I know that isn’t as fun of a topic as a yummy recipe or making some fabulous craft or a room makeover but it is important if you want your site to grow.
FIRST–let me just say-I am not an expert. I have researched and researched trying to get as much accurate information as I can. There is some false info out there and there is some good info out there. Do your own research don’t rely on others but with that said I will share with you a few things that I have learned.
If you want to research this yourself and I would highly recommend that you do–read articles FROM GOOGLE (webmaster tools). They are the ones who have created SEO. If you gather your information from someone other than Google you may not get accurate information or they may have interpreted the information incorrectly. Check it and see if it lines up with what Google says.
That is not to say that I didn’t read other articles besides Google–I did BUT I tried to research it and see if it was in line with Google.
Crafterminds wrote a great article on attending LINKY parties– I recommend that you read it.
Serenity Now also wrote an article that you should read about linking.
If I provided you with a link to all of the articles I read I would scare you to death. There were a lot. Once again some people claim to be the NEW BIG expert on this and when you check it against Google it is not correct, other people have written great articles on the subject.
1. links–permalinks –what you NEED to know.
A link is the general link to a blog. Mine is itssoverycheri.com. A permalink is the exact link to any particular post. The permalink to this post is itssoverycheri.com/2012/07/20/linky-party-etiquette-seo-and-how-to-get-featured-more/ (When you come to my blog and click on a post title the link changes from the link to my site to the permalink of that post.)
The Search Engines LOOK to see who you are linking to. Did you read that? They are LOOKING. When they see a lot of links not coming back to me at all (some people enter without linking to me at all) or they just see a link rather than permalinks that is not great for both you and me.
- A Permalink is much better than a BLOG BUTTON–yes that is what I said–WHY–because a blog button is a general link and not a permalink. SO why have a blog button?–Because people see the button and recognize the blog. Just remember a blog button doesn’t greatly help either one of us, as far as SEO is concerned. A link is OK but a permalink is SUPERB.
- When you add your PERMALINK to a party –you do it so people can find you–you need to add, to you POST, the PERMALINK (the exact party event) that you are attending. You wouldn’t want the hostess to feature you and only provide a general link back to your blog. Back links (permalinks going back and forth between you and the hostess) are a PLUS for both participants involved. YES permalinks positively affect your SEO. If that sounds like Greek to you–just follow the instructions and you will thank me one day.
- If you have your PERMALINK entered into a party but only provide a general link back to the hostess–it can affect the hostess’ SEO.
- The hostess really shouldn’t feature people unless they have added a permalink. WHY– because it is another negative against her because there is no permalink in your post. The hostess then gets a double whammy hit against her–WHY? Because that would be 2 outgoing permalinks to you and NONE coming in to her.
2. tiny links–why making them as small as possible is bad
- I understand that people are trying to make the links as small as possible so it looks neat and clean but do you want the hostess to feature you and make your link and photo so tiny that people can’t read it or see the picture? That is what you are doing to the hostess who is spending a lot of time going through all the party participants and featuring you.
3. Link party page–why are they bad and what should you do
- A linky party page is not a permalink to the exact post, so it is bad for your SEO and for the hostess’ SEO.
- It looks like SPAM to Google and that is BAD for you.
- Don’t get rid of your linky party page–you need to leave it in place,since you used it in the past so there is some trail to the parties you entered, but it is in everyone’s best interest to stop using it immediately.
- Use your party page as a way of remembering what parties you want to attend on which dates not as a place to grab all the links to add into a party.
4. Only showing a few buttons or hyperlinks and then a message Click Here for all the other parties I attend.
- That is one sure fire way to make a hostess not want to feature you. It is basically saying these are the only blogs worthy of mention.
- Just because you put a huge blogger’s button or their permalink and then redirect people to everyone else doesn’t add to your credibility–many times they either don’t do features at all or they limit their features to a few, where some medium sized blogs may feature you over and over and get traffic coming your way.
- Permalinks to every blog party you enter, should be on the actual post. If it will take you too long to do each permalink–you are entering too many parties. Give the same respect to the hostess that you are wanting.
5. 50-100 links on a page is bad bad bad for your SEO
- It is a negative against you to have tons of links in one post.
- Copying and pasting a list of general links to every party that you might attend is not good.
- Even entering 100 good quality permalinks looks fishy to Google
- You need to add, only the permalinks, of the actual parties, that you ARE absolutely, positively attending.
- A long list of links looks wrong to Google and you will get a hit for it.
WHAT is the BEST way to handle links?
- Add in the PERMLINK to the exact event as you enter that party.
- Grab your permalink–save it in a word doc or an e-mail so it is easy to grab as you go to each party.
