Organic Link Building Project

I am willing to participate

  • Yes

    Votes: 22 100.0%

  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    22
  • Poll closed .
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theRKF

theRKF

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Oct 31, 2002
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A common complaint amongst florists trying to operate without the advertising budget and Marketing degrees of FTD or 800-Flowers is that their websites are under-performing. One of the key ingredients to having a strong web presence is a high search engine ranking. If people can find you, they are more likely to buy from you!

How do you get a high search engine placement? Mlou has tirelessly scoured the web for insight into this, presenting a wealth of knowledge in both the FlowerChat and Real Florist forums.... but still the problem remains. While Meta Tags and keyword frequency, "alt" text and site maps all help to improve your site's rank one of the hardest areas of SEO to prefect is Link Popularity.

How many sites link to your site?

This is especially troublesome for commercial sites like retail florists. There are not many information forums that will link to our sites. Many companies have resorted to affiliate programs and link farms to increase their inbound link count.

Real Florists Can Work Together
Imagine this:
What if every florist on FlowerChat was to make a commitment to link to every other florist on FlowerChat? Imagine the power of two, three or even four hundred links pointing to your site?

This could be easily accomplished. If there is enough positive feedback, I would be willing to create a feature on FlowerChat that would let each participating florist submit their URL, shop name and one keyword / phrase. The program would then produce the HTML code required to create a powerful link page displaying all participating shops and links to their sites.

Example:
Shop - Martin's, The Flower People
URL - http://www.Toronto-Flower-Delivery.com
Keyword - Toronto Florist

Produces this listing:
Toronto Florist - Martin's, The Flower People

To be clear
1) Free service - no charge to participate
2) No commissions or order fees
3) To participate you must agree to display the link page on your site

Please let me know if there is any interest in this!

Ryan
 
flowerknife+us said:
*******not sure Teleflora will provide this link.*******

Knife's Wife

P.S. Spare me the lecture on why I should get my own site??? I Know!
Click to expand...
If not, see your P.S. :)
 
The best option is to use the dynamic linking method. That will make sure you always have the most up to date list on your site. Your webmaster can use any form of "server side include" to pull the list. The file is currently a ".php" but it only has HTML content.

Your web guy will know what that means :)

Ryan
 
Oh Geeky o.. , I mean, Oh infinite One!!!
What the H E Hockey sticks are you going on about???!! You know that I'm my own webmaster! Speak the Queen's English man!!! :)

For the Keywords, should we include all of the towns or what would you suggest?
I'm assuming that the link we put on our site would refer to a page that's constantly being updated or what???
Rock The Geek (not!).........
 
Rock said:
Oh Geeky o.. , I mean, Oh infinite One!!!
What the H E Hockey sticks are you going on about???!! You know that I'm my own webmaster! Speak the Queen's English man!!! :)

For the Keywords, should we include all of the towns or what would you suggest?
I'm assuming that the link we put on our site would refer to a page that's constantly being updated or what???
Rock The Geek (not!).........
Click to expand...
Rock,

It's easy 1-2-3
1) Sign up
2) Choose a simple keyword phrase - Bay Roberts Florist
3) The site will generate code to place on a page on your site.

Ryan
 
:cool: :hammer:
 
Ryan, you rock!

This is exactly the kind of project that can make a difference. !!!!!!!!!

Couple thoughts, however...

1) I believe there has been discussion on some of the webmaster forums that Google is devalueing links from pages title www.my-florwer-shop-url/links/ . Better to call it /Great-florists/ /Real-forists/ /Other-florists-we-recommend/ or similar.

2) Not sure the includes page will spider as well as HTML on your own site. Maintenance would no doubt be easier, however.

3) I have seen TF sites with outbound links but never to other florists.
 
What is PageRank?

Let's start with...

What is PageRank?
Google PageRank is a ranking system which ranks individual webpages based on their experience placement in the web. PageRank is the estimation that a random web surfer would cross a page. When a webpage links to your webpage it is viewed as an independent vote of quality for your webpage by that person. Each page of your website has its own pagerank...



sounds good to me I would like to hear what Mary lou thinks if she agrees I say count me in
Click to expand...

Steve, simply put "absolutely, I am all for it"... The primary factor in Google's relevancy algorithm is getting many keyword links from many websites hosted on different servers. When PageRank first came out it was a large part of Google's ranking algorithm, but over time it has been greatly depreciated.



I like the idea, Just Flowers seems to do this sort of thing and seems to have sucess with it.
Click to expand...

