Linking In Earnest

I watched an amazing video last night - “Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” on YouTube.

This vid has been online a bit (has over 2.3 million views) so you’ve probably know about this guy but in case you don’t, Randy Pausch is a Professor from Carnegie Mellon who is dying of pancreatic cancer. He’s blogging and recording his final days as a way to leave a legacy for his very young children and draw awareness to this deadly disease.

The lecture on the video is part of an old academic tradition known as “The Last Lecture”. Professors are asked to pass on to their students all their worldly wisdom as if the next day would be their last. In an ironic twist, Professor Pausch was asked to do the lecture the same time he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.

As I watched and listened to this remarkable 76 minute video, four things he recommended stood out for me:

1. “… be good at something, it makes you valuable”

2. “How do you get people to help you? By telling the truth. Being earnest. I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day because hip is short-term.”

3. (Shows slide of Jackie Robinson) “Don’t complain, just work harder. That’s a picture of Jackie Robinson. It was in his contract not to complain, even when the fans spit on him. You can spend it complaining or playing the game hard. The latter is likely to be more effective.

4. "Work hard. I got tenure a year early. Junior faculty members used to say to me, 'What's your secret?' I said, 'it’s pretty simple: call me any Friday night in my office at ten o'clock and I'll tell you."

Professor Pausch wants us to take what he’s learned and use it to enrich our personal and professional lives. I see no better tribute than to apply his sage advice to my link building business and life in general:

1. Be good, it makes you invaluable. Attracting links is about setting yourself apart and/or creating a niche. Spend time developing your business and marketing your reputation rather than coming up with silly linking schemes.

2. Be earnest. Cutesy link bait may attract a handful of links, but content in demand is there for the long haul. The number one online activity after email is product search. Write content that answers your customer’s questions and provides value.

3. Work harder. Don't succumb to the mediocrity of your competitors. Look to offline promotions for inspiration and ways to set you apart. Don’t use linking tactics that can jeopardize your business.

4. Work hard. You can’t build quality links in a day. Or a week, or even a month. It takes time and energy to create the right content and/or find and approach sites that will do you the most good. Develop your content, your image and your reputation and you’ll become the authority site everyone wants links from.

If you’d like to see the PowerPoint slides Dr. Pausch’s used in the lecture, click here.

Do You Link Dope or Incestuously Link?

Holy cow. Did you know the practice of link doping and incestuous linking are bona fide methods of link building?

Honest. Says so in the Wikipedia.

As I was trolling around today I stumbled on a page in Wikipedia titled "Methods of website linking". I found it after searching on the term "link popularity".

Clicking through I was taken to a page describing methods of website linking I've never heard of like - "Link doping" and "Incestuous linking". Incest and doping and links - oh my!

(click the images if you want to see them more clearly)




Keep in mind I searched on the term "link popularity" and came to the page expecting to see just that. Instead, I found terminology used to describe outdated , incomplete and irrelevant link methods sitting under a title that lead me to believe I was going to read about hyperlinks. Say huh?

Ok, so I backed up and decided the page was really trying to talk about link building methods. Where's the disclaimer and link to search engine guidelines on link exchanges and paid links? Those changes to the guidelines happened last year and were significant. Looks like paid links are on another section but this one talks about recip links so I assumed I'd find updated info. Well you know what they say about assumptions.











I couldn't find any information on link popularity per se, there's a little paragraph there but it's not accurate and far from complete. (The page was redirected from the "link popularity" page which is empty). There are calls on the main page for "cleanup" but they're from November of last year and the revision history shows edits made to the page February 18, 2008. Which means this page has been touched recently and it still contains outdated and irrelevant information.








It amazes me that link popularity, one of the most fundamentally important concepts to understand when talking about search engines and online marketing is on a page with "Link doping" and "Incestuous linking". Where exactly is the tie-in? Everyone (including me) says the Wikipedia is an authority source, but what I found for the term "link popularity" is anything but.

If I get over the fact I didn't get what I was searching for (link popularity) and focus on the page I was led to, I'm still left shaking my head. The page is titled "Methods of Website Linking" and yet - what's being showcased doesn't have anything to do with website linking. Most of the linking building tactics mentioned aren't really tactics and the one key concept on the page - link popularity- doesn't even talk about anchor text. How can you talk about link pop and not mention anchor text?

It appears the people taking care of this page definitely aren't authorities or even moderately versed in current SEO, they've mistakenly jumbled two concepts and stuck them under a generic banner. I'd roll my eyes and let it go if the page wasn't redirecting from one titled "link popularity" and 3/4 of the info on the page wasn't SEO related. Nope, this is a case of someone not knowing what they're doing - and others letting it sit that way for months.

And yet, when I publicly suggest knowledgable people with good content should contribute to the Wikipedia, I'm spoken down to, told to read the conflict of interest guidelines and criticized. Yeah that's right, I can't let go of that little incident, and don't think I should after seeing this.

And if you come back and say - "why don't you help clean it up instead of bitching about it Debra" -- forget it. It will be a cold day in Wiki hell before that happens.

People new to SEO and who want to learn about link popularity and/or link building methods shouldn't give this page on the Wikipedia a second glance. It's inaccurate, outdated, uses terminology no one in the business uses and is mis-matched for the title. This one's a dud.

Maybe Wikipedia should change the tactic "Link doping" to link dropping dope. It fits.

p.s. Pope image is the cover of an old album produced by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Fetch / Sphinn