Nikki Pilkington writes:

Great move – totally understand why it was a difficult decision.

[Reply]

jayen writes:

Although it would be nice to be able to put relevant links within the articles as it is the general consensus that google favors these links, i understand why you don’t want to encored it, it’s just human nature for people to be greedy (hence the current economy crisis :( ) and so not put always the most relevant links in the articles and so just generally not add to the overall quality of the articles.

So I have to agree with you that this was the right move.

Jayen

[Reply]

Patricia writes:

Not all internal links need be self serving. Book reviewers may want to link to the author site or an excerpt site. Just one example I can think of because, as you may have guessed, I review books :)

Just my 2 cents.

[Reply]

Nickolove Lovemore writes:

I understand your decision. In reality it will not affect how I write articles. I have very occasionally included links in the Article Body but they have not been self-serving. Even without your rules, leaving links to the Resource Box has always felt like the right thing to do.

[Reply]

Gunter Eibl writes:

I’ve never placed links in the body as I agree- this is the GIVE.

However, do you have any plans to also make resource box links nofollow one day?

Gunter

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Gunter,

We have no plans to make resource box links nofollow.

Something really huge would have to happen for that decision as it’s not even on our radar.

The good thing about today’s decision is that we expect no negative impact on the traffic that we’re currently sending our members… so those who came to us for highly pre-qualified traffic will continue to win.

[Reply]

colleen writes:

I often have links in the body because I often write on technical subjects where references are essential. The links are not self-serving, however it would be nice to give some link juice to the “more info” I’ll live.

[Reply]

Cheow writes:

I think it is fair and square for links in article body to be nofollow. Good article marketers know that the article body is not the best place to place self-promotion links.

Great job Chris!

Cheow

[Reply]

Sally O'Boyle writes:

Good idea. One question: in a few of my articles, I’ve wanted links in the top three paragraphs as well as other places in the article which were not self-serving but offered more information for the reader. Will those be allowed now?

[Reply]

Chris writes:

Of course you can do what you want, but I don’t see the point.

I thought your editors already were not allowing “self serving” stuff in the articles – of course, the whole point of writing articles is to promote oneself.

If search engines are counting the nofollow links, then what is the point of this change? Just to discourage more people from submitting articles with yet another rule change?

[Reply]

Shirley Bass writes:

I do not see any problem for me here. I really don’t have an opinion, so I’ll be on my way…

Shirley Bass

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Sally,

Sorry, links are not allowed in the first 3 paragraphs, nor above the fold (that’s subjective because everyone runs different resolutions and screen sizes).

In addition, if the article is ‘thin’, we may not accept links in the 4th or 5th paragraph even though we may find another reason to reject the article (uhm, like because it’s thin).

If I were your friend, I’d highly recommend not including non-self-serving links in your articles. I know the counter argument against that advice is in alignment with our values of providing our mutual users with a positive user experience; so permit me to be out of favor with myself because this advice will net result you and your website with more traffic (instead of less).

[Reply]

Chinmay Chakravarty writes:

In the maze of self-servers, self-promoters, crawlers and all that why not invent a new term ‘selfless links’! This terminology will help us serve only readers. And, ‘selfless links’ should definitely be allowed–be it in any ‘body’!

How’s that?

[Reply]

Sally O'Boyle writes:

Thanks, Chris (or Christopher?). Interesting advice – will have to search and see if there is an article expounding on this idea. I have a lot of outgoing links in my blog articles as well. Maybe I’m hurting myself more than helping? Still new at the game…

[Reply]

Duncan Brodie writes:

I have no problems with this at all. This site is such a great resource for providing traffic to my site and offering a platform for me to help so many more people.

Duncan Brodie

[Reply]

Ed Bagley writes:

Totally agree with your decision. We have enough greedy people in our society today; we do not need to reflect greed at EzineArticles.com

We should be serving readers, giving them what they came for: great articles without blatant self-promotion where it does not belong.

[Reply]

Andrew Seltz - The Go-To Guy! writes:

Self-serving articles filled with self-serving links are a short-sighted promotional plan at best.

This change should not have any effect on people who try to win visitors to their sites by first providing value to their readers and then inviting them to visit their websites.

If you can’t get people to read to the bottom of your articles – you’ve got a much bigger problem on your hands than no-follow tags.

I get lots of visitors from my articles here and there is a reason why I don’t waste much energy on other article directory sites – they don’t produce results.

