Just as I thought linkbaiting schemes were a thing of the past, I come across yet another link whoring scheme that I think is all wrong. Do a search on viraltags and viralinks and you will come across this post instructing you to add a matrix of links under any post on your blog, and adding any blog that pings back to your post into the matrix.

So basically it’s link exchange. You get links from people who wish to pingback from your site, and you add their links in return.

Pretty interesting idea, I would say. However, if this concept were to be as successful as the promoters would say, why aren’t they on top of the search results for the keywords viraltags, and even viralinks?

Maybe they used a name of an already existing service (there are sites called viraltags.com and viralinks.com)? Maybe it’s really a fluke?

Here’s what I think. The concept is indeed interesting, as it takes advantage of blogs’ automatic pinging/linking back mechanism in order to “notify” other viralink bloggers that there are people asking for a link back. And we know the value of inbound links in terms of search optimization. However, there might be misplaced enthusiasm about such “viralinking” schemes.

• Link farms? The way the links are set up—which are in matrix form—might be thought of as link farming by Google. Come on, we know Google likes links that are interspersed into text naturally. There’s probably more value in a single link coming from a blog post of substance rather than a long list of hundreds of links. Jampacking your post with links would just dilute its link-love value.


• Anchor text. The original viralinks post tells of linking using a matrix of dots or stars. Where’s the SEO value there? Aren’t you aware that the anchor text plays a big part in optimization. If you used asterisks as anchor text, then you would just be optimizing the site linked to for the “*” keyword (if there is such a thing). You should use something more descriptive.


• It’s artificial. I read some bloggers claiming this would enhance your popularity on technorati. I’m thinking otherwise. I would say the guys over at technorati would think of such schemes as unnatural ways of jacking up link popularity, and hence would eventually filter them out. So whatever popularity you get will likely be short lived.

I guess there may be some merits to getting into link-exchange schemes. But one thing I really hate, and would like to highlight here as such, is how these things uglify your site. I’m not about to add a hundred or so links below my posts (or even just one) just for a link exchange program. I would rather write interesting, substantial, link-able material that everyone would blog about and link to.

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5. Link Bait Barnacle