Reciprocal hubbers
63How to get good reciprocal links
Have you wondered how those beautiful people get scores of 99 and 100 as you open HubPages each day? They work hard, building up links and by creating good content. Getting people to link to your hubs can be difficult - this hub suggests an easy way using the goodwill and co-operation of fellow hubbers.
More and more social bookmarking sites are imposing conditions on fair usage, mainly to avoid spam (here, the promotion of your own websites). Additionally, it is becoming increasingly unethical to promote your own material such as your recent hub. StumbleUpon, for example, imposes a limit on the number of times you can stumble the same domain (currently 10). How useful would it be if you could get others to do you a favor, and you would do the same for them?
StumbleUpon adding a link (new discovery)
Comment to hubpages
Here is how this project works - you leave a comment below, including the following information:
- Social bookmarking memberships and user names
- Link to your hub
- Whether you will only accept the first response, or whether you will reciprocate with multiple responses
For example:
[hubpages]
I'm a member of StumbleUpon, Facebook [username hubpages; network London]
and Digg [usename hubpages]. Anyone want to swap reciprocal links with any/all of those? My hub is:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Project-Backlink
I will reciprocate with all responses.
My thanks in advance,
hubpages.
Ensure you enter carriage returns [your largest key with the left-pointing arrow] before and after the url(s). Otherwise hubpages's url generator gadget might corrupt your url. Having done that, you might respond:
[pjdscott]
hubpages - I'm in StumbleUpon and Digg and will promote you there.
Did you Digg this already?
If not, I will do it. Please Stumble and Digg my hub:
"http://digg.com/business_finance/Online_Banks_Interviews_with_customers_opinion_and_reviews
Great to link,
pjdscott
Both hubbers race to their agreed social bookmarking sites and promote as agreed, remembering to click through once (so the other can see when viewing the day's stats for their hub). S/he then returns to my "Reciprocal hubbers" hub and leaves a comment, listing the places s/he bookmarked:
[hubpages]
"pjdscott - have linked to your hub Online Banks on StumbleUpon and Dugg:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/hubpages.com/hub/Online-Banks-by-Peter-Scott
Hope you like it and good doing business with you.
hubpages
Having added the agreed links, pjdscott then posts his final message:
[pjdscott]
"Hi hubpages,
I have Dugg and am delighed to have discovered you on StumbleUpon:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/hubpages.com/hub/Project-Backlink
Many thanks,
pjdscott
StumbleUpon instructions
When you Stumble ["thumbs up"] a page, you discover it (if nobody else has previously Stumbled it) or you simply add it to your favorites. The former is easy - a box pops up and you write a few words about the site.hub. However, if someone else has already stumbled it and you want to write a review, then goto your "Favourites" tab and "Favorites » My Blog" will appear. Below this, there are several links and the middle link should be "Pages Liked". This will list your discoveries, but also pages that have been discovered by someone else. Underneath the title/url of the relevant page, you will find a link to "# review(s)". Click this and add your comments. That way the hub/link gets maximum exposure and credit.
By posting comments on this page, not only can hubbers see who is reciprocating, but can see how quickly and efficiently a hubber responds. If your reciprocal request happens to get two or more hubbers responding, then you are obliged to reciprocate with all (you can post the same message detailing all reciprocal adds, as long as each is clearly identified).
It is helpful if the comments are somewhat extended, referring to an issue(s) within the original article. This helps to expand the keyword relevance, and also assists the search engines in assigning importance when they visit to ascertain the ranking.
Adding a photograph in StumbleUpon
A picture is worth a thousand words - this old adage is even more true on the internet. If you want people to stay within a site, add images! In SU you place your mouse over the image and then right-click, or if you're an Apple Macintosh user, press control and click. This should result in a new dialogue box when you can add comments about the blog or review.
Caution
While there are an increasing number of social networking sites, some employ methods to stop what they see as spamming. Therefore spread your friends' promotions carefully and continue to promote other things as well.
