We are all hungry for inbound links these days and even more so since the introduction of nofollow which I personally hate as it did not solve a bit the problem of comment spam it was supposed to solve but had a detrimental effect on social networks and blogsphere in particular. It turned all of us bloggers into a particularly greedy bunch. Before placing a link we started to think of how much we would lose if it’s an open link without nofollow. Although my attempt to mock the whole nofollow concept by inventing a rel=follow attribute proved to be popular enough it nevertheless is too limited to change the picture in any significant way. The only solution to this seems to be generosity. But generosity itself isn’t enough in a world governed by the principle of self-interest. Attempts to persuade an average webmaster that outgoing links from his/her site are beneficial since eventually they will bring a hub status to the linking resource were not too convincing. It needed more than just empty promises of some benefits in the future. Linking should be mutually beneficial for both the linking site and the linked one and more these benefits must be obvious and immediate. For quite some time I’ve been thinking about a strategy that would realize these objectives and finally I think I came up with one.
Initially the idea was triggered by observing rather old-fashioned SEO attempts to pull out their own sites from Search Engine results using site: operator. I am sure you are all familiar with this dumb trick and if not just follow this link to see what it does. You see? This is an example of pure greed and selfishness. You pull out your own site and only your own site. Now let’s try a different search this time using not site: but link: operator (example). These are URLs of resources linking to lzzr.com. And what’s the point, you might ask? Surely if you are greedy it does not make any sense to promote someone else’s URL but if you are clever you’ll quickly realize that it’s in your own best interests to have inbound links from strong pages. Think about the amount of time and effort (and very often money) an average SEO spends on acquiring links from pages with good Page Rank. Now, the same goal can be achieved simply by making some effort promoting pages that already have natural links to you! They are already out there, just give them some link love. Of course this way you push up resources that are not owned or operated by you and hence you loose something but the gain which in my opinion outweighs the hypothetical loss you may suffer is that all of those pages link back to you!
From strictly SEO point of view you create a perfect 3-way linking structure where Search Engine Results Page (SERP) serves as an intermediary between you and pages linking to you. In other words you link to results page and results page links to a number of sites each having a link back to you. This 3-way linking is known to be much more effective than a usual reciprocal linking and is not punishable like the outdated link farm method. On a side note: I strongly insist that the structure I just described can not be considered search engine spamming as it makes a perfect sense from user’s point of view. Let me explain: I as a webmaster certainly hold a pretty high opinion about myself and my website. Equally I should value those who appreciated my website by placing a link to it. Thus promoting websites linking to you is just a simple sign of respect and appreciation. I also assume that sites linking to my content are relevant to this content hence linking to them enhances user experience!
However the potential of this structure is limited since search engines are rarely indexing their own pages (Google results page will not be indexed and processed by Google but Netscape results page for example will be seen in Google) and even if they did these result pages are still orphan i. e. have no internal links coming from within the search engine itself. A perfect solution would be to have a page like this to be a part of your own resource – an objective that was horribly difficult to achieve until very recently in purely technical terms.
Now here is where Web 2.0 comes to the rescue. Let’s check this example from Google BlogSearch (similarly you can pull your results from Technorati but Technorati is lame). True it only displays links from blogs but look at the bottom of the Google page – you see it can be pulled out as Feed! Now, do I need to continue? Almost every single Web 2.0 resource or service comes with a built-in ability to pull and display feeds. Now all you need to do to promote blogs linking to you is to set up such feeds at every possible place and watch how pages linking to you grow in reputation and PageRank pushing up your own resource on the way.
