Meta-Sites and You
One of the interesting developments online has been the proliferation of meta-sites; sites that provide access to a wide number of sites. Portal sites, such as Yahoo and MSN, are the obvious leaders in these areas. They allow users to catch up with news, check their mail and other services, and provide links to other sites. However, there are also sites that are basically just link farms. Either way, they can be of use to you.
Very quickly: A straight link farm (a site that does nothing but provide links to other sites, and has little original content in and of itself) will work against you when it comes to search engines. What I’m referring to here is a site that has a lot of links, but because that is what the site was set up for. For example, a web ring.
From an SEO perspective, these sites are great. Not only do they provide back links, but they also provide a steady stream of customers. The stream of customers are nice in and of themselves; however, the various search engines like to see that your sites are popular, and reward you with placing you higher in the rankings. The way that they measure this popularity is by watching how many hits your site gets, and how often people link back to it. Ergo a portal helps your rating by increasing the number of hits.
However, the major problem with them is that they have the possibility of acting against you. You should always keep an eye on which sites link back to you, and check out sites that seem a bit curious. (Of course, you should be checking to see which sites are linking back to yours anyway, if for no other reason than to look for potential partners and advertisers.) Some sites will take your site off theirs if you ask, so don’t be afraid to ask them. If they don’t, you can always ask their internet service provider, especially if the site is obviously a problem site.
There are a few major problems with meta-sites. The first is that they cost a lot in order to advertise on. Although they are definitely worth it, the cost may prove prohibitive even for a lesser known site. The other problem is that they can create a spike of traffic rather than a stream of traffic; search engines tend to dislike traffic spikes and penalize sites that experience them (they tend to frown on anything that looks like it is trying to manipulate the search rankings), Obviously, you should limit how many portals your site shows up on, but you should be on at least one or two.
That said, taking advantage of a portal can be worth the price. The increase in traffic can be worth it; the more traffic your site gets, the more customers you get, and portals definitely drive traffic to sites. Your biggest problem will be keeping those customers; if you can keep that traffic, and build on it, your business will do great.