Remember (few of you need reminding) that Digg will penalize you if you promote a site listed as being owned by you. Never, repeat never, list your own sites (in your "About" section) if you intend to Digg them - get somebody else to do it for you!
Finally, many social bookmarking sites offer the opportunity to become "friends". I suggest you always wait until you have communicated with someone - don't press the "friends" button without previous contact since many users see that as spam.
StumbleUpon adding a link
Related sites
- StumbleUpon review of "Project Backlink"
Here is my "discovery" of Hubpages's Project backlink - feel free to add your own review or give a thumbs up in your SU browser. - How To Increase Traffic To Your Hubpages!
I found one of our star hubbers, SunSeven's advice very useful. Her hub is clearly written and presented. - 50+ Social Bookmarking Sites
An exhausting (!) list of sites, many of which are probably not worth chasing. It does take a lot of organization and time to register and maintain your online profile. - How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites
Some very concise and useful tips here, even if some of the information is a little dated. - Toward a Better Digg: Social Bookmarking sites
Mainly concerns competitor to Digg, so Hubpages is not mentioned. While the article was written last year, some information is still relevant. - Top 30 Social Bookmarking Sites | eBizMBA
Interesting and recent listing of the most popular and best-ranked sites. - Social bookmarking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Standard fare from Wiki; did you realize that social bookmarking sites started as far back as 1996?
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
Hubpages and Google Analytics
The Massive Tracking Video Part 2: Hubpages
There are no losers (as long as you are careful)
Everyone benefits because you get extra traffic at the least, and depending on your social bookmarking type, extra SEO. Some people might extend the courtesy and add hubbers to their other social bookmarking friends.
Warning - this idea could harm your membership
Many social bookmarking sites impose a limit on the amount of times you can discover/link to one domain. If you link too many time you will get banned. Digg are particularly fussy - StumbleUpon only allow 10 links from your blog to the same domain. The crux of my proposal is to spread your links - agree to link with someone on Digg - for your next link list facebook, etc.
Of course I might benefit if I write a hub where people make a lot of comments...but it was my idea!
PJD
Note. Apologies for using hubpages's persona!
Ezine articles on Social Bookmarking
- Vital Steps to Launch a Social Bookmarking Campaign
As a business owner, you must not disregard the power of many online schemes. You never know, but most of the people on your target market group are already spending long hours online. If you still haven't started with this, you better act fast to know more about the vital steps towards a successful internet marketing launch. You still have a long way to go before you can master the craft, but as soon as you start taking interest on the things that matter, you will definitely reach your goal in due time. With so many definitions and terms that you have to start doing and familiarizing yourself with, one of the most essential tool in internet marketing is known as social bookmarking. To help you get a better grip of the concept, here are the essential things that you have to know about it. - 10 hours ago
- Social Bookmarking Sites
A brief overview of why it's important to consider social bookmarking sites as a contributing factor for increasing rankings, but also the importance of not neglecting other on-site and off-site factors. Social Bookmarking websites are fast becoming the weapon of choice for many who want to increase traffic through to their websites. - 17 hours ago
- An Insight - Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking networks are popular worldwide and people have started recognizing its benefits. If you are a business owner and want to benefit from the social bookmark avenues, explore it sooner. - 36 hours ago
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Comments
Hi Scott, I´ve digg your hub. But I never understand very well how those sites really work :/
At least I never got much traffic from them :( . I will follow this hub and see if I can reciprocate :)
Hi funride - I have Dugg your Portugal golf article and left comments on Digg and Hubpages. Thanks for the Dig and the friend add!
Best wishes,
Peter
I´m finally starting to see how those sites "should" work :D , thank you ;)
I´ve dugg your "Skype fraud" hub.
