Viral linking meme
There is an interesting debate doing rounds in Blogosphere on the pros and cons of viral linking. Elliott J. Cross has started a viral link chain in which my blog too has been “tagged”! I was also enthused by DCR Blogs “Drunken Virals” lyrics!
Generally when someone starts a viral link campaign, the purpose is to get coveted back links from other blogs pointed to them. Back links help to promote your blog’s page rank, Technorati score and improve readership by promoting your site to other readers that might not know of your blog’s existence.
But before I could jump right into the viral linking bandwagon, I was jerked back by a solemn warning from a concerned blogger that Viral links are bad for your blog’s health!
Now you have a blogger in a terrible dilemma. Primarily, I am not much obsessed with pageviews, comment counts, Technorati ranking, Google pagerank and all such parameters of blog-popularity since I blog as a pastime and for fun. But human nature being what it is, I am unable to resist a temptation to try a few teensy-weensy tricks to get a few more eyeballs on my blog!! But such moves hurt my ego too, since it is like badgering someone, “Roll up, roll up, here is my bloggie!”
But is there a better way?
A blog about Nothing talks about “Organic Traffic” thus:-
I am going to work on individual relationships. That is part of what I mean by organic links. I am thoroughly convinced that people are 100,000 times more likely to follow a link that is included as part of an actual meaningful post instead of simply lost amid a blob of other links. … I have come to the realization that simply getting your name mentioned in a valid article is thousands of times more valuable than getting linked in a mass produced list hundreds of times.
But people are bitten by the SEO bug and try to game the search engines by fair or questionable means. But it means nothing to a lone ranger like me! 😆