This is exactly what I do for my blog. The easiest way is to create Yahoo Pipes page combining Google and Technorati feeds. But the easiest doesn’t mean the best since Yahoo Pipes are notoriously slow and are usually badly indexed by Google. Surely I must have more SEO Tricks up my sleeve. I obviously keep and maintain LZZR accounts on all major social networking services to beef up both LZZR online presence and exposure which is a bon ton thing to do these days. At every opportunity I include a feed with links to sites linking to LZZR.com. Of course different services have different options and consequently different SEO efficiency. On major blog systems such as Blogger, MSN Live, WordPress.com etc. you are only allowed to display a limited number of feed entries in your external feeds and as a result sites that are at the top of Google Blog Search and the most recent Technorati entries will be favoured. In addition these link blocks are set up as separate page areas different from content and links due to their small number will have a substantial link churn. Not so good but at least something. Squidoo is a better place as they allow including a substantially large number of feed entries and besides they are displayed within the main content area of the page. But the best opportunities can be realised at Tumblr and Jaiku blog services. These two are really godsend as each new feed entry in those systems is published as a separate blog posting thus permanently affixing each link. Another interesting option is to propagate you back links feed by setting up special groups at various services like Bumpzee or the same Squidoo.
Note: I purposly avoided placing such link feed blocks on lzzr.com itself to prevent Link Farm structure.
So here is the deal: you link to any page at LZZR.com and get a bunch of backlinks to your site from places I manage and be sure do my best to promote. Your site must be a blog and it should be already indexed by Technorati and Google. I suggest you write a blog post about this very idea and link back to this very article rather than to the root. This will be more beneficial to you as the article itself already contains a bunch of outgoing links to places where I set up link feeds. However if you don’t want to link direct to the article any link to any page within lzzr.com will do including a root link. I became so excited about this idea that I even designed some buttons for the occasion. I think they visually represent the idea of LZZR linking where a LZZR link reflects from an intermediary.
Feel free to copy them and don’t be afraid of hotlinking as hotlinking is good!
Now if you are still thinking that this whole idea is just a shameless self-promotion – go back to the beginning and read again. I am sure you’ll find a rational core in all this. There is a good deal of self-interest in all this of course. I get inbound links from you. But at the same time you get a number of links pointing to you in return and this number is going to grow for as long as I’ll be finding new places to insert my link feed into. I will also be promoting pages with back links by all means available as this is in my own best interest. Thus there comes a perfect win-win combination!
PS:
Of course the temptation to copyright this idea and call it LZZR linkingTM is huge but in the spirit of true generosity I will refrain from doing so. You are free to replicate this structure for your site as this would be a really effective way to fight the nofollow greed. The only thing I would object to is if you decide to pass this idea as yours without proper attribution in a form of a backlink to this article 
. And should it be mentioned that linking back is in your best interests anyway… It’s good to link LZZR.com!
14 Comments
I like how you said “Technocrati is lame” when it’s how I found this post.
I am fairly new at blogging. I have been trying like heck to get my technorati rank and authority up and promote incoming traffic to my blog. I have been trying everything I can possibly think of. I really appreciate you putting everything in plain english. Any help you could provide would be appreciated. I printed off your posts and am taking the time to read and will try to incorporate your ideas into my blog. Hopefully it will work for me.
You can visit me if you like and leave suggestions please.
http://thehub.yesdebtfree.org
would appreciate any input you have to offer.
jackie,
Thanks for nice words
I can see how backlinks to you are already propagating through the system!
As far as your blog there are two things that are apparent even at first glance:
1) You need to optimize your WordPress install at least with mod rewrite and Search Engine Friendly URLs and changing template from Kubrick to something more optimized would help too
2) You should extend your presence in various online communities and social networks
Certainly it will give you a significant boost in traffic and ranking
Cool dude .this stuff was worth the time to read it.
Keep posting such wonderful stuffs
It works!
After about 48 hours since I first posted this idea there is over a dozen of linkers and the number is steadily growing. It’s not that I was not sure about the whole idea but it’s nice to see how something that was designed at first as a proof of concept turns into a clockwork linking machine!