Andrew Seltz
The Go-To Guy!

[Reply]

Shirley Bass writes:

I agree with you Andrew Seltz. Good comment!

Shirley Bass

[Reply]

Bruce Point writes:

We have not used links in our content for more than a year. We have seen no difference in traffic to our sites by using the resource box alone. There really is no reason to place links in the content.

However it seems that EzineArticles is becoming more about rules and regulation then about the freedom to publish original content. As writers we detest lock step rules and regulations. Dictatorial rules and freedom of expression frequently are mutually exclusive. There is something wrong with every article having to be crafted to fit through a square hole.

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

I noted that people are 10 times more likely to click on as link in the article to as reference, judging by the click states in the report section of the author’s area.

I like to put web addresses into the article for references. I do not care if they are even active, actually, I’d often prefer they were not, I use them for reference.

“No follow” helps on forums and comments on blogs, as it prevents splogging for those who merely want free-link upgrades that the search engine gives.

Now with that said there are times when it makes sense to put a weblink into an article to help the reader with more information. I am uneffected here, and for those that have abused the priviledge, all I can say is that malcontent trinket selling, Internet scoundrels have ruined it for everyone, as there are times when one might really have a good reason for putting in links and want them to be found.

[Reply]

Peter McGahan writes:

dont mix up two things here. You can still put a clickable link in text, its just that the coding tells the spider not to follow it for ranking purposes. This action will have no impact whatsover on a link placed in the main body of a column as the link will still follow if you click it

February 18, 2010 at 3:55 AM

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

Perhaps the only legitimate reason I can possibly think of to put links in the article body is when I write an article about a concept for a new innovation, many might think the concept is impossible so I put links to other research papers within the article. In fact you cannot read an article in Wired, Scientific American, Popular Science, MIT Technology Review online without finding links in the article. News articles too have links, like the WSJ, NYT. So there are lots of reasons for the links, do they need to be active? Sure why not? Should they be followed or found by the search engines? Not necessarily.

[Reply]

Steve Hill writes:

I think this is a great idea.

Have you thought about also using no follow on this blog? It could be a good way of deterring people to just add spam like comments etc.

Steve Hill The How To Stop Stuttering Centre UK

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Steve,

I thought about it; but have decided against it because the moderation routine works pretty well.

We deflect about a dozen comments a day that violate the blog comment policy of posting with a keyword in the name field; but if they would have substantial comments, i’d email them privately to repost with a real name and not a keyword stuffed.

In addition, I find myself removing resource boxes all the time from blog comments. What do these people think they are doing? Writing articles… ;!)

[Reply]

Steve Hill writes:

Nice one Chris. I have noticed that things have improved recently.

So has EzineArticles suffered in this current economic downturn or is this one industry that is recession proof?

Steve

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Steve,

Sure, ad revenue is softer than normal, but:

We hired 8 people this month.

Recession proof? Nope… but I keep believing that this recession is the perfect time for true market leaders to widen the gap between themselves and all of the competition.

The current economic slow down has just been an insanely motivating force for us to do more with less; do it faster and with more accuracy/consistency.

[Reply]

Steve Hill writes:

You are totally right, only the fittest will survive.

I personally invest into a downturn, the opposite of most people who panic and sell up.

It is a risky strategy but one which with hard work could well prove to be successful.

Wishing you and your team a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Steve

[Reply]

Robert Ludwig writes:

I think this is a great idea. I hate articles that have “self-serving” links in the content. However, there are times when using reference links in the content enhances the importance and usability of the subject matter.

A problem that concerns me is when people use my articles and actually remove the links in the resource area. I find about 25% of those that use my articles in their websites do this.

Is there anything I can do about this problem?

Bob

[Reply]

Chris writes:

This is another decision that just keep the quality up, so its a good thing. No problem by me.

Chris

[Reply]

Harvey Roquemore writes:

I’m all for this change. I believe it really will increase traffic to EzineArticles and I can’t wait to see the results.

[Reply]

Mat writes:

It’s a good decision but how much more traffic are you expecting as a result of this? I would be interested to see if it results in that much more traffic.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Mat,

Every month we raise our standards in terms of what kind of articles we’ll accept and in terms of the quality of the site (you’d be floored to see what kind of activities we’re working on behind the scenes to ensure our users have a fast & positive experience every time).

