Viral links are bad for your blog’s health

There, I’ve said it. Exactly what I’ve been thinking since I got involved with viral linking over a month ago. Earlier today I made the decision to remove myself entirely from the viral linking “chain letter” which is making its way around the blogosphere lately. Meaning I’ve decided not to actively promote it with other sites. If this blog still appears on different blogs viral lists I can’t do much about that. Why would I bow out of this link generation method? There are a few reasons that in and of themselves probably weren’t to much of a big deal, but taken as a whole I felt it best to get out. Ultimately I’m telling you all of this so that you might consider this viral linking from another perspective that you’ve not though about before.

Before I get into a great amount of detail as to why I’ll just run down the reasons real quick for those of you with short attention spans.

• Quality of links
• Maintenance of the list
• Horrible click thru rate
• I want to work on organic traffic

Quality of the links

I know nothing of SEO, but I do know that a great many of the links were coming from sources I didn’t care to be associated with. Not because they were bad, or morally corrupt but because there was no relationship beyond the link itself.

It’s said that in order to grow as a person we need to be around people who stretch us and force us to grow. That’s sort of the same principle I’m applying here. I’m going to work on individual relationships with those blogs and people I believe will not only help me to grow, but also benefit from being associated with me.

I also have a great concern over whether or not search engines might consider it to be a questionable practice. As I said before I’m considering “quitting” Google, but I’d really like for it to be on my own terms not because I did something for a few extra clicks a month.

Maintenance of the list

Simply put I was tired of keeping the list up to date. Removing those who hadn’t reciprocated my links, or adding those who had for the first time. Originally I had moved it to it’s own wordpress page and had been updating it every 3 or 4 days, but ultimately it became to much of a hassle.

Horrible click thru rate

I don’t believe the CTR justifies the work. I’m talking both incoming and outgoing traffic to and from viral links. For example up to today for the month of September I’ve gotten less than 35 clicks coming in to this blog. Outgoing clicks on viral listed sites has been less than 15. Compare that against Darren quoting me on Problogger which has gotten me 94 visits in the past month. As you can see the CTR for viral links is miserable.

In short the fact that I get more traffic from comments I make on other blogs than this blog being linked on a viral list speaks volumes to me. I’m willing to bet that if you did some research you’d probably find the same thing to be true on your blog as well.

I want to work on organic traffic

Above I mentioned that I am going to work on individual relationships. That’s part of what I mean by organic links. I’m throughly convinced that people are 100,000 times more likely to follow a link that is included as part of an actual meaningful post instead of simply lost amid a blob of other links. I simply don’t have the time or desire to sit here each week and create something truly original like dcr’s “Drunken Virals” posting. A viral link like that is surely more valuable than the ones most of us put up.

I’ve come to the realization that simply getting your name mentioned in a valid article is thousands of times more valuable than getting linked in a mass produced list hundreds of times.

There you have it. All of the reasons I am no longer participating in the viral link list. I am a little curious about if others have done the same thing as I have done…

1. What reason did you have for quitting it?
2. Has your trafffic increased or decreased since doing so?
3. Is there any reason you believe I’ve overlooked that should give me pause about separating myself from this project?

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