Suggest Link - Acceptance Criteria for free listings
Free link listings are included in our directory on a Link Exchange basis, i.e a fair value reciprocal link is required. Due to the large numbers of spam and inappropriate link exchange requests which we receive we provide these guidelines to our acceptance criteria. A suggested link will be displayed immediately but will be subject to our personal review to check/confirm if it will continue to be displayed. Our Review Process will consider issues such as:-
Relevance
Automatic Rejection List:-
We will not confirm/retain links to web sites dealing with:-
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medicines, cigarettes, gambling, life Insurance
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pornography
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general holiday sites
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Lawyers and legal advice
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Web hosting sites (except specific wedding-couple-web-site services)
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Web sites which are all, or mostly, adverts.
Relevance is the most important consideration when assessing a suggested link partnership, so please request to exchange links only if you provide something helpful to:
- people needing to give wedding speeches
- people organising or participating in a wedding
When deciding upon your link's description -
please write it to explain HOW your site will be of interest to our visitors. You are also more likely to receive visitors if you do this.
Visibility
This is the consideration which fails most suggested link partnerships. Please make sure that your link-to-us page is easily reachable from your home page.
- Links pages that are hard for visitors to notice/find do not help visitors and do not represent a fair exchange.
- For example, when the navigation to the reciprocal link is a small/tiny link, perhaps hidden at the bottom of the home page.
- Multiple links pages that are poorly categorised are of poor value to visitors.
- Links pages that contain a large number of links (say 30+) tend to bury individual links.
We are unlikely to exchange links in these situations.
If you do not wish to provide a fair reciprocal link, you may like to consider a Sponsored Link.
Search Engine Factors
We will consider factors such as Google page-rank and Alexa traffic-rank.
However 'low' popularity on it's own will not prevent a link exchange.
Please do not waste your time by applying if your website does not meet these guidelines.
How to pass the Free Link Acceptance Checks -
an example review
As an example this is a review of a suggested link exchange from a jewellery web site:-
The first reason why your link exchange proposal was not confirmed is that it is hard to find the reciprocal link's page from your homepage.
A second reason is the degree to which your link description and web site appear to be of interest to people visiting our wedding speeches site and then viewing our Wedding Resources Directory.
- There is nothing in your 'link description' on our web site to focus your site for people searching for Wedding Jewellery.
- Also your web site itself appears as 'just another jewellery web site' there is nothing specific to catch the interest for people who are interested in weddings
THE REVIEW PROCESS
Please understand, none of the ideas or issues I discuss are required of you, after all it's your web site and business, however they do relate to how our business assesses proposed link partnerships.
The two issues I considered were:-
- How Much does the proposed link exchange benefit my web site?
- How much does the proposed link exchange benefit my visitors?
A good conclusion to either factor would cause the proposed link exchange to be considered favourably
Specifically in your case:-
Visibility:
I note that on your home page there is a link to "Resources",
- but when I visit that page I discover:
- There are Many outbound links, more than 20-25. (61 in total)
- The reciprocal link to our site is not on that page
- That the page is not the url of the reciprocal link provided, NOR does it lead to the reciprocal link provided.
I tried to discover the reciprocal link by visiting the site map - there is a section at the very bottom for groups of links, but none of them actually link to the url of the reciprocal link provided.
I eventually noticed at the bottom of every page a link to 'Directory' this did link to a 'categories' page on which lined to a 'misc' category which displayed the reciprocal link.
At this stage I concluded that it was not likely that many of *your visitors would find their way to my site* and this negatively influenced my assessment of the link exchange proposal.
Search Engine Factors
However I do understand that one can never predict how many 'click-throughs' a link will attract anyway, so I next considered the likely benefit to my search engine positions using the Google pagerank. I considered:-
- the number of links outward on the page - only 2, that was 'good'
- the Google pagerank of the reciprocal link page - zero, not good,
- the Google pagerank of the pages leading to the reciprocal link page - zero, not good,
- the Google pagerank of the home page - 5, good,
Overall I judged that the likely benefit for search engines was marginal.
Relevance
While doing the above investigations I was also considering how useful this link exchange might be for visitors to our site:-
The 'description' of the link to your web site
There was nothing in the description to attract the notice of people searching for wedding products or suppliers, it was a general description of your products.
For example (using some information you provided in your email):-
- Original - Quality Pearl Necklaces, exotic pearl earrings, and bracelets including Tahitian, Freshwater, Akoya pearls, & Cultured Pearl Jewellery From The Islands To You!
