7 Top Ways to Avoid Link Theft

7 Top Ways to Avoid Link Theft Ifyou have a link directory on a website, how do you stop link theft bysites that don't link back, or trick you into thinking they do ?

Whetherlink theft is anything to get concerned about depends on how many linksyour website has, the quality of those links (Google Page Rank) and howmany of those links you lose. Search Engine Ranking is certainlysomething that's becoming more dependent upon the links to your website.

Youmight be forgiven for thinking that when a website no longer links backto you, that it was an accident your link was removed from the linkdirectory. Of course accidents happen as I know from using some linkmanager software. Just one click in the wrong box and a website linkdisappears the next time you update your link directory. But the reallink thieves are those people that use methods to rob you of a link.

Here's 7 Top Ways Link Thieves work and how you can avoid being their next victim.

Ifa website asks you to exchange links, don't link to them until theyhave given you the URL location of your link in their link directory.If you link to them first they may forget to add your link.
Visuallyinspect your link by visiting the website page your link has beenplaced on. In your web browser, view the source code of the page. InInternet Explorer go to View then Source and this will open up yourdefault text editor.

Using the text editor search on the pagefor your website domain and ensure when you find it that the link is astandard text link of the form :
<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/" target="_blank">Link Title</a>.

The target="_blank" just launches a new browser window when the link is clicked.
The link should have no JavaScript code like :
<onclick="javascript:newWindow('http://www.yourdomain.com')">Link Title.

Links like this JavaScript one can be made to look visually identical when viewed in a web page browser, but to a search engine it's as if this link is not there.Whilst a visual inspection to catch this form of theft is always thebest, you can catch some, but not all of these types of links by usingreciprocal link manager checking software.
Check thatyour link on the other web sites page is not being put through aredirect. By hovering your mouse over the link, check what link textappears in the status bar of your web browser.

If your link appears as :
"http://www.theirdomain.com/page.html" or
"http://www.theirdomain.com/redirect.asp?id=2273" and not
"http://www.yourdomain.com"
Then your link is on a redirect.

Any form of link that has theirdomain and not yourdomain in the linkURL is only of benefit to the other site owner and not you. Links likethis point to their domain and not yours which gives the other site thelink benefit in the eyes of the search engines.

Don't link to this site if you want some search engine benefit from the link.
If you just want traffic from visitors clicking on the link, that's the only benefit you'll get.
Ifyou want to get search engine link benefit, don't link to web sitesthat have dynamically generated link pages. If your link is on adynamically generated link page the URL of that page could be somethinglike :

"http://www.theirdomain.com/links/index.php?&lk=5".

The fact that the URL has a ? or & in the URL means that most search engines will never read that page, so they will never see the link back to your site.
Use the Google Toolbar Page Rank Tool to check the PR of the page your link is on.
If the PR is 0 but the PR of the home page is much better, this couldmean either the link directory is new ( not likely if it has a lot oflinks ) or there could be something about the page which is preventingGoogle from reaching it.

Using your web browser view the pagecode as in 2 above and check for the robots meta tag at the top of thepage between the <head> and </head> tags.

If it says :
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> or
<meta name="robots" content="all">
then all is OK.

If the tag says :
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> or
<meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow"> or
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> or
<meta name="robots" content="none">

Then this page is not being given full access to the search engines.
Do not link to this sort of page.
Ifthe robots meta tag you checked is OK but you still suspect a problemwith a low PR then you should check the sites robots.txt file. To dothis type the main URL of the site into a web browser but addrobots.txt for example: "http://www.domainyourlinkingto.com/robots.txt"

The robots.txt file is read by the search engines and it tells it thedirectory and files it can access. A simple robots.txt file might looksomething like:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /forms
Disallow: /contact.html

If the URL of the page you were linking to was :
"http://www.domainyourlinkingto.com/dir/web-design.html"

Then you would want to be sure that in the robots.txt file you should NOT see :

Disallow: /dir
Disallow: /dir/web-design.html

Thisis telling the search engine robot not to index or follow the links inthe link directory called dir and to ignore the links pageweb-design.html.

And you should not see :
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

If you see :
User-agent: *
Disallow:

Then that's OK.

All sounds a bit complicated I know, but there is no easier way toexplain this sort of thing. Some reciprocal link manager checkingsoftware will also detect the incorrect use of the meta robots tag andalso check the robots text file.

However some link managersoftware I have experienced, incorrectly reported a link page asblocked by the robots text file because it read "Disallow:" asprohibiting the search engine when in fact it means allow (see above).It is "Disallow: /" that would tell the search engine not to index thesite.
Once you've completed your link exchange and donethe checks to ensure you're not being cheated you must then check yourlinks at regular intervals. Once you have more than about 50 links youwill soon find link checking becomes a time consuming process. It's farbetter to build your link directory using some form of link managersoftware that will automatically check your links at intervals youspecify.

To help you in making the right choices about setting up a link directory read my article "10 Mistakes to Avoid When Setting Up a Link Directory" which you can find at Webpageaddons.com

Of course not all link theft is intentional, sometimes it's just thewebmaster not knowing that the way he has set up his link directorywill not provide search engine link benefit to anyone that links tothem.

However some link theft is intentional, the webmaster knowsexactly what they are doing and by following this advice you can avoidbeing their next victim.

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