Links (and not sausage links)

Regarding SEO, one of the important actions to work on is building quality links between your site and others. Obviously this takes time, and resorting to a “link farm” – companies that readily provide your website with 100s or 1000s of links – is not the way to go. Google will penalize you and you’ll wind up in the “phantom zone” (reference to Superman, for all the fans out there). My main website – RJGreen Photo – has built up a bunch of links. Photographers, many from England, have found my site requesting reciprocal links. (That is, I link to them and they link to me.) On my link pages I offer the option to any photographer wishing to do so, offering my code to input into their websites. While I’m small potatoes compared to the big guys I’m apparently attracting enough attention that non-photographers/photography websites want me to link to them. No, I haven’t received any from adult sites, but I have gotten them from marriage counselors.
I like to keep a check on my “link popularity” by using SEO websites to check my stats. Recently Google changed something with their search algorithm and my stats took a nose dive. Down into the single digits. I checked other websites whose stats I knew were excellent and they also nosed dived so I knew it wasn’t me, but all of my known links have disappeared. One way to check them is to google – links:yourdomain.com. I used to have pages of them. Not any more. Even my best quality links from ASMP are gone.
I know that Google does this periodically to weed out the scammers, but this one was the biggest drop for me. I hope everything rebounds soon.

The image above is how I feel.

January 5, 2012 | Categories: NJ Portrait Photographer | Tags: amusement park, fun, inspiration, lifestyle, New Jersey Corporate Photographer, Photography, photos, seo, stock photography, vacation | 4 Comments