I hope many more hubbers come to this hub and do the same thing ;).
pjdscott, this is a good idea, but may run into problems if all everyone marks is Hubs. These sites can't tell if it's your Hubs or other people's you are marking, because they are all on one domain. For this to work, people need to post other web pages on other domains in a ratio of about 5:1 or even 10:1, otherwise everyone is risking being banned or having the HubPages domain banned.
These sites can detect when you have posted links like these to their bookmarks and are asking people to hit them, and most of them frown on it.
Perhaps we could discuss the strategy in the forums and work out something safe?
Good thought, though - we can definitely do more to support one another at these sites.
Also, just to be clear to your readers, you should probably spell out that when you say "thumbs up" is Stumbling, that's not true of the HubPages "thumbs up" - a Stumble bar with the thumbs on it is a plug-in to your browser, and not everyone has it. If you "thumbs up" a Hub using the thumb on the comment box header, that is purely internal to HubPages.
You need to hit "share it!" to access Stumbleupon.
Good thought, good job, lets workshop it in the forums where we can get some of the really savvy brains engaged in devising the best possible way to do this. I'll see you there!
Jenny's right--People do get banned.....and hubages can and has been banned from at least one of the social bookmarking sites because of this sort of thing. From their point of view it is spamming the site.
That said--have have already dugg your skype article and will friend you too:-) Think that mutual digging should be done very informally and carefully on Digg so as not to set off spam alerts.
Inspirepub - many thanks for your considered and detailed comment. I agree with most of what you say and can see that caution is needed. In my hub I discussed StumbleUpon and also mentioned Digg since I have experience of these sites. I suppose the danger is that everyone rushes to Stumble and get banned. However, you suggest that such sites can detect link requests - while they have alerts for link forums, I don't believe they have trackers on general forums such as those found in HubPages. Perhaps I'm wrong - in any event, I agree that we should discuss this on the forum. Incidentally, I have clarified the SU thumbs-up mechanism in my first picture - many thanks.
As you will see, I'm attempting to help the whole HubPages community (if you knew me, you would know I'm a fair person). I will deliberately avoid answering the next request posted for a reciprocal link since I've already got one - and am not greedy. Hopefully, someone will mention other social bookmarking sites and we will get a fair spread of linking.
Something which puzzles me is that HubPages rarely appears in listings of social bookmarking sites. Why is that? How established is HP? I would be very surprised if Google or even StumbleUpon penalizes HubPages since certain individuals might be seen to be spammers. Can I coin the phrase "Corporate Spammers"? And add that HubPages is certainly not corporate spamming, nor responsible for it. Perhaps Jason might give us his thoughts. See you on the forum!
robie2 - great to get your feedback. Likewise, I agree with your points so let's discuss them on the forum. PJD
pjdscott -
Thank you for this hub. I like the idea of working together as a team here on HP. Eventually I will figure this all out:-)
See you downstairs...
tDMg
LdsNana-AskMormon
LdsNana-AskMormon - many thanks for your contribution. In the interests of fairness, I hope someone else will post a message here and that you both offer to link from sites other than, say StumbleUpon or Digg (apparently, the latter have a stringent policy against persistent links to the same domain).
There are lots of other sites - anyone else want to help Hubpages and your own hub?
I agree, pjdscott. Supporting each other is great - the power of the masses is much greater to the strength of one. But I also agree with Inspirepub and robie2 that we should be careful not to get HP banned in our overzealousness.
The social bookmarking buttons are hidden in the Share It! button at the bottom of the hub, and maybe a lot of new hubbers don't know it's there. But perhaps it was hidden there for the exact purpose of preventing the spamming problem? I'm not sure. :)
pjd, This is all really confusing to me. I'm pretty knew to this whole idea and not really technically inclined. However, I do know that if I visit hubber's pages that visit mine, like yourself and press the thumbs up button you will get a higher score. And guess what else, I also figured out if I press one of the Google sites you will get paid for it and I will most likely find and interesting subject to write my next hub about. I'm clicking on one of yours as soon as I post this message. What would be great if everyone took the time to do that for each other. And, I only have dial-up internet, so it takes me a lot longer. You have a Google ad for a "one way link exchange" - I'm clicking now.