Now it is possible to judge the system response and it proved to be faster than I expected. An average response time is only about 3-5 hours – lightning fast. And it’s also 100% reliable. Well not really I actually know of one site that for one simple reason did not receive a backlink. It’s Anthology of Ideas. It’s a wonderful site and the reason it did not get included in both Technorati and Google is because Aaron (the author) for some obscure reason decided to put the evil nofollow into the link. So we blame it all on the evil nofollow but the site goes with a direct link from here and a Digg and Del.icio.us bookmark as a generous compensation from me. Otherwise this site is really nice.
To avoid possible disappointments – for this system to work there are two things needed:
1) Your site must be a blog
2) Your site should be already indexed well in Technorati and Google BlogSearch
3) Link to LZZR.com should be without any evil nofollow
Some of you have took too close to your hearts my remark about Technorati (“Technorati is lame“) but what can I do if it really is? Just look how Tumbler can not chew Technorati outgoing feeds and you’ll have to agree.
I also think I should remark on this:
Firs of all thanks for the positive reaction! I really appreciate this. But secondly I just have to correct you: there are much more than just two backlinks you’ve got! There are four places I set up which I consider to be good for the purpose as they display all links: Tumblr and Jaiku, Squidoo and Bumpzee (in no particular order). And places where the most recent/top backlinks are displayed as a navigation sideblock like Blogger are countless. I honestly lost count of them which is indeed really good since it makes the whole structure look genuinely natural.
I am also glad that you find this repeatable and once again you are more than welcome to reproduce such system for your own blog. It would be nice if you let me know if you set up a system like this so I can join in. Also, please do care to let me know if you find new web 2.0 places where you can pull backlinks feeds or display them!
PS Overall it is a wonderful social networking experience as it takes you out of a shell and urges you to visit new and exciting blogs you would have never known about otherwise. Some of the new acquaintances I acquired during these two days became my new friends on MBL and other social systems.
Good luck sorting all this out!
I had a question about using Tumblr and the like — does this create issues with duplicate content downgrades from the search engines?
in reply to Glenn Abel
I don’t think it should.
Entries are published as exserpts not as full text and in addition to this they are coming from so many different sources that there should be no question of lowernig ranks of linking sites this way. If it was so it would have been too easy to SEDD your competitor just by subscribing to his/her feeds on systems like Tumblr or Jaiku.
It’s true that there might be a problem of significant similarity between the content of these two for example but the fact that the systems themselves are rather different in structure and design should be a sufficient warranty against dup checks.
And finaly quite a number of distinguished SEOs consider duplicate content penalties being just another SEO myth.
I love the elegant thinking contained in this idea.
just thought id let you know that I’ve put a short’review’ on my lowly blog. I doubt it’ll make any difference to your stats – but I had to say something about your approach.
Thank you David!
Although the whole LZZR.com project is not about hiding my real agenda and on contrary I am constantly trying to make it more and more explicit I am indeed astonished by how sharp and how precise your small article is. You managed to express in just a few words not only the LZZR Linking idea but the overall style and direction I am taking my project to.
It is indeed about
to a very large extent.
I am particularly pleased that you cracked the implicit direction I follow
and rightly enough LZZR.com aims at demystification (if you allow me the Marxist reading of the term) of the Web 2.0 for an average web user (a keyboard proletarian so to speak
). Although I personally see lzzr.com as leaning more towared anarchism 
And in the same spirit – I really liked this particular spark:
– brilliant!
Well thank you too… for the encouragement – and for reaffirming that the dialectic isn’t so much obsolete as alive and well and virtually rehabilitated.
I can feel an Internationale coming on. excuse me…
Nice write-up. Will definitely take up your suggestions and work on it.
Why not. Always worth a shot:
Linking to lzzr.com – Scam or Great Idea?
Hey,
I just posted a new blog entry about this and linking to you. I reckon this might just work. In the worst it is definitely worth a try.
Monika
Have you checked my post? I have written about your LZZR linking.
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