Quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Blue
Very nice thread Morgan 
I have a question, I'm not a novice though, but with freesites I'm willing to admit a little lack of knowledge at times as it's not my specialty.
My question is, how many link lists should you submit to? I have a working theory that submitting to a lot of Link Lists is a bad thing. My theory basically follows that if you duplicate a freesite to accomodate 100 Link Lists, that google and other engines will nail you because of their duplicate page penalty.
The smaller Link Lists will also barely send you a trickle of traffic, which also makes me wonder if its a productive endeavor. Is building and designing pages for say 12 Big LinkLists and gearing it towards SE traffic a better idea? Or should you submit to as many places possible?
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Excellent questions, and I do thank you, Mr. Blue.
First off - unless I have misunderstood you - you do not "duplicate" a freesite. You'd make one site with an index page. The linkbacks on this index page would go to the big linksites. You'll get most of your traffic from them and from your SE optimization. In fact, in most cases, you'll get *all* of your traffic that way.
Once upon a time, I made "doorway" pages on which I put tables of linkbacks to smaller linksites. Carefully watching my stats showed me that I got little or no traffic that way. It was a waste of time. (See "note," though.)
The only exceptions might be an "enter.html" page for niche specific linksites and toplists.
Not all small linksites *stay* small linksites, though. Some are in the hands of knowledgeable webmasters and will grow. If you want to play a hunch that a group of smaller linksites might turn into bigger linksites, make a doorway page with a table of linkbacks for them and get in on the ground floor. You can even help them grow, should you be of a mind to, by occasionally putting their linkback button on your index page. Few things make a linkmaster's heart sing like seeing their linkback button in amongst the big kids.
Note: one of the linkback buttons that is now on my index page permanently started out as a "doorway page" linkback....because I thought the site was pretty and the webmaster had worked his/her ass off on it. As it turned out, I got a lot of traffic from them. I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't taken a shot on them with a doorway page.
However, always remember that you're doing this to make money.
Submitting, like most other things, follows the "do everything" philosophy. First off, try doorway pages and pay attention to your stats. Find out if you're getting traffic from the smaller linksites and adjust the pages accordingly. Pare them down, in other words. See if you can end up with just a doorway or two that actually sends traffic. Always put the "big linksites" on the index.html page. However, use actual words for your doorway pages, such as enter.html, entrance.html, keyword.html, keyword-keyword.html...NOT index43.html. That's guaranteed to piss off the linkmaster of even the tiniest site.
Since we're discussing submitting...I just thought of something else. Some linksites want their big pics alone, some allow them on .html pages. If you do a doorway that allows pics on .html pages, WITHIN THE SAME FOLDER, make a separate main page and gallery pages, named with keywords. Index could lead to a main page that leads to galleries with pics alone; the doorway page could lead to a main page that leads to gallery pages with pics on .html pages with a banner or text link. That's a lot of bang for the buck for the same 20 pics.