Viralink - Is it a Good Idea?
Andy Coates has created quite a buzz lately with his Viralink idea. The basic idea is that you copy and paste a matrix of 120 stars to your blog and add your own link to one of the unlinked stars. As other bloggers spread the Viralink from your site, the number of backlinks you get increase exponentially.
In the last week, I have created three Viralink posts because it sounds like a great idea. Every time I got ready to click the ‘Publish’ button I had second thoughts about the impact this will have on my future ranking in Google. Then, I would click ‘Delete’ button.
Last week, John Chow got punished by Google for his review for linkback promotion. This really concerns me because John was asking for a link to the phrase make money online for SEO purposes. In order to get a linkback from John’s site, you had to write a review of his site and add a link to the phrase and the original post. There’s some value here because you have created content by writing the review of John’s site.
The Viralink idea concerns me because it’s just a link train that adds no real value and lacks unique content. I may be wrong and might kick myself for not participating in the beginning, but I would rather get my traffic from quality content rather than my marketing skills. I’m no SEO expert, but I’ve been around long enough to know that Google will notice soon enough and take appropriate action.
For now, I’m going to stay away from Viralink.
What do you think?
I did have some of the same concerns that you did, especially after that John Chow fiasco. (it looks like it may have been his robots.txt file now)
Anyway, what I tried to do, and did poorly, was add some content above and below the cut and paste area. I should have added more, and more than likely go back and go into further detail about how the Viralink works, thus creating more content.
(at least it sounds good here in your Comment section and in my head..lol)
Don
[…] got a comment on my other page, Earsucker, recently, and Donovan over at BlogthatOutside covered whether or not to viralink. I saw this again today at BobMeetsWorld and decided to see what […]
Don
Did you see Courtney Tuttle’s D-List? I think something like this could be used virally and still have a positive impact on your rankings.
Donovan,
Maybe I can change your mind a little bit. I have improved Andy’s Viralink idea by coming up with a way to use your anchor text of choice.
This should go just as viral but you will benefit from anchor text instead of just a star *. Please
check my post “Improving
your ranking and Google PR with ViralTags”.
BTW, John Chow’s Google issue had nothing to do with his Review links program. He sorted it out and was back in #1 in no time.
It’s only been about 24 hours since I started my ViralTags program and I’ve already gained about 40 authority on Technorati. You might want to check it out and decide for yourself. Good luck.
Had the same concerns and so I’ve stayed away from any of these linking schemes so far.
While I think it is a valid way of building links, I think this kind of think might be giving too much attention to search engine and search engine traffic. Ultimately it is human readers who matter, human readers who become fans, and human readers who click on your ads if you happen to be monetizing you blog.
Perhaps it is a hare vs tortoise issue.
I saw that viral linking idea and it didn’t sit well with me either. I don’t know if it will work well or not, but something tells me that I might regret using it.
It’s a way to exploit search engines, basically. That might work for a short while, but they seem to catch on pretty quick. I’d prefer to have real readers and comments on my site than a list of asterisks to fool Google.
I might change my mind down the road, I don’t know. It might be six of one and half a dozen of the other, but I’d rather have comments and real links from readers right now.
I have participated in both the virallinks and viraltags. I have seen great results from both. All of my stats have gone up and I gained more readers and visitors from them. So far so good…
It’s also about discovering other blogs that you wouldn’t otherwise have.
There are over 70 million blogs and many more websites out there. If you are worried about Google coming after you for getting a couple of hundreds of backlinks with only anchor text, then I think you are worried about the wrong thing.
I can’t tell you how many nice blogs that I have come across that I will be going back to visit, and these blogs would not have been known to me had they not been linked in my ViralTag matrix. At the same token, I’ve gained a healthy readership from this as well. Ultimately it’s the content that will determine if people come back or not, so if you have interesting content, then ViralTags can be a nice way of allowing others to discover it. Hope to see you soon.
Jimmy
@Jimmy (Founders Cafe):
I like your ViralTags idea better than Viralink. I may try it out as a test; I haven’t completely decided yet.
You make some excellent points and I appreciate your input. You certainly have made me question my position on this matter.
@El Yanqui:
I totally agree with what you are saying. I would prefer to have comments and links from real readers too, but we still have to get readers to our blogs in the first place. That’s the quandry.
@Andy:
I’m glad to hear that these are working for you. Another thing that concerns me is diluting Technorati results. Take a look at the reactions to your blog here: http://technorati.com/blogs/zr5.net?reactions
Most of them are the Viralink/ViralTag posts on other blogs. If someone were lookup your blog to see what you are about, what would these results tell them?
I have been torn about doing things like this, I am even a little sketchy about doing the D-list thing. It seems some of these blogs that are doing the viral link half of their posts are about gaining more traffic, with very little posts worth reading.
I know blogging involves a lot of promotion but I think some people get bogged down with that and don’t concentrate on their content.
Kevin:
You have a point about the D-List; it’s sorta the same thing only not as intrusive, imho. I have received a fair amount of traffic from the D-list, so I won’t complain.
I feel the same way as you do regarding quality content. You can’t keep readers if you never post anything of value.
I don’t have an issue so much with the D-List, because it just gets the word out on some sites that use dofollow. I’m on it, and I’ve gotten visitors because of it, and many have been repeat visitors. I haven’t had anyone just post “nice site”.
It seems to me to actually get people to look at other blogs and I like that.
El Yanqui:
I feel the same way about the D-list. I have had many visitors share some very insightful comments on my blog. I was prepared to nix the “nice site” and “me too” posts but I haven’t had one yet.
[…] that give you inspiration or are related to your topic. Link to the original poster even if you don’t agree with what they say; you might just start a discussion. Imagine […]
I don’t think you need to resort to anything like that anyway. It seems to me that you have a well put together site with good content. That’s what people want, isn’t it?
It’s tempting to use these methods to get the word out about your blog, especially when you are first starting out. Good content or not, if you have no traffic what’s the use?
I do agree with you. People do want regular and quality content. Our attention spans these days are so short that you’ll be forgotten if you don’t keep your readers engaged.
I don’t see this as good idea as the link hidden inside the star. it is consider as black hat strategy. however for Jhonchow, Google mostly will update their algorithm. but if you have good SEO, your page will back to the top.
Ruri: I agree with you and you are probably right about Google forgiving the viralink folks somewhat.
Have you seen what viralinks do to Technorati reactions? The genuine reactions are hidden by all the crap viralink pingbacks. IMHO, this is one of the things that are making the Technorati authority rankings meaningless.
I think the viralink succeeds because its quick and easy. Very little effort required from the blogger, and has ongoing benefits (unless google doesn’t like it).
In my opinion, you are far better looking at something like the reciprocal review thing as at least there is the potential for the content to be interesting for your readers. The review thing also means that the content is a little different each time, and not just * like some of the viralink things are.
swollenpickles: I like the reciprocal review idea much better than viralink, because it is content driven and less apt to be considered a link train.
There are still duplicate content issues to deal with, but I’m just nit-picking.
Viralinks is easy