Free Website Promotion, Website Traffic, and SEO Tips

Let’s talk a little more about the fourth point in my previous post. There are several ways that a website can avoid passing Page Rank to your website. Some websites use redirects to redirect to your website from their URL. The problem with this is that the major Search Engines don’t always count this as a link to your website. Although, Google® counts many of these links as links to your website, these redirects do not always appear to pass Page Rank on to the page they redirect to unless they are a particular type of redirect called a “301” redirect. Since it is always possible that this will change and since different Search Engines treat redirects differently, it is best to avoid getting links from sites that use redirects. If you exchange a link from one of these sites, it could affect your Page Rank® negatively, because you are giving them an increase in Page Rank® but they are not passing along any Page Rank® to your website. One exception to this rule is if the site in question gets a massive amount of traffic and the traffic you are likely to get as a result of exchanging links is really high.

Another thing you should note is that currently, Yahoo’s directory listings use a “302” redirect, not a “301” redirect, so at this time paying for a listing Yahoo’s directory may not give you a boost in Page Rank®. However, being listed in Yahoo’s directory can get you more traffic from people who visit the Yahoo® directory.

How can I tell if a website uses redirects on it’s links page?

Go to the link pages. Some of the links may be affiliate links which will be redirect links. However, some of the links will not be redirect links. Put your mouse over each of the links on the page. At the bottom of the screen the link should be a standard URL http://yourpagename.com (this is a static link). If the site is using redirects, then all the links will look something similar to one of these:

http://www.pageyouwanttolinkwith.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?ID=1203

http://www.pageyouwanttolinkwith.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?ID=http//yourpagename.com

Avoid trading links with these sites, unless you really think that the link will generate a lot of traffic by itself. Alternatively, you could let the owner know that you would like to exchange links with them, but you would like them to link directly to your website with a static link and not a redirect link.

Important Note: Page Rank isn’t your biggest concern in SEO. Quality links and quality content is your biggest concern.