- Consider - Many brides love the idea of pearls with their wedding dress, but they are just as appropriate for anyone attending the wedding especially bridesmaids and mothers of the bride and groom [**]. We provide wedding jewellery to thousands of people around the world each year through our website and 4 stores located in Hawaii. Visit our web site to see Quality Pearl Necklaces, exotic pearl earrings, and bracelets including Tahitian, Freshwater, Akoya pearls, & Cultured Pearl Jewellery From The Islands To You!
[** there you are ... attract the attention of some our our likely visitors, that's bound to influence my decision <smile>]
A focus on 'wedding related visitors' at your web site.
This is by far the most influential factor in encouraging a link exchange - our business doesn't benefit directly but yours could!
There was nothing I noticed in your website that focused specifically on visitors who are browsing web pages because of a future wedding. If there was I would judge your site to be of specific interest to my visitors and more importantly you would be much more likely to convert any such visitors into customers.
Here is an Idea I have had - please don't consider it as 'required' or prescriptive in any way:
How about a web page title something like - Pearls For Weddings. The the web page could have a few paragraphs:
- Perhaps one which - welcomes visitors interested in weddings, and which says pearls are great for weddings and how you sell to thousands of wedding customers each year.
- Perhaps one which - discusses any folk lore, or customs around the world where pearls are related to weddings.
- Perhaps one which - discusses one of your product lines and says how many of your visitors/customers choose it because of [whatever reason].
- Perhaps one which - discusses how pearls dissolve in wine (is that actually true? if not add it to the folk lore paragraph <smile>) and mention how you also sell loss, theft and damage insurance for the first year.
- Perhaps one which - anything you can think of really.
We hope you find this helpful in planning a proposed link exchange.
Your link to Our Site:
Here are some examples for the link-to-our-site which you will put on one of your web site pages.
You can choose an example that fits with your web site or write your own.
As part of the "Suggest-Link" process you will be asked to provide the url of the web page that contains your-link-to-our-site.
| URL: |
http://www.finespeeches.com |
| Title Suggestions: |
Fine Wedding Speeches |
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Fine Wedding speeches - for the bridegroom, best man, and father of the bride |
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Wedding Speeches Etiquette - know the rules so you can break them safely. |
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Don't Flounder! get expert help when planning your wedding speech |
| Description Suggestions: |
Fine Wedding speeches - for the bridegroom, best man, and father of the bride |
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Wedding Speeches Etiquette - know the rules so you can break them safely. |
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Planning Wedding Speeches - Be Remembered for the RIGHT Reasons. |
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Planning a Wedding?
Help the speakers & speeches be remembered for the RIGHT reasons! |
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Free wedding speech help, advice and guidance.
Buy professional example wedding speeches - use "as is" or improve with our suggested customisations. |
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Planning a successful wedding speech is not generally something quick and easy unless you are an expert public speaker or have access to one who knows how to coach the less experienced. |
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Wedding Speeches, for the best man, bridegroom, father of the bride, written for you by a professional speaker and wedding speech writer. Free help and tips available |
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Be confident about your wedding speech responsibilities, learn what is expected from you and how it fits in with everything else on the day. |
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Our downloaded wedding speeches package will help you be remembered for the right reasons whether you have 5 months, 5 days or 5 hours. You use the pack differently in each case following our free help and advice.
You are provided with 5 example speeches that are a mixture of humour and sincerity. There are also HUNDREDS more jokes, for you to select from. Many have example adaptations of how they can be appropriately blended into a speech, and our website articles also give advice and guidelines about how to prepare, practice and perform your speech.
If you prefer a custom written wedding speech please see our service at www.sparklingspeeches.co.uk |
Images for links
If you would prefer to include an image, here are a few which you are free to download and use on your website:
Sponsored Links
A sponsored link benefits from being highlighted with a background colour in the category pages, and by being near the top of the listed links.
- We do not require a reciprocal link, so the visibility requirements of a free link are not applied.
- The Automatic Rejection List subjects will still apply
- The relevance criteria will still be applied however they will be more loosely applied.
- For Example if sponsored, a link suggestion to a general 'Jewellery' site may be accepted.
- Whereas, if not sponsored we would look for content specifically focussed for 'wedding jewellery' etc.
You have the option to "Sponsor" a link, either at the time it is suggested or later from within your Link-Partner's Account, by clicking upgrade-listing.
You may like to consider our sister site which specialises in one-way links targeted to weddings/wedding keywords ....
http://weddingwords.biz
