Linking Strategies: Mining Prospects, Part 2.

The last thing you want to do is set up a reciprocal link with a site on Google's "bad neighborhood" list. A one way incoming link from one of these sites won't hurt you, but why waste your time getting a link that won't be seen by real people and will probably disappear in a few short months.

Unfortunately, Google doesn't stamp "bad neighborhood" across their virtual forehead, so you'll have to do some research in order to protect yourself.

First, visit the site. Does it look professional? Does it have real content? Does it have PageRank? These are all pluses.

Then look for the tell tale signs of unacceptable optimization techniques. Do you see numerous links below the copyright information? Or below a large amount of white (unused) space? If so, do these links go to the same page, just using different keywords? If you drag your mouse cursor from the top down, does text show up that was previously hidden? When you hover your mouse cursor over one of the images, does a jumble of keywords display as the Title or Alt text?

If the site uses any of the unacceptable techniques listed above, don't waste any more of your time, move on to the next site on your list.

Otherwise, using Google, search for the site name ("Bergies Zoo") using quotes, and see what others are saying about it. Run a site search on the domain name, ("site:bergieszoo.net") and find out how many pages are indexed. If they have hundreds of pages indexed, check fifty to a hundred or so of the entries. Are the pages on topic? Visit one or two of the pages, especially if the page seems off topic.

(I recently discovered a site that looked like a legitimate web design company site, but when I ran the site search, I found hundreds of spam pages: very little content and off topic, apparently created to present Google AdSense. Needless to say, I won't be adding a link to that site.)

Now, if you think the site looks appealing and find it has useful content, and your research shows good comments, or at least nothing bad said about the site, it's time to submit your site.