- Then open up your post and add each party’s PERMALINK that you are entering into your HTML at the bottom of your page.
- Will you enter as many parties? Possibly not but it is better to have good quality permalinks going back and forth to each other than to have a BAD SEO cloud hanging over both you and the hostess.
- PERMALINKS to the actual event, along with great quality projects, and good photos will make a hostess want to feature you. Comments help too.
More on backlinks
More on ranking
links again
I am still learning new things all of the time–how about you? If you are wondering why I all of a sudden stopped featuring you. I hate passing by great projects but I don’t want to hurt my SEO or yours.
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
great informations, Cheri!
Thanks Cheri for all the great info… So what you are saying is that I shouldn’t add the hosting blog button to my post when I enter a linky party? I should really be writing the blog’s name and giving it a hyper link directly to the linky party? Just trying to understand… 🙂
Thanks
Susan
You got it Susan.
Excellent, excellent excellent. I have never joined that many link parties in a week. Only because I am a firm believe if I join the party, I want to visit at least five on the guest list. If I join 100, that is not happening, and now to find it would be not good for SEO…that I thank you for putting out there. Quality over Quantity, I have been saying that for two years now. Thanks Cheri, pinned this!
debbie recently posted..A boy, his dog Dixie! and a random act of Kindness out here in BLOGLAND!~
Great information, Cheri. I am still learning about SEO. To me it’s good manners to include a hyperlink back to the party that I’m attending in my post. I am not a fan of party pages on a blog and another turn off is seeing a giant list of parties at the bottom of a blog page. If a person is linking to that many parties, there’s no way that they are actually participating in the party and by that I mean looking at other projects and leaving comments.
Paula recently posted..Storm Damage Repair Progress
Thank you for this information!! I’m fairly new to blogging and linking to parties, and have always wondered how people I visit who have long lists of places they party with manage them all. I was under the impression you are to return the favour by visiting and commenting on others you party with, and could’t imagine how you can do it if you link to that many. I was feeling guilty because I only have a few I link to. I won’t feel guilty any more!
One question, you said don’t use the blog buttons. Use the name and hyperlink. I have never been able to figure out how to use the blog button html copy & paste properly, so I save the picture of their button to a folder. When I link to their party, I insert the picture of their button, have the party link open in another window, copy the hyperlink and link it to the button on my post. Is this okay or still not as good as using their name and hyperlink?
And I have no idea what SEO means…so, off to do some googling…and checking out the links you put in your post!
Thanks for the info!!
Debbie 🙂
Debbie recently posted..Me? Finishing Furniture??
Thanks so much Cheri. I uploaded your button picture but added the hyperlink to that.
Susan
Susan recently posted..Fire Pit Cover
I’m heading over to see what each of you are up to.
Cheri
Debbie,
If you link the button to the actual hyperlink then that is great. The hyperlink is in there.
SEO stands for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Google ranks sights based on your SEO ranking. Don’t panic if you do a search and you aren’t ranked. I think Google is having some issues with it. I know several people who are not banned and yet it show no ranking for them.
Cheri
Debbie,
If you grab my button code (in my footer) and change the basic link to the actual hyper link that should be easier for you.
Let me know if that works.
Cheri – Great post with so much information. I didn’t realize that the hyperlink was the preferred link. I have been guilty of several ‘bad etiquette party linking’ in the past – not intentionally, just following the lead of others, assuming it was the correct way. There always something new to learn. Thanks for sharing.
Suzanne recently posted..Summer on the Mountain
Hi Cheri, I had been doing what you said – type out the name of the party hostess, then link the party # / page to that name – It crossed my mind that it was a tiny bit tideious by finally thought to paste my project page link into Word, then copy from there for each party. Thank you for simply confirming what I only thought to be the correct procedure when linking my projects up to parties.
And I’m about to do just that, on your party page for today 🙂
JoAnn
Cheri, thanks for joining our party and linking this post. This is information that everyone needs to know. And you have done an excellent job of compiling and explaining it.
Jane @ Cottage at the Crossroads recently posted..Color at the Crossroads
Oh Cheri this is marvelous. :o) I am actually doing something right and I’m so excited! I always insert a nice sized text link in my post when I join a party…a hyperlink to the party post. I was doing it as a favor to the hostess but now I know I’m benefiting myself as well. This post is so well written and thank you for linking up to our party. I’m pinning this so I can go back and read some of the links!
