Tuesday, August 02, 2011

I Am Not an Imbecile

"Really, dude?" she seemed to say.


I got an email the other day, asking me, "What does it take to get a link on your soap website to mine? I'm a fellow soaper."

Um...my death?

Seriously, why would I link to your soap website from my soap website? Why would I send people to you when I want them to buy soap from me?

Why?

So I emailed the guy back, saying the links I have just show a bit about who I am--my chiropractor, my web guy, soap information, things I find funny, my Facebook, my Twitter. It's a separate links page, so if people are there, they are really digging deep into my site. I was polite.

He replied with a lecture about SEO, and how he's an SEO pro, and how exchanging links will bring both of us more traffic. He said "most soapers" don't know how to exchange links properly, and ended with this: "Honestly, just linking out to friends won't get a site anywhere."

I replied to him that I am the first result on a Google search for "handmade soap Denver," and that's good enough for me.

This post was supposed to be helpful to you for your business, but I'm not sure how to wrap it up. Saying something about ignoring requests to exchange links might be part of it. Another part might be, "Don't let rude emails get to you."

Or you could blog about them. Do you receive emails like this?

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:43 AM

    I don't think he was necessarily being rude (unless, you know, he actually was rude!). There is a philosophy of business, especially online business, that says collaboration, cooperation and relationships will be good for everyone. I run a nonprofit and I find that to be true, but I don't know how it would translate to a for-profit business. Just my two cents, since you asked! :)

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  2. Anonymous,

    I agree that creating relationships and collaboration are a good thing. This guy's tone was very preachy and rude--lecturing me about how I couldn't possibly know anything about getting traffic to my site. As far as creating a relationship with me, he didn't. He just wanted a link, and when he didn't get it, waggled his finger in my face. Viturally. ;)

    Linking to his site from my site, in this case, wouldn't be collaborating on anything. It would be sending people away to another soaper's site, which doesn't make sense for my site to do.

    An example of link sharing and collaboration, in my case, would be posting a link on my site to a craft show I'm doing, and the craft show would post a link to my site. I want people to attend the show, because I'll be there, so I promote the show. The show promotes me, because I'm going to be there, and they want my followers to know it.

    Thanks so much for commenting--I appreciate the conversation!

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  3. Anonymous7:36 PM

    I agree with you, Amy. I don't see the sense in promoting another soapmaker on your own soap site. How would that look to a customer? Like you don't want their business? Or that you think some other soapmaker is better than you are? That's a head-scratcher. But then again, I'm no SEO pro! :)

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  4. I'm not a pro at that either, Ruth, but I think link exchanging is really not the way to go anymore. We get more traffic by commenting on blogs (wink wink!), doing guest blog posts, participating in social media, etc. That's my opinion, anyway--I think link swapping is "old school" Internet.

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