Value of a Link?
What is the real economic value of an outbound active link from EzineArticles.com?
I’m talking about the active links that are in the resource boxes of every article.
Care to put a dollar figure on it and explain your logic for what you think the real value is?
Which factors do you use to delineate its value?
What economic value does the active link have by itself from our site vs. the distribution power potential of our site as a hub to spread your active URL like a virus? Can you separate the value or is the distribution potential of the active URL only a bonus?
Which factors do not impact its value at all?
If you have more than 1 active link, is the economic value doubled perfectly or not?
How much would you have to spend if you bought an identical link from someplace else?
I’m looking for an abstract discussion to bring about a concrete number as to the real ecomomic value of a link from our site.
This is an excellent question for discussion. One of the most perplexing problems while marketing your information is how to let people know where you are on the WWW, and what makes your site worth their time to look at. My wife and my mom came by but only because I was standing there with them:/.
Looking at the value of a link as strictly a numbers game, a text link on resource35.htm of a PR1 site is not going to carry the relationship potential of a link in the resource box of an article at EzineArticles.com. But it goes a lot deeper than that.
When someone chooses to read an article posted, they want that information at some level, which means there is INTEREST there. And I personally believe it is that INTEREST that generates value. Its not very likely that a purchase will be made from that one link (though not impossible), but if that article is chosen for inclusion in a 3000 member ezine, the original interest has the potential to be multiplied exponentially.
A brief example. I purchased a front page text link on a PR8 financial services page. Even though we shared keywords, the focus of that site was off just ever so slightly to my link wording, and I didn’t get one visit. Conversely, I share a link with a PR3 site that brings several hundred visitors a month to my site, largely because of the relationship we have developed with each other. A dollar value? Absolutely. But had I gone after the relationship based on the dollar value, I personally don’t think it would have ever happened. Those relationships are just too fragile. Boy, you hit the spot with this question, Chris!
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