In
world of Internet Marketing, and Web site promotion, nothing changes faster than parameters that rule good Search Engine rankings and placement.This has led to a developed new science in last few years, SEM (Search Engine Marketing). This new science, SEM, has been a boon to both Web Masters and merchants that maintain Web sites as a way to increase exposure and revenue for their products and/or services.
SEM has become a much sought after entity, with SEM specialists, who focus on optimization of a site, routinely adding linking campaign management to their overall repertoire of services. This has resulted in a large influx of Web sites focusing on linking campaigns and reciprocal linking as it has been established that good, solid reciprocal linking campaigns increased traffic and visitors to a site exponentially.
However, like with everything else online, idea of SEM and linking campaigns has spread like "wildfire", with sites seeking links seemingly endlessly. This has led to what can only be termed, "linking explosions", with many sites posting links to everything and anything in an effort to increase their Search Engine rankings and placements.
The actual attainment of effective linking campaigns, is a work oriented, tedious undertaking, with literally months spent developing a good campaign. While a good linking campaign does increase rankings overall, with Search Engines, question remains, "does it increase sales"? After all, consumers are ingredient that facilitates sale of a product/service in long run, not rankings or placement of a site. Questions about whether linking campaigns increase revenue for a site are coming into play now.
Recent data (courtesy: WebSideStory) has shown that consumers, now more than ever, are arriving at Web sites via "search features", not by direction to a Web site via another Web site link. The use of "search features" to arrive at a site has increased by almost six percent in past year. In addition, direct navigation by visitors to a Web site, has also increased from a year ago, by almost ten percent. In direct contrast, Web link "arrivals" of visitors has dropped in past year, by a somewhat staggering, twenty percent!
The World Wide Web quite obviously has now become more utilitarian to consumers, and linking campaigns, as a result, may become more ineffective as time goes on. Linking campaigns, by their very nature, promote "browsing" and time-consuming "visiting" of many sites, before product/item/service, is found by consumer. As Web progresses and consumers become increasingly discerning in their overall approach to Web, they are now going right to source, more often, via "search features" and direct navigation.
Accordingly, then, "digging around" on other sites, has diminished over past twelve months, and in all likelihood, will continue as a trend well into future, hampering effectiveness of linking campaigns overall. This trend reflects an international shift towards this method of finding information on Web, and is not localized whatsoever, crossing many demographic and geographic barriers.
It's really difficult to effectively pinpoint cause in this shift for consumers. However, sheer magnitude of linking campaign craze that is so prominent now, may account, at least in part, for shift in attitudes of consumers. Because of popularity of linking campaigns as a method of increasing rankings and placement, attaining "quality" links (those with a Page Rank of 5 or higher) has become more difficult for Web masters. In addition, sheer volume of linking requests to pages with a high ranking, has also increased, to point where higher ranked Web sites are inundated daily with linking requests, interfering with their ability to attend to their own business.
