The Perfect Poker Link

[Randy]

The perfect poker link would do the following things:

• It would get a 100% clickthrough ratio. Every single person who visits the page that it's on would click through to my site.
• The link would use anchor text that included my #1 keyword phrase for the page, and the text surrounding the link would include my secondary and tertiary keyword targets.
• The link wouldn't cost me anything.
• I wouldn't have to ask the person to link to me; they would just link to me because the content on my page is outstanding, and they want to share it with their visitors.
• The page I got the link on would rank #1 for my target keyword phrase in all 3 search engines.
• The page I got the link from wouldn't have any other links on it.

What other things would a perfect poker link do?

This isn't just an exercise in hypothetical situations. Once you define what would be a perfect poker link, you can evaluate linking resources by that benchmark in order to get an idea of what a linking source is worth to you.

[Notspot]

No. 7 - It would be the catalyst that made another 50 high quality sites link to me with variations of my keyphrase.

Although I'm not keen on your No.5 - I think the link would CAUSE ME to be No.1 on all 3 search engines.

[Randy]

Well, if the other site is #1 for the phrase, but my link has a 100% clickthrough ratio, then I'm getting the same amount of traffic I would have if I were #1 and then some.

Originally Posted by Notspot

No. 7 - It would be the catalyst that made another 50 high quality sites link to me with variations of my keyphrase.

Although I'm not keen on your No.5 - I think the link would CAUSE ME to be No.1 on all 3 search engines.

[pokermonger]

It would be on a page that pre-sold the quality and trustworthiness of my site.

[kingcobra]

#4 is the funniest by far. As if someone would link to you without even you asking or more importantly you returning the favor in some way Do you work for Google?

Come to think of it, this was a poker site, in other words a competitor, who though they should send some traffic away from his site and to yours just for the hell of it? Even funnier.

Best poker link that you could realistically expect:
I got on a guy's PR2 homepage and I just gave him a directory PR0 link.
Guy just said I'll put you here and you put me on that page and I couldn't believe my eyes. PR from heaven

This only happened once and probably never will again

Ken
http://kingcobrapoker.com

[Randy]

Originally Posted by kingcobra

#4 is the funniest by far. As if someone would link to you without even you asking or more importantly you returning the favor in some way Do you work for Google?

I often link to sites without being asked to. I know other webmasters who do too.

[agmonson]

Originally Posted by Randy

I often link to sites without being asked to. I know other webmasters who do too.

I don't see this being as rare as it would seem. If I find a site that I think would be a resource to my visitors I certainly wouldn't have a problem linking to it.

It's all about providing a resource to your users right?

[pokermonger]

It seems that many people believe that every link out from a site hurts it in some way. While linking to some places may hurt your page, a link out to others (think pages that improve the user experience) can help your page, whether you receive a link back or not.

[DealerDan]

Originally Posted by Randy

I often link to sites without being asked to. I know other webmasters who do too.

Yep I do it too, and one of my sites has over 100 links(last time I checked) because of people linking to it(without being asked) because they appreciated and wanted to share the content that was on it.

I think it's a shame the way things have come, where so many webmasters will never link to another site unless its part of a link exchange or it's for sale. Think about it - you run a website, and you find out that without being asked, another webmaster loved your content and linked to you. Wouldn't that make you feel good inside? Wouldn't that make you realize people appreciate the hard work you do? Wouldn't it motivate you to work even harder?

If you answered yes to all three of those questions, then go out and link to another site without being asked, and give another webmaster that great feeling

[kingcobra]

Well this is actually good to hear. Maybe I'm too cynical perhaps but it's hard enough getting links from sites when you're reciprocating. To be honest I've never tried asking a site to link to mine without offering anything in return. I'm not sure what the motivation would be. Do anyone but webmasters visit link pages? On most sites I'd expect the answer to be no. Are these pages even supposed to be for humans? I guess some webmasters may think so. I'm not so sure. I've never really had visitors checking them out on my site anyway, and the only traffic is the webmasters, current and prospective link partners that is. If it weren't for search engines would we even have link pages?

I'd like to think that sites would put my links and anchor text up for nothing back but I for one am not about to chance it since giving a link back only takes a minute or so. I would expect the average webmaster to laugh at a pro bono request like this and as I said earlier especially from a poker related site who I would expect would not be too thrilled to refer their traffic to my site so I can monetize them instead. Are these not businesses at least in some sense?

However it is refreshing to see that there are people who are getting the "free" links.

This does bring up the topic of one way versus two way links. Many people think the one way links are better. I used to think that way too. I found out that while you want the one way ones as well, having a lot of inbound than outbound is a bad idea. Take it from me as I used to be set up this way, back when I used to think the same way as a lot of so called experts. Trial and error taught me otherwise though, and after I thought about it a bit it made perfect sense. I'm not going to tell you why as I don't want to give too much away but given the choice I'd prefer that I link back to the site.

Ken
http://kingcobrapoker.com