Linkspun.com

I have questions in regards to building link bait sites for Link Spun and general reciprocal linking.

I have been building out blogs to attract more trades by following jdoughs GFY article about generating hardlinks. He recommends building a group of blogs, adding 5-6 handwritten posts and then submitting them to 8-9 different blog directories. With this tactic these blogs can then hopefully get some PR.

I have been following this tactic, except I have yet to create any PR for these sites. At least a PR of 1 seems to enable more trading and allows for one to go after PR 2 and 3 sites as well. However, all of my newer link bait blogs are still at PR 0.

How can I go after links on higher PR sites if I can't offer more than PR 0 sites to potential trade partners? Is having a bunch of PR 0 blogs enough to build a lot of trades towards my money site(s)?

While I know PR is not everything (backlinks, original content, design etc.), it does seem to make a difference in adult link trading. Any suggestions?

Hey Ethnic Lover, the PR thing with the new blogs is probably not really your fault. I mean if you've created a few, submitted them to directories and nothings happened, thats not your fault, google hasn't done a 'real' PR update for several months now, so that is why they may still be 0s.

The 0's will be enough to point some good links at it, but since this is trading we can only assume a return about as good as our output. SO if we've got a handful of pr0's, the average link back we'll probably get for them is a pr0.

There is a few other ways to bring in that initial PR and weight, using a select couple of your own sites to link into them, using the directories you've already mentioned, or building up some thumblogger/other free sites and pushing links to them.

Keep an eye on the forums as well, guys are pasting lists of 50-100 domains/sites they are letting drop (sign of the times) and you are able to grab pr1-2s often for 10-20 bucks. I recently bought a handful of pr2 and pr1 (10 years old) for $10 each.

Basically with a new network of new sites you wnat to get a little creative and do whatever you can to get that initial boost into the new sites so they dont look so new.

PR may not be completely dead but it is very quickly dying.
Google used to do significant updates every couple months.
The last update was 3/31/2010, the last major update before that was 12/31/09.
Webmasters are slowly realizing that PR carries almost ZERO weight in SERPs as well.
If you look up 'porn' or many other top terms you will find PR0 sites listed on page one.

You'll also find people trying to scam webmasters by buying sites that used to have PR to use as trade bait even though they have no intention of ever updating the sites, no intention of acquiring backlinks for the sites and essentially they are trying to bleed the residue of reputation from sites they bought to get unwitting webmasters to trade quality links from sites that do update and do have good content on them.

I have a couple high quality PR0 sites currently getting more SEO traffic than a few of my lesser-updated PR2 and PR3 sites. I do not expect that to change, if anything I expect it to become more and more common. The fact is that PR is absolutely useless to surfers (most don't even know what it is or that it exists) so the ONLY people who PR was benefiting were SEOs seeking to game the system and get their sites ranked above 'better' results by artificially manipulating the listings with a variety of SEO tactics. Why would Google want to allow that to continue? They wouldn't... and that is why they have repeatedly said that they are not making use of PR in nearly the same way or to nearly the same degree they once did. I'm sure there is a more covert version of PR being assessed by the algo, but the official PR is clearly being ignored or overlooked by the algo in many instances these days.

That being said, find quality PR0 sites or webmasters who value PR much less (like I do) and make trades with them. Look for sites that update often, that have REAL hand-written content (not spun or morphed) and sites that actually look like they are worth visiting. Get trades on many of them. It may never improve your meaningless PR but it will definitely improve your ranks. Always remember being ranked #1 makes you money, being PR1 or PR2 may give webmasters an erection but it won't do much for your ranks in most cases.

If you are regularly updating your sites with original content worth reading...
Send me some trade requests and I'll gladly accept them: http://www.linkspun.com/profile.php?profileID=12

/rant

jdoughs - Thanks for the response. I figured it would take months to see any PR on these sites. In the meantime I have tried to make the sites visually appealing and hand wrote everything. I am really keeping the surfer in mind as I build these sites.

Relentless - I for one am tired of caring about PR. The majority of surfers are clueless to PR and sometimes I wish I was too. I always find it strange that some sites on LinkSpun have no PR yet have a healthy amount of backlinks and original content, while other sites have PR 2 or 3, limited backlinks and hardly any content to speak of.

I agree with your strategy for seeking out webmasters to trade with. I am always turned off when I get a trade request and the webmaster's sites look so sloppy, rarely updated and could pass as link farms.

I will definitely send over some trade requests. Thanks.

As a side note: I punched in "porn" to Google and noticed that four of the first ten results are not even related to porn, bookshelfporn.com, veganporn.com, chartporn.org and stairporn.org. Surfers must be thoroughly disappointed when they click on those domains. Who after all is searching for bookshelves when they type porn into Google?

EthnicLover wrote: Relentless - I for one am tired of caring about PR. The majority of surfers are clueless to PR and sometimes I wish I was too. I always find it strange that some sites on LinkSpun have no PR yet have a healthy amount of backlinks and original content, while other sites have PR 2 or 3, limited backlinks and hardly any content to speak of.

If you don't subscribe to any premium analysis services or purchased any professional tools to aid you in your strategy I'd suggest you use free sem scores and reports as an initial guide to trading.
I don't have an issue with those who still want to do PR points for PR points trading, I don't agree but won't make a fuzz about it. However, it gets my juices flowing a little when ppl come back with comments saying they are slightly offended by me offering a lower PR back to their sites with zero or close to zero organic search weight. What they don't understand is that I have tried to match the two sites on an overall level with emphasis on organic search scores and neighborhood.

PR rating is just one of the factors I look at - site age, content and change velocity are the others. Does the site only exist as bait for trades, or is it an actively traveled site with real traffic. Those tend to work best for me.

Tropicool

How about posting some real content to the sites? I have numerous blogs that make me cash daily because the surfers that surf them enjoy reading my porn stories.

vrocks wrote:How about posting some real content to the sites? I have numerous blogs that make me cash daily because the surfers that surf them enjoy reading my porn stories.

How dare you bring quality into the equation

vrocks wrote:How about posting some real content to the sites? I have numerous blogs that make me cash daily because the surfers that surf them enjoy reading my porn stories.

I totally agree.

Do you find that updating a blog frequently with hand written posts (i.e. every 2-5 days) brings you more traffic than a less updated blog? This is assuming all other things are equal, such as building backlinks. Do you see your traffic grow as you consistently post new original content?

Does Google reward adult themed blogs with more traffic because of consistent new content? It seems mainstream blogs are rewarded with more traffic for the same thing.