Karen, in response to your idea of clicking each others google ads to generate revenue; this is not a good idea, again for the good of the community. The term for what you are describing is click fraud and seeing as everyone on this site is earning money for the same google adsense account any penalties that befall the account will befall us all. Google moniters the amount of clicks that come from each IP address over time and if excessive amounts are coming from the same IP address regularly, google will impose a penalty on that account, which in this case would affect us all.
Sorry if this sounds pessimistic, but I do have the community’s best interests at heart.
Karen - dobsc400 has put it very simply - thanks for the thought/action but we must not click on AdSense unless genuinely thinking of buying a product or service. I do appreciate your response however.
My reciprocal hub idea suggests a one-off Stumble, Digg or whatever. It can't be systematic or organized in any form.
Thanks for the info pjd & dobc - makes sense.
Great tips and lots of great information in this hub.
Thanks for the Great tips, you have provided here..
I am going to comment again on this Hub (actually, I think I originally just gave it a thumbs up). Social networking and working the sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Propeller, etc. is very important. We cannot submit our own hubs to these sites (nor can you vote on them). Getting in a network of hubber friends, and also participating on these Web 2.0 sites to reach out to others there beyond HubPages will very much help your traffic and ranking over all. Great Hub, pjdscott!
Hi Peter, Whew! That's complicated yet comprehensive info. I'm going to refer to it after printing it out so I can follow some of your ideas and suggestions.
Question: I forget who, but a woman a short while ago, at HubPages, said she had managed to get approx. a quarter million "hits" and that appears to be climbing. She expressed great pride in this achievement, despite the fact that she reported "I'm not making [much or any] money." I'm confused. If you get that much traffic, that "traffic" is exposed to all the ads on your site. Why wouldn't you make a lot of money with the amount of traffic she reported? Helen (a.k.a. Creativita)
Many thanks for writing Creativita. Only Google AdSense operates a pay-per-click campaign and on HubPages, the payment rates are very low. In one month I don't even make enough from my Hubs to get a cup of coffee at a MacDonalds! It also depends upon your hub topic since some will attract AdWord businesses willing to pay more for PPC/PTC (see my PTC hub for a little more info).
Thanks for the Great idea... thats very creative... may i use on my web site?
These are all great ideas for making money online I just posted a new hub explaining how to make a ton of easy cash on the internet using linkbid script.
This may be a hub that I need to bookmark so I could very well read it again and again to grasp this entire social bookmarking thing. Thanks pjdscott. :)
zegran, linkbid and rippemaker, many thanks.
ripplemaker - since I wrote this hub, there has been a huge increase in the number of social bookmarking sites. While the concerns that some commentators made are true, I think we can adopt a system of promoting each other's sites with a little caution and not too much fear!
Great hub with lots of good information and a great idea. I'm on Stumbleupon [name = stumbletrains] and Digg [name = kwiklinks]
Would appreciate Stumbles/Diggs for my newest hub:
http://hubpages.com/hub/ChristmasTrainSets
I'm always glad to add new friends on these sites, and reciprocate Diggs/Stumbles.
Hi funwithtrains - Many thanks for your comment and links. I have befriended and subscribed to you at Stumble and added you to my Digg friends. As you already know I have really enjoyed your Christmas trains hub and commented!
pjdscott says:
2 years ago
Well, I suppose I will begin! I'm on:
StumbleUpon and Digg [pjdscott]. Would anybody be interested in posting my Onine Bank article? I'm already there:
http://digg.com/business_finance/Online_Banks_Inte
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/hubpages.com/hub/On
A Digg, Stumble and click through to the article would be greatly appreciated.
My thanks in advance,
Peter