SEO Services Yahoo Stores by Tom Chuong

The Way of Giving Links

Living in Florida, I’m fortunate to have many sunny days, lots of rain, and the occasional long tail of the hurricane. Since I moved here several years, I became somewhat of a amateur weather predictor. I was particularly interested in the prediction of the rain.

Using nothing more than the shifting of the winds, the rustling of the leaves on the trees, and the movements of the clouds I started to predict if and when the rain will come to our area.

It was clear that I needed a lot of practice because sometime I was always off by my a few hours or days.

Nevertheless, it was fun to see nature at work. And since nature always operates on certain predetermined factors, I was sure that I will one day I will predict the coming of the rain with some certainty.

Throughout my rain prediction training, I became aware of one constant factor. When the clouds are full of moisture and dark, it will usually rain. So I concluded that when the clouds have an abundance of moisture (water), it gives back to the earth willingly.

The rain made me think about the 8th verse of the Tao Te Ching (pronounced Dao De Jing). Here’s an excerpt:

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

With our websites, we’ve all worked hard to make it popular in the search engines, obtained a high Pagerank, and established ourselves as an authority on a topic. Essentially, we’ve invested a lot of time and money in our online endeavor.

And what I’m about to ask you may contradict with your own beliefs on giving.

As you’re reading this article, there are countless “newbies” looking for help in the form of advertising. They are not knowledgeable on search engine optimization, social media optimization, or any other form of online marketing. I have seen them wandered from website to website looking for free or quick fix to solve all of their marketing needs.

These “newbies” are good people and they mean no harm because they are merely trying to make money online. They only lack the guidance to make them even better people and this where you can help them. Remembered when you were once a “newbie” on the Internet.

Throughout your daily Internet routine, if you happened to come upon a newbie asking for your help, please help them. You can help them by giving away a free text link from your homepage or create an entirely new webpage with their product or services on it. Both of these examples will cost you nothing, and it will give you a feeling of self happiness.

As always, you can use your good judgment to determine if giving a text link away would have any negative consequences to you or your website. Think of something else if you don’t want to give away a free text link from your homepage.

You can be creative and give whatever you think will literally cost you nothing to give. In the example of the free text link, you could even add a nofollow attribute if you don’t trust the website yet.

After a month, check with this person that you’ve helped and see how they’re doing. Let them speak freely and offer your advice if you think that it could benefit them further.

In the end, you might make a new friend and set the foundation for this person to possibly help someone else in the future in a similar manner. Go now and give away a free text link.