March 2008

Don't Be Another Amateur Radio Link Farm!

If one is not careful, it's very easy to become a "link farm" in the Amateur Radio website business. You've seen them before, Amateur Radio websites that are not much more than a collection of links to other websites. After all, putting up links to other web sites is a lot easier than trying to come up with original content that might keep visitors at your site.

And let's not forget the big favor you're doing for those other sites. They say that "link popularity" is one of the things the major search engines assess when assigning page rank. Think for a moment, of how many Amateur Radio websites that you've visited that have a link to the ARRL on it. More than a few! All of these links pointing to the ARRL website makes them look pretty juicy in the eyes of Google.

Does the ARRL return the favor by providing links back to those generous websites. I don't think so. The ARRL is a business. They have to pay for web promotion like any other business. Unless, of course, they can get people to help them out for free.

There are many places to get free content for your website, if you can't come up with your own. One way is to solicit articles from your visitors. Another way is to borrow articles from the many "free ezine article" websites. Just search for "free web content" or "free ezine articles".

Another way is to get copyright-free material from federal government websites like the FCC, Federal Trade Commission, Social Security Administration, or NASA, just to name a few. By the way, NASA has tons of great space photographs just waiting for you to copy and place on your website. These photos are in the public domain. You helped pay for them, after all!

Back to the links. My suggestion is to not provide a link to any site that doesn't provide a link back to you. Website promotion is too hard. By all means exchange links with other Amateur Radio websites, but don't be a link farm.

Now, you might think you're doing a big favor to your ham buddies around the country by making it easier for them to find ham-related websites. There's no doubt about that! You're making it real easy. But back to what I said above. Website promotion is hard.

Why make an effort to get people to come to your website if, as soon as they get there, you're just going to send them elsewhere? If they were smart enough to get a ham license, they're smart enough to use a search engine.

73,

WF5TX