for link building.
Truth be told, I always feel a major conflict about these awards … I enjoy the notion that a friend has bestowed me with a level of praise, and also enjoy playing it forward to others I feel deserving. But other than those involved, who really wants to read it on your blog? There, I’ve said it, as cold and heartless as it may sound, it’s not my intention to come off that way.
It concerns me to write posts that anyone other than the parties involved don’t really want to read. Whenever I’ve written these, I’ve always provided an additional post that meets the reasons why people have come to my site as a landing post, trying to please 2 masters at once … the friends I care about, and those who came to find something interesting.
I really like your idea about having a separate page. I did notice that Kim has already done this, but hadn’t given much thought to it up to now. I’d be more than happy to be involved with these when they’re not appearing on my main page and it would remove a real weight off my shoulders, by not alienating friends, as I’m sure I have to some degree by not actively joining in with many of them. I think you’ve just resolved a very important issue for me!
And I’ve also been guilty of combining several awards into one post, in effort to reduce the number of posts for these awards. A separate page would resolve that as well. But can a person create individual posts on a separate page? I haven’t had one to work with to know.
A person could also have the images of all awards collectively in one area to remove any clutter from the main page, as well as a quick visual. I’ve only displayed 2 that I’ve received for this very reason, not to appear untidy, as well as reducing page load.
Wow, Deborah… that’s a long comment.
There are always ways around working with such awards. One of them is this very post – where you can see I started from Kim’s award and continued with something valuable for the readers.
I am sure you can do the same if you want.
Laura, at Writing Thoughts, has a way of integrating meme’s with the topic of her site, and I rarely see her displaying awards. This is a very self-aware blogger.
Liz, at Successful Blog only continues memes she really likes, but she doesn’t call them memes. I think what she calls them is “continuing the conversation”, group projects and so on. The point is: no matter what name you give them, make sure they provide QUALITY for your readers.
The same goes for awards.
I actually like seeing that people love you. So don’t be afraid to tell us about it.
Your idea with writing an additional entry to keep the balance is very good.
Wow Mihaela!
Thanks for the compliment.
Actually, memes were taking me off topic for a while. So much so that someone commented to me that they couldn’t tell what my blog was about. This was during a week when nearly every post was a meme or group project of some sort. Live and learn …
(I have a notepad sticky of those memes I haven’t participated in, but might some day. I’m just working under the assumption that they never expire.)
I’m not totally against memes and awards. Like you, it feels really good to be loved. However, it can be a struggle to stay on topic. (I feel that if I lose my focus too much, I will also lose my readers.) I actually had to contact one blogger who tagged me for a huge train-type meme award (40+ links to other bloggers) to tell her that I wasn’t going to participate.
I probably should have a meme policy of some sort, but I haven’t quite worked it out.
Laura, let’s do the “anti-meme” dance
. LOL.
I feel like raising my hand
I feel left out 
[...] has always been my philosophy when it comes to awards and memes but reading Mig’s latest post On Link Love, Link Baiting and Link Carelessness prompted me to spell it out to [...]