We don’t know specifically how much more traffic this change will attract; only that it was the right decision and we’re willing to deal with the negative consequences of it (losing some members who were only here for link juice alone).

[Reply]

Geoff writes:

Although I`ve only been a member for around a month, and written 20 articles, I`ve never placed links within the body of my articles. Having said that, I can understand why on occasions it might be useful to the readers to have a link to go to another site.

Do those links need to be `DoFollow` though? Not really. As long as those in the Resource Box aren`t NoFollow I really can`t see why anyone has cause for complaint.

[Reply]

Barnabas Samuel writes:

I think it is the right step in the right direction. I solemnly support your decision.Thanks.

[Reply]

annieblawrence writes:

I understand the move and will adhere to the new decision. Happy Holidays to everyone at EzineArticles.com

[Reply]

Margaret Welwood writes:

Forgive me, please. I think I made a typo in my last post. Just as it was closing I thought I saw “Nine of them have links to my website.” What I meant to say was, “None of them have links to my website!”

[Reply]

DomainRegistrationHosting.org writes:

Nofollow tags really help the website gather higher rankings, of course. Was wondering when this would occur.

[Reply]

Scott Sickles writes:

I’ve seen several complaints about different aspects of EzineArticles. I’m utterly amazed why anyone would dare complain about something that they get for free. They are always free to post their articles elsewhere if they don’t like the posting guidelines or turn around time or anything else for that matter.
Personally I’ve never put links in the article body so this won’t affect me at all and I understand why it needed to be done.
The bottom line is it’s always been money in my pocket using the free service that you provide and I will continue to do so. Thank you for that Christopher!
Loved the mug too!

[Reply]

Shirley Bass writes:

Hi Scott Sickles,

I am 100% with you on that evaluation! It makes my hair stand on ends, when I hear someone whining about a free service, especially EzineArticles.

Nothing is FREE. Someone is paying for it somewhere. They are just giving you the opportunity to do something with their idea and they too have to make a living. More power to them! To me, it’s a win win situation.

Shirley Bass

[Reply]

Scott Sickles writes:

Maybe I should clarify my post a little more. The complaints I referred to have been on some IM forums, one in particular and I’m sure that Chris knows which one I’m referring to. The complaints simply don’t make any sense to me.

Take today for instance. I submitted an article to EzineArticles today and it got rejected. I didn’t agree with the reasoning but no biggie. I simply submitted it somewhere else.

I appreciate the service provided by EzineArticles and I will continue to post articles as long as they let me.

I’m right there with ya Shirley!

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

There are two types of public bitches I hear in forums outside of this one:

1) Those coming from members we respect as being an ideal EzineArticles expert author.

2) Those coming from members who are not ideal.

When I read a public bitch about category 1 complaints, I appreciate them and carefully consider the feedback to help us improve our service.

When I read category 2 complaints, I listen and after confirming they are not ideal members… I move on.

Bum marketers are not ideal members for us… at least for now.

[Reply]

Shirley Bass writes:

Last evening, I saw several complaints being made by one person on… (not sure I can say where). It appeared to me, as though he wanted to ‘stir the pot’ and draw others into his conversation and perspective of EzineArticles. The complaint was over one article that had been rejected.

I found it to be an inappropriate place to be complaining and thought he looked ridiculous. Freedom of speech is his (thank goodness), but why not go to straight the source?

In my time spent on EzineArticles blogs, I don’t recall seeing his name appear on any comments or complaints.

You have a good perspective, Chris. It would be difficult for me if someone were trying to turn perspective customers away from my business.

I am not sure what he does on the Internet or why I have him as a ‘friend’, but I will remember his name.

Shirley Bass

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

I tend to agree with what Scott said about complaining about a service that is FREE. And yet, I understand why some folks might complain from time to time about “whatever” it is because I once calculated how much time I spent “posting” the articles I wrote.

So far at a 40-hour work week, considering 2-3 minutes per article to post, I’ve spent the equivalent of 18.5 days so far posting 15,000 articles, that’s just posting them. So, basically that is 18 days of my life. And that is working straight through the 40-hours with no down time to get coffee.

So, what some that critique might see as legitimate, I guess we should consider their comments from time to time, as they do have a “vested” interest in time. If the rules change midstream, well, maybe they may not have opted to spend that time in the first place, see that point?

