Those with the most votes WIN!!!!
Like me, you’re probably sick of seeing (and hearing) all those stupid campaign advertisements promising this, supporting that, attacking this, exposing that. You can’t believe anything you hear…which is why I think it ought to be against the law to lie or take something out of context during the campaign process…but enough of that. I’ll save that soapbox for another time.
So what do votes on the Internet mean? Why is it important? And how do you get votes?
Quite simply…votes on the Internet are links from other sites and the reason you need votes (or links) from other sites is that the search engines will determine the value of your website based on the number of votes (or links) your website gets. The more votes or links your website has, the more value it is perceived to have. For instance, if you have two sites about Interior Decorating, one has 50 different websites linking to the website, the other has 10 (everything else being equal) the one with the most websites linking to it will rank higher. So in this case you need to know that MORE is better.
So how do you get votes, I mean, links to your site? There are many different ways–
One is to get reciprocal links where you contact other website webmasters and agree to trade links with one another. Some sites even have automatic reciprocal link programs where you add a link to your website and automatically get a link in their directory. Women’s Work has an automatic reciprocal link program so if you’re interested in collecting votes, make sure you submit your link to our directory. Your listing will be reviewed (to filter out any offensive websites), and added to our directory usually within 24-48 hours.
Another way to get links is to post messages on forums. Many forums allow a signature file (the 1-2 lines of information describing you and/or your business at the end of a post) with a link back to your site. The downside of many forums, however, is that many are dynamically generated and do not get spidered by the search engines. If you see lots of numbers and IDs in the URL, it is probably dynamically generated and although it won’t help with votes it may help with traffic if it’s a popular forum.
Still, another great way to get votes or links to your website is to make a comment to a blog post. Most blogs allow visitors to make comments to a post and is a great opportunity for you to add a link to your site after you’ve made a thoughtful post (in your signature file). Search engine spiders LOVE blogs and popular blogs will get spidered a couple times a day… that means the new blog vote to your website is nearly instantaneous.
Which brings us to the critical DOs and DON’Ts section (just like the (in)famous Glamour magazine column .-) )…
DON’T spam…in most cases people are reviewing posts to directories, to forums, to blogs. Anything resembling spam will be deleted and could get you banned from the site.
DO add informative content. Understand, this is a service that these websites are providing to you. You benefit. Your website benefits. You get votes. And if your comments are really good, and your website is valued, you may even get listed on a site’s Blog Roll which means lots and lots of votes…but more about that at a later time.
So get out and start campaigning…but keep it on the up and up!
Susan of Women’s Work
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