Guest
author: Dirk
Johnson
There's a niche in stock market
investing called "short
selling". In a nutshell,
they "borrow" stock
today, sell it for the cash,
and hope to buy it back later
for a lower price, pocketing
the difference. If the stock
goes up and stays up, they eventually
need to buy it back at a higher
price, coming out of pocket.
It's a lively and dicey game.
There are market analysts who
advise their clients as to which
stocks to short. Since the risk
in short selling far exceeds
that of straightforward investing,
these advisors have a desperate
need to be "right".
If they are wrong, their disciples
become quite disgruntled with
having to cover their short
positions.
There is strong drive on the
part of short sellers to "talk
down" a stock, using a
variety of public relations
gambits. Facts get twisted.
The truth suffers. Anything
that will reduce the public
perception of the value of the
stock is fair game. It can get
ugly.
In the SEO realm, there
are a number of high-profile
short sellers
It recently occurred to me
that, within the SEO realm,
there are a number of high-profile "reciprocal
link short sellers".
Many of the most vocal have
been doing it for several
years, using their "expert" status
and industry influence to
disparage the practice of
reciprocal linking, calling
it ineffective, immoral, and
worse.
They use every Google update
as a reason to announce that
reciprocal linking is dead.
And much like their stock
market counterparts being
caught in a "short squeeze",
they can begin to sound shrill,
relying on flimsy evidence
and emotional pleadings to
make their case.
All of this noise from these
SEO pundits would be of little
consequence, except that,
like the stock market, there
are site owners who rely their
advice. For those who have
been listening to the reciprocal
link short sellers for all
these years, they may well
have found themselves with
a financial loss. It may take
the form of a competitive
disadvantage that widens every
day. Even worse, in order
to satisfy their "big
name" advisors who despise
reciprocal linking, they may
have deployed alternative
linking methods that were
more costly, less stable,
or carried higher risk.
Whatever you decide to do
for your own website has consequences
Running a website presents
a large number of decisions
to the site owner/manager.
As a business manager, whatever
you decide to do for your
own website has consequences.
Taking that one step further,
sometimes there are unintended
consequences that result from
what you DON'T do.
So it goes with reciprocal
linking. Some sites do it.
Other do not, for a variety
of reasons. Reciprocal linking
may not be appropriate for
a site, or the site owner
does not want to commit their
limited resources to doing
it. Choices must be made.
There are legitimate reasons
to not do it, and in these
cases the site owner accepts
in advance that their competitors
may not be so constrained
and their competitors may
gain some form of an advantage.
In other cases, deciding
against reciprocal linking
may be solely due to the advice
of the "experts" who
have been pleading that it
is not effective. Here, the
site owner is also believing
that they are yielding no
advantage to a competitor.
When they find out months
or years down the road that
the advice was flawed, they
may well regret such a decision.
Catching up may be very difficult,
for a number of reasons.
Website marketing strategists
who claim that legitimate reciprocal
linking is ineffective are certainly
entitled to their opinions,
but the site owner who is looking
to them for guidance must also
realize that they are not being
provided with any definitive
proof of such statements. The
pundit's can easily make these
claims and sound convincing,
but rarely do they suffer the
consequences of their own advice.
It is the site owner that follows
their misguided advice that
takes the financial hit, in
the form of lost opportunity.
I appreciate that many sites
don't reciprocate, and never
will. That's what makes the
world go round. If you decide
to reciprocate with other sites,
just do it properly, graciously,
and limit it to other relevant
sites. That's how it has been
done correctly since the inception
of the World Wide Web, long
before there were any search
engines. Reciprocal linking,
when done right, is proper,
legitimate, legal, and good
for business.
The reciprocal link short sellers
have a lot of reasons for making
their claims, but are their
claims based on facts? Or emotional
pleadings? Will taking their
advice help your own site, or
simply leave the door wide open
to a competitor who chooses
to ignore them?
Editor's note:
Take a look at the recommended
resources to learn more
about building good links.
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