This is why I cut the “complainers” as we are calling them here a bit of slack, and why I like Chris’ take on it. Real time feedback good or bad can lead to a superior system, which is what I believe we have here today.

Anyway, this is all just philosophy and such. Something I was considering last time I wanted to lambaste a complainer who was selling trinkets and scam looking stuff on a website with a “slam page” for email newletter capture and a three page sales letter, with AdSense around it all.

[Reply]

Scott Sickles writes:

Lance I completely understand your point and it is a good one. However, that being said, I also feel that constructive criticism and complaining fall into different spaces. The complaining I’ve seen on a particular forum have mostly amounted to nothing but bashing and that is what I was referring to. Then again there seems to be a lot of bashing and personal attacks there too.

Any good business person will tweak and make the changes needed to improve their business. A smart marketer will have enough diversification in their traffic generation methods that any changes made by outside sources will minimal effect on their business and can easily enough be adjusted for.

I welcome constructive criticism as I’m sure Chris does. It’s the outright complainers that I have the problem with but you’re exactly right. It’s all just philosophy at this point for the most part.

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

Scott makes a great point. You know it’s amazing that here we have the Internet – undoubtedly the best communication device every created for humans by humans themselves. Then we have folks using it to send negative-ness, unreasonable complaints and ruining it all. Why?

That makes no sense, Scotts right.

[Reply]

Scott Sickles writes:

Christopher I didn’t catch your last post until I had already made mine.

Maybe I am missing something here but I was of the understanding that all articles have their roots in bum marketing. Articles are meant to build credibility in a niche by providing meaningful content and drive traffic to a site that will ultimately sell a product or service. Again please correct me if I am wrong.

Not trying to be a jerk here and I am relatively new to IM but I feel like I just got slapped after defending you and EzineArticles because much of my efforts are “bum” oriented. I guess I’m a little shocked because this is the first time that I’ve heard that bum marketing is frowned upon.

[Reply]

Shirley Bass writes:

There certainly is a difference between constructive criticism and complaining.

Lance, I too can see the need to bring certain issues to the forefront and have no problem with that. It’s good to know how one can improve and make an experience better for the users, if it is a viable complaint.

I can also see, that you paid through time and effort for users to read your FREE articles.

Shirley Bass

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

Wow, I just noticed the thread with the chronic complainer. If this is what you are talking about, well, I totally agree. I’ve seen this type of Internet trouble maker before, it’s quite disgusting.

[Reply]

Shirley Bass writes:

Totally disgusting!

Shirley Bass

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

Yes, you know I read through that thread and started thinking to myself, what are they talking about, who is this guy and who cares what they think. That’s just nonsense. And to play this game of using someone else’s link and hide under false pretence, secrecy and anonymity to boot? And then have a cocky attitude about it because they think they are being tricky? “Get a life” is my first comment.

Besides most of his comments are irrelavent and incorrect anyways. Oh well, I think we need to ignore that person. I assume it is a male, it could be a her, but, who ever it is; “give me a break” what a mean-spirited soul.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Let there be no gray area on this:

Bum Marketers are newbies who often barely have expertise in the content they are producing and they almost never already have their own website or business.

Our perception is that BUM MARKETERS are only out to make a fast buck pitching someone elses stuff because they haven’t produced any of their own stuff to sell yet.

We’d prefer non-bum marketers who are genuine experts in the topic they are writing about who promote their business domain that offers products or services that they sell.

The connotation of “BUM” means someone who is trying to make a fast lazy buck … not someone who should be a respected expert in their niche.

Calling it as I see it.

[Reply]

Scott Sickles writes:

To say that bum marketers are newbies is a generalization that is simply wrong.

I’ve got 130 articles on your site alone with over 27,000 views in two related niches. I don’t consider that to be lazy by any definition.

Having a domain name does not make anyone an expert. Being an expert is about knowledge that one has gained. Furthermore, anyone can set up a domain name and redirect it to the site of the product they are promoting. That is a way to use “bum” marketing by not using an affiliate link.

It seems to me that the word “bum” is being held to a very, VERY tight definition while the word “expert” is being held to a very loose definition. There are many, many “faux” experts in IM. That’s a given.

I didn’t realize that being a newbie was such a horrible thing. To define a newbie as being lazy and wanting a fast buck is well, short sighted IMO. A newbie is the name given to one that is new to IM. It has nothing to do with the knowledge they have in other areas.

