1. skellie

   Hi all, just wondering… would presenting links in that way (un-linked to words) negatively influence the way search engines perceive the validity of your site? I’m more than willing to be the test-case for this, but I’m hoping someone with more knowledge of SEO than I can help out with an answer.

   Sep 1st, 2007

2. Michael from Pro Blog Design

   I was wondering the same thing Skellie. It certainly won’t give the sites you link to any credit worth talking about (They’d want good anchor text), and I’m not sure if they’d see that as a spammy technique. I think it would definitely seem suspicious, but would they do anything about it?

   The lack of content around the links would be another factor (Natural links would have some sort of description of the links). It does seem a little dodgy to me.

   I’ll ask some actual SEOs what they think.

   From a user perspective though, I don’t really like it. I tried to hover on each of them so I could at least see the URLs, but even that wasn’t helpful, and I got fed up. Sorry.

   I didn’t click any of them I’m afraid. I like to have a link in context (like the ted.com link. There are some fantastic Ted videos, but I’d love to know a little more about the one you’ve picked before I go and download it).

   Sep 2nd, 2007

3. skellie

   Hi Michael, thanks for the useful feedback. I try to use this blog as a testing ground for new ways of doing things and while sometimes they work well, other times they don’t. Sometimes there is a reason why things haven’t been done before, I guess!

   Here are the links in a more usable format for you:

   How to Disagree and Persuade Without Offending
   How to Write a Book: The Short, Honest Truth
   Getting Things Done TiddlyWiki
   100 Websites You Should Know and Use
   Jakob Nielson on Web Usability
   Creative Thinking Hacks
   The Tumblr Radar
   Minimalism Isn’t so Minimal

   Thanks again, Michael — I’ll never know whether something works or not if people don’t tell me, so I appreciate it. Hope you like some of the links above.

   Sep 2nd, 2007

4. Michael from Pro Blog Design

   Thanks Skellie - Much nicer now! I’ll be clicking a few tomorrow (It’s 2am at the minute. Starting to get tired now… xD )

   Sep 2nd, 2007

5. Miguel Vera

   I’m with Michael, though I must add that you’ve created an interesting experiment. For some reason I didn’t want to click on any of the links either, but after you matched a title to them it felt like the right way. Don’t mess with my mind Skellie

   Sep 2nd, 2007

6. Ankesh Kothari

   Thanks Skellie for experimenting and trying something creative.

   Disclosure: I don’t cater to search engines and am a self proclaimed seo-clutz. But I don’t think this experiment works well either. And its sometime Michael addresses in his comment.

   Clicking on dots… isn’t a good idea.

   A better idea may have been linking using numbers. Or coloured boxes.

   Maybe something like this?
   http://www.sleeptrip.com/300loveletters/2.html
   (Warning: you may end up spending hours on that website if, like me, you like crazy creativity…)

   Sep 2nd, 2007

7. skellie

   @ Miguel: Don’t worry, I won’t mess with your mind again

   @ Ankesh: Michael from Pro Blog Design actually went to the trouble of asking about this method on an SEO forum. Apparently there’s a risk search engines would consider them ‘hidden links’ and penalize the site.

   Now, I only get about 4% of my traffic from search engines (also completely disinterested in SEO) so it wouldn’t be a big deal, but in some ways I’m glad I did this experiment to test out this method on a blog that really doesn’t depend on search results.

   Thanks for that link. I’m thinking using small images might be a more usable and prettier alternative, which would still retain that element of surprise and randomness I was going for.

   A question for everyone: if the links had been small, easy to click images, would you have explored them not knowing what was at the other end? Or do you prefer to always know what you’re clicking, even if from a trusted source?

   Sep 3rd, 2007

8. Maki

   Good, clean anchor text is doing a service to those you link to and any other sort of linking is really unnecessary, in my opinion.

   If you really believe in a website and can recommend them fully, you should want to help them rank.. so others can find their content or service as well.

   While the dots may be intriguing, they aren’t big on usability and may even be quite irritating (which is the case for me).

   Sep 3rd, 2007

9. skellie

   I agree Maki… I think this was definitely a case of me being too experimental for my own good ;). The anchor text is indeed another point for me to consider.

   Sep 3rd, 2007

10. Mohsin | Blogging Bits

    Skellie, I have to say that this approach can be dangerous for you. You may not care about search engines right now because they are not sending you enough traffic, but you might care about them 6 months from now when you’ll be getting a decent stream of search engine traffic.

    Give the links proper anchor text, just to be on the safe side.

    Sep 5th, 2007

11. skellie

    OK Mohsin, I appreciate your concern. I’ll fix them up this evening.

    Sep 5th, 2007

12. skellie

    Fixed! I hope the search engine bots weren’t too judgmental ;).

    Sep 6th, 2007

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