GFLORAL, it's not that simple... HINT: not all Links are equal in the eyes of the search engines... Just Flowers isn't using Reciprocal Links... they are using the backlinks, the multi websites excessive cross linking system, one-way links and lots of cloaking...It's not that reciprocal linking is counted less...It's that one-way is counted more.

An example of excessive cross linking
You have 5 sites with 5 pages each. You give a link to each and every page of the 5 sites from each of the site's page. (i.e. you have 25 links on each of the pages)



COUNT ME IN TOO! does it have to be on the first page or can it be on the about us or special things we do pages??
Click to expand...
Carol, no you wouldn't want all those links on your home page...you would develop a special page for links. Also remember that many inbound links are to home pages. The closer your page is to the home page (fewer links away), the more important that document must be to your website.



Can only florist with independent sites do this link? Would love to link with you all but not sure Teleflora will provide this link.
Click to expand...
Knife's Wife, you already have a link page on your TF website... http://www.colemanflorist.com/info.asp?id=1460
I don't know how TF will feel about your linking to all these florists, some not TF.



Mary Lou Nix (mlou)
http://www.ilocalflorist.com/
Your Internet Local Florist Directory
[email protected]

Don't get mad...
Get SERPS!!!
 
Mlou,

I know I have the link page. I have been spending many hours at night working on this project. I have contacted, the best of the best family owned business's in my area and have asked them to do a reciprocal link. Wedding cake and pastry shop, Caterers, Banquet Halls and Fine restaurants, Photographer, Jeweler,Bridal Shop, Invitation store, Fine Hand Made chocolate store. They are all Family Run business with great reputation. I was suprised to find that 95% did not even know what a link was, and that even though I explained to them that it was free still could not believe it. I have had a few contact me right away and say they want to do it but then have said that the webmaster advises against it. We are getting there. I don't see how it can hurt with whom I have chosen.
Anyways, My thought was that the wire service sites might not be allowed to.
I did apply and I also have sent Teleflora and e-mail to tell them to add the link, so we will see what happens...
I will let all know when the verdict is read!
 
the concept sounds good but the results will be mixed

I have had a few contact me right away and say they want to do it but then have said that the webmaster advises against it. We are getting there. I don't see how it can hurt with whom I have chosen.
Click to expand...

Knife's Wife, the concept sounds good but the results will be mixed. The reason Reciprocal Links work with google is anchor text is still "THE BIG FACTOR" in scoring. PageRank is passed through links. Each page only has so much PageRank which it can pass to another webpage. Many reciprocal link pages have no PR. Those may not be ideal candidates for link exchange.

The off going PageRank is split up between all links on that page (including links to other pages within that site). Therefore a PR 5 link on a page with 10 links is worth a lot more than a PR 5 link on a page with 100 links. One PR 7 link may be worth more than a thousand PR 3 links.

A page does not lose PageRank by linking out to other sites (unless it links out to penalized sites or link farms), it just has less PageRank to share among the webpages it is linking to.

A good example of this is your website...Google shows you with one inbound link (national directory), which is from a PR 6 webpage going to your home page. The result is a PR 4 for your home page and PR 0 for your link page. (Most florist have a PR of 3 or less)

The PR 0 for your link page is why most webmasters willn't want to link to you...

Here are some tools you might want to play with when seeking additional links...

"keyword pagerank finder" is an SEO Tool which allows you to check the Google pagerank
http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/google-pr.php

This "link popularity" tool will help you find out who is linking to your site, but also to give a useful benchmarking report to quickly show where you stand in comparison to competitors..
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/



Mary Lou Nix (mlou)
http://www.ilocalflorist.com/
Your Internet Local Florist Directory
[email protected]


Don't get mad... Get SERPS!!!
 
My intention with the links was not to gain page rank but to connect with other great business's in the area and more or less endorse each other. More for local exposure to customers that our viewing their sites and might also be looking for who they might recommend for the flowers for their special occasion... hence the type of business's I contacted all related to wedding and special events.

Knife's Wife
 
flowerknife+us said:
Can only florist with independent sites do this link? Would love to link with you all but not sure Teleflora will provide this link.

Knife's Wife

P.S. Spare me the lecture on why I should get my own site??? I Know!
Click to expand...

Here's a friend of mine's teleflora site - they do allow outside links on the main page
http://www.olsonflorist.com/

Google is also starting to devalue reciprocal links, according to my reading, always trying to move the target.
 
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