Christopher, although I feel I’ve been unfairly labeled, it’s still your site. If you don’t want me here just let me know and I will close my account. I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Scott,

You’ve taken me out of context.

I never said that being a newbie was a horrible thing.

I’m also not labeling you because I don’t know who you are well enough to make any kind of judgement.

This was my first visit to your articles today:
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Scott_Sickles&o=date-d&opt=ecats

I see you write about affairs and conflict and you appear to be a bum marketer because you don’t own the domain you’re pushing your traffic to.

Assuming you personally wrote your articles (which it looks like you did)… you appear to be a good member for us…

If you uploaded your author photo and author bio plus owned your domain, and included your name in your resource boxes, you’d be an ideal member.

Our issue is largely with the BUM MARKETERS who submit crap, PLR and other worthless garbage and I’ll agree that I shouldn’t broad-stroke paint all bum marketers as lazy.

[Reply]

Scott Sickles writes:

I apologize if I took you out of context. I guess I took things a little too personal.

Yes I do write my own articles. Every one of them. I understand why you want to keep the quality of the articles on the high end and I agree with that completely. I feel that’s why EzineArticles is at the top of the heap.

Thanks for your feedback and setting the record straight. I now know better where I stand on this issue as far as you’re concerned. Thanks again.

[Reply]

imran writes:

I know i am late to comment on this topic but want to say something to the ezines team. The decision is good that the body links should be the nofollow and the links in the author bio should be the dofollow. This will encourage the authors to place the links in the author bio area and it will be beneficial both for the ezines and the writers.

But this decision is not fair as it is also applied on all the articles before the decmeber 2008. As we all know that this rule was not applied before december 2008 and people like me put the links in the article body to increase the PR and ranking of our websites.

Suppose i have 50 articles that are all pointing to 2-3 of my websites before decemeber 2008. Some had PR3 or PR2 etc. That improved the ranking of my websites. But when u applied this nofollow rules all of my rankings were down again because of nofollow tag.

This is not fair.

If you want to implement this rule, then you should apply it to all the articles written before the date of imposing of this rule. Because before december 2008 we were putting the links in the body to increase the ranking of our websites and it was 100% according to the rules. Now all of our dofollow body links are nofollow and as a result our rankings and PR of the websites are down.

I request to reconsider this rule and apply it only on the articles after december 2008. I think it will be fair.

imran.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Imran,

Sorry you don’t agree with our decision.

Members who come to EzineArticles purely or primarily to enhance their search engine rankings are…not ideal members for us.

Reason: Many write too keyword or keyphrase efficiently in their quest to dominate the search engines and they fail to deliver real expert value in their articles.

Ultimately, “search engine ranking writers” are not in our best interests as they do not create a positive user experience.

We prefer members who are vaguely aware of SEO,…enough so that they can do some basic search engine research to know what to write about related to their area of expertise. The temptation to go overboard on SEO is too high for most SEO experts and thus, they don’t become ideal members for us.

[Reply]

imran writes:

Hi Christopher,

Thanks for your reply.

You are right in the sense that a writer whose only intention is to create the back links from the articles cannot produce the quality content for the community. But you will agree that this cannot be true in all cases and i know many writers who deliver really the great content on the topic and also give the back links to their websites. For the further readings or for the related products they want to refer the people to their websites. This is natural and you can see in most of your articles in the resource box there are the links to some websites. Do u think that all those writers have produces low quality content and your website published it?

Second thing is that your site have very strict rules(that i always like) and only quality and selected articles are accepted and those articles are rejected which are written only to advertise some products or services. So, if an article is accepted after your 3 level of checking then it should be the right of the author to get a quality link to his/her website. When you are only publishing the articles that are really quality artilces and are in accordance with your policies then you cannot say that we dont want the writers who only write to get the good SEO rankings. Your argument looks weightless.

It is the natural thing. Your site have quality content, and you are earning from your website. I have seen your website story in the adsense stories website that shows that your website is doing the great business with the adsense. This is all because of your efforts and because you only publish the unique and quality content. But you will agree that it is all possible because the writers like me are subitting this content.

So the writers should also get the benefit. I agree to your rule that the back links should be posted in the author box and the links in the body should be Nofollow.

But my concern is that why have u applied this rule on the articles written before the december 2008. When the writers had submitted all the quality content according to your rules and regulations then your new ruels should not effect the old members.

I think you should think again on your decision.

