All of us yearn for just and fair treatment. Unfortunately fair is not always the case on the internet business. This is very true to linking. How many websites do you know that don’t play the internet game fairly? When you have agreed to exchange links, they trick you into believing they have linked to your website when in fact, they haven’t.

Identify Link Theft

This trick is what webmasters call the link theft. But not all lost links should be thrown out to link theft. There are cases when your website’s link is lost in a particular page because of online accidents. It is a fact, however, that most cases of lost links or not beneficial links are due to link theft. So in all ways, learn how to avoid link theft. Here are some tips to identify whether or not a particular website is a link thief and what to do to avoid it:

Request For Your Link’s URL Location

Before you link to a particular site requesting link from your website, ask them first about your link’s URL location. You have to do this because some websites forget (or intentionally forget) to give your website a link back if you have already given them a link to their website.
  • Link Robbers Can Deceive
Check whether your link on a particular web page is spiderable or not. This is because some websites trick you into believing your link is already live but in fact it’s not working right. You can do this by clicking on “View Source Code” of the page that carries your website’s link. Check whether your link follows th
e standard text link. The standard text link is created using this format:

a href=”http://www.yourdomainname.com/” target=”_blank>Anchor Text

Some format like the one below is not spiderable by the search engines.

onclick="javascript:newWindow('http://www.yourdomain.com.’)”>Anchor Text
  • Check If The Link Will Redirect
How can you check whether your link will just redirect to the same website when clicked? Try pointing your mouse’s cursor on your link and check the text that appears on the status bar of your web browser. What should appear on the status bar is the url of your website on this format:

http://www.yoursite.com

Format like the one below means the link will redirect to the same website:

http://www.sitedomain.com/page.html”
  • Dynamically Generated Link Pages
Avoid linking on a dynamically generated link page. How will you identify a dynamically generated link page? If it looks like this, then it’s a dynamically generated link page. The search engines wont be able to read pages like this.

http://www.domainname.com/links/index.php?&brbf=aw

There are a number of thieves online. Don’t be one of them and don’t be a victim of any of them. Guard the benefits of your links by following these tips and ensure a fair internet linking game!

This article is written by nPresence, an online web marketing agency that specializes in Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click advertising, Content Management Systems, Web Design, Conversion Tracking and Analysis. For all your all your web marketing needs, please see http://www.npresence.net