backcrap

This is about the third week since I “relaunched” disassociated.com in its new Wordpress casing. This is also about the third week since I started making a concerted effort to promote disassociated.com.

Although I’ve been blogging here for almost five years, about the only people who had linked here, up until a few weeks ago, were pretty much people I knew personally.

It would be fair to say “promotional” efforts here in the past had been sporadic and far and few between, which has, needless to say, been reflected in my web stats. And that was fine. I was just happy to make one post and then start thinking about the next one.

Needless to say also, since getting word around about disassociated.com in the last three weeks, my web stats are now making for some slightly different reading.

But with promotion surely comes prominence. And not of all it particularly welcome either. I’ve started receiving emails and comments, bordering on spam in my view, telling me how important backlinks are, together with “suggestions” for boosting my backlink count.

This will bring about all sorts of “benefits” I am told. Increased search engine rankings, better pageranks, blah, blah, blah.

And if I just send a cheque for X amount of dollars all my backlink wet dreams will come true.

And, yes, it’s true, I want to do more to promote disassociated, but I want to do so on my terms, and certainly not on the suggestion of spamy “advice” by way of my in-box or comments page.

I don’t know though, maybe I am too old skool for today’s internet. When I first started teaching myself web design in 1997, I read a little about Tim Berners-Lee, the person considered the creator of the World Wide Web. In particular, it was his reason for creating this… “monster”, that has always remained in my mind.

In 1989 he invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory.

Key words: Information sharing.

But if you want to “share” information, that is links, in 2007, you have to pay for the privilege it seems. A post at the blog of the blogger known as Kumiko is a case in point.

I sell links. I don’t give them away unless it’s to something worthwhile!

While the quotation may have been tongue-in-cheek (but then again, maybe not, that’s a dedicated money making blog after all! ;), there’s no denying backlinks have become a precious commodity.

Especially when people (not to be named) are sending out unsolicited messages, asking for money, to supply them!

Sure, it would be great to make some money out of this. I love writing, so why not? But I doubt artificially inflating my backlink count is going to achieve this aim.

Look at the blogs of say Jeffrey Zeldman, Greg Storey, Heather B. Armstrong or hell, even Jason Kottke, and what do you see?

Quality content. Pleasing layouts. Some information sharing even. That’s how these blogs have reached their respective, elevated, places in the blogosphere. “Content is king” as they say. And that’s the way to go.

Of course I don’t expect the unsolicited “cash for backlinks” offers to cease anytime soon, but what’s wrong with living in hope?!