Ann recently posted..A Different Kind of August
Oh wow Cheri, I had no idea. thank you for being persistant and showing me the truth. I actually used to do it that way, but then figured out, wrongly now I know, to be more effecient and just do the links, not the hyperlinks… I’ll change it from now one. Thank you so much for the head’s up! Little Bit
Little Bit recently posted..Monday’s Simple Cleverness… Secret to Caulking the Edge of Beadboard
Thank you Cheri,
this was the most helpful to me. I just read a few articles on link parties…this one seem to cover the most info. I am just not sure if I’m adding the hyperlink correctly in wordpress, when you said add it to the html code that threw me, WP which I am still learning had a button to add media, so I have been cutting the link and pasting it into my post, is this right?
Very helpful information Cheri! I appreciate all of the hard work you put into this post. Went back and changed to hyperlinks and hope that it helps both the host and me! Thanks again for the great explanations!
Abigail Peterson recently posted..Advertising & Sponsor Spots now available on Lovin’ Our Chaos
You are very welcome. I learned a lot too.
I know this is an older post of yours, but I found it fascinating. Who knew that is how the party hosts picked out who to feature, I always assumed it was just because our post was a particularly good one (call me naive). I’ve always listed my link to a party as a general link thinking that was giving the host more SEO than a permalink. So I guess I’ve been doing it wrong all along even when I thought I was helping them out. I do think that blog parties have changed so much in the last year or so. I used to get so much more traffic from the ones I linked to and now it just seems that everyone links and runs on to the next party. Thanks for the info and I’ll check out the other blog posts you mentioned.
Pam,
The permalink is very important but I also look at great projects with great photos and I mention that in this piece.
Ahhh, I hope I can do this correctly. I feel like I’m learning a new language. Thanks for the help Cheri.
Gloria
you can do it. If you need me you know where to reach me.
Hi Cheri, thanks so much for your great explanation. I’m new to blogging and link parties and had been putting up buttons with general links. Now I’ll go back and change them to permalinks. Between visiting the site of the link party (I like to spend a little time looking around too), thanking the host, visiting one or two other links, looking around their site and leaving comments, adding the buttons to my post, etc. etc, it takes me a couple of hours to link to a dozen parties.
Debbie recently posted..Make the most of your drawers
Hi Cheri,
Thank you so much for the post. I have been seeing these link parties everywhere and wasn’t real sure what it all entailed. I read this article and learned quite a bit, but think i will re-read it again to make sure that I understand it all. I appreciate the time and effort you took to explain it to everyone.
It looks like a lot of fun and I hope that I will get the courage to try this one day. I just started blogging again, as I stopped blogging over 5 years ago.
Kylara
Homemaker Haven recently posted..Community Random Acts of Kindness aka C.R.A.K.
Oh my goodness….I have not been going about this the right way at all. I am changing the way I link up to parties from here on in! Thanks so much, Cheri.
Mary Beth @ Cupcakes and Crinoline recently posted..Clean Your Silver without Polishing ~ Homemaking 101 Tip #7
Hello, You are too kind to share this! I was getting so discouraged on joinning linky parties. I could not figure out why I was not getting featured??? I was putting the link to the blog and not the permalink to the exact event on so many of my posts. Heart breaking, I feel I wasted so much time and did not get to share my work. Question please, should I go back and delete the bad links and buttons, and party the right way again on those posts I messed up on? I do put my permalink for their party but messed up on their direct party permalink! I so wished someone would have clued me in? I know everyone is so busy as yourself, but your advise would be appreciated. I hate to waste past post. Thank you so much, anxious to hear from you!
Thanks for sharing this insightful information. I’m relatively new to blogging and have mixed feelings on link parties. I seem to get lots of spam views (not sure of the correct term) after participating in a link party. Not sure what the problem is there…
Thanks so much for that information! I am just starting out blogging and a little lost on the linking to others. Still learning and this post was very helpful!
Nancy
Nancy @ Artsy Chicks Rule recently posted..China Cabinet and Dining Table Re-New
Thank you, Cheri, for posting this information. So many of the party hostesses have directed the linker to “grab a button”. I had been simply pasting that button onto my sidebar or link party page. I have even seen a couple of hostesses direct the linker NOT to just add a link into the post. (!)
I keep the link party page as a way of advertising the link parties. Should I stop this?
I will definately be following your directions here. They make so much sense.
Blessings,
Holly
Holly Ferrera recently posted..Creole Chicken Pot Pies
WOW! Thank you so much for this! I have been doing the parties completely wrong and had NO idea :0 I really want to share my blog but also be a part of the community. I am going to work on getting it right and fixing links this week! ~~ Claire
Thank you for this information. I learned about Linky Parties last week and found all kinds to visit and post to. I found tons of wonderful posts, that I visited and I left messages at them all. I linked each party to my post too. Needless to say, it took a really, really long time. This week, I thought I’d shorten the process and just go to the linky button on my linky page. I had no idea I was not helping the party hostess. I will go back to linking each party to the blog post. I will have to limit my partying though because it takes TIME.