And my suggestion is that before doing such type of decisions you should get the voting or suggestions from all of your members. Because we are a community and you should hear and respect the comments of all of your members and when you take such type of decisions then you must email all the members of your website. Because not every member follow your blog or forums etc.

i think you will not feel bad about my comments :-)

imran.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Imran,

Our members do get a monthly benefit from submitting their content to us…

TRAFFIC

This month so far, we’ve delivered 5,313,788 visitors to our members website for free. That’s over 60 million clicks we’re sending annually for the benefit of our members. High-value targeted Traffic is what we have to offer.

[Reply]

imran writes:

Yes i know that. But i think you dont want to come on the point. So no use. Thanks for your time and replies though.

imran.

[Reply]

Johan writes:

Interesting comment here so that I understand this correctly;

In the eyes of EzineArticles;

1) If you a bum marketer your a newbie that is lazy to work and not the members you want
2) If you use EzineArticles to submit articles but know something about SEO and want to use EzineArticles for that purpose when don’t really want you

Basically EzineArticles don’t allow the nofollow as it will decrease there income so this must be a recession decision as funds are going down

Article are no allowed to do this ad that as it effects the adsense income (no other reason)

There is no such thing as a “free ride” Free means free and this so called “free traffic” EzineArticles is boasting about made EzineArticles big bucks. So these wonderful article people submit to EzineArticles for “free” EzineArticles should be grateful for instead of making out it is “free” service.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Johan,

Bum Marketers are not ideal members. Never were.

If you are using us only for SEO and don’t care about your reader… then no, this type of person wouldn’t be an ideal member.

We dofollow links in the Resource Box.
We nofollow links in the article body.

No doubt that there is no such thing as a free ride for any of us. Article writing & marketing takes a lot of time & energy to build your traffic over time… but for most of our members, they find it’s worth it because the traffic keeps on coming for YEARS after they have submitted each article.

The members who earn the most traffic are those who consistently build their article inventory (by writing & submitting fresh articles often).

March 29, 2010 at 11:18 AM

[Reply]

sean writes:

I’ve spent the last 6 months happily putting links into the body of my articles, totally unaware of this rule. It’d help – A LOT – if there was a note or something below the text editor on the submit article page saying “links in the body will be converted to nofollow” or a javascript confirm box that said on submit “you have put links into the body of the article – these will be converted to nofollow, click OK to continue” or something.

I also see that http://ezinearticles.com/editorial-guidelines.html doesn’t mention “nofollow” at all – it would be good if it did as I searched this page to see where I could put links when I first joined.

Call me a bum if you want but the main reason I do write articles is for SEO. Your site is in the US, so for lots of queries in Australia you don’t rank all that highly and the proportion of click-thru traffic I get from EzineArticles is useless to me as it’s an Australian service we offer.

The only way I found out about the nofollow tags was looking at the source code one day – surely that tells you that there’s been a failure in communication from your side along the way. I’d bet that nearly everyone that is putting links into the body copy of their articles has no idea you are adding nofollow. I guess you don’t care that much as it doesn’t affect you at all but it’s pretty annoying for people that put hours and hours into writing content.

[Reply]

Kevin Levine writes:

I think links are ok as long as you only have 4 of them within an article. In my opinion all the other rules are overkill. We can only help people of whom we can reach out to. There are many valuable reasons for using links regardless of what type they are. I hope a reconsideration occurs on these areas.

Thanks!

Kevin

[Reply]

Svilen Andreev writes:

Hello,

What is the point of all of this as almost all of the sources publishing our articles put a “rel=nofollow” tag for the links to our sites in the article’s resource box. Many of them use very tiny font size for the resource boxes as well so that the potential visitor will not find and click on our links easily.

I am very disappointed.

Regards,

Svilen

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Svilen,

Your assumption is that it matters. I challenge your assumption and while logically you’d think it matters, I’m not convinced it does. I’m also not convinced that search engines discount the rel=nofollow as much as you might believe they do.

You also get TRAFFIC from your links even though many members tell us that we deliver them more traffic than the ezine publishers and/or webmasters who syndicate your articles. In either case, it’s about traffic.

Lastly, never underestimate the end users ability to find your link… no matter how small of a font. I have stats I can’t share that makes a strong case for the intelligence of the end user knowing how to find your URL in your resource box.

November 30, 2010 at 12:15 PM

[Reply]