BackLinks.com review and a small rant

Monday, October 02, 2006

After writing about Text Link Ads a few posts ago I thought I'd see what other programs are out there. I was recommended BackLinks.com, which is free to join.

It's quite a straightforward process - they provide a service which enables webmasters to either buy, or sell and swap links by providing a server-side script that you put on your website to do the 'behind the scenes' stuff for you. They also don't get involved in the payment process, so you do get all monies charged. To be involved your site needs a PageRank of 3 or more.

I looked at the selling and exchanging part of the process. After registering for a free account, you then complete your details - URL of the page, title and description, your geographical location, price you want to charge per link and payment method etc...

You then customise the link block and once this is done, choose the relevant code for your site and insert it where you want the links block to be. Once this is done, you'll be in the searchable database for other webmasters to request link exchanges or to buy a link. You have complete control over the process.

However, the code does have a downside. I did e-mail the technical support people about my issues (more in a minute) and to their credit, the reply was incredibly quick. However, I did ask that if the code could not be changed or split into different options then my account was deleted. The reply from them was literally:

"we deleted you...

James"

So what was my problem with the code? As a web designer I follow coding and legal standards. When previewing the link code I noticed the following issues. (It is possible that the preview code and the actual code are different, but this was not pointed out to me by the technical support and my issues therefore refer to the code preview only):

1) I use XHTML encoding on LittleFish Web Design - capitalised HTML tags are not allowed in XHTML and won't validate at http://w3c.validator.org. The BackLinks.com code uses capitalised tags.

2) Font size should be specified in % (percent) or ems. If they are specified in pixels, they cannot be resized in some web browsers and are therefore not compatible with section 508 (US) or DDA (UK) which is a legal requirement. Although highly unlikely especially for small websites, a site owner of a non-personal website could be sued for breaking the law. The BackLinks.com code uses pixel font sizes.

3) I don't use tables for layout as CSS is a more modern coding standard. The BackLinks.com code uses tables for its layout.

If you aren't worried about these issues, then have a look at BackLinks as it seems to be a very good idea. If you do want to take notice of what I've mentioned, try Text Link Ads (and remember you can get $100 off when buying text links).

Meeting with coding and legal requirements has many benefits - the code is more streamlined meaning faster loading pages; the search engines like it; your pages look the same across more web browsers and more browsing platforms and really there's no excuse for not doing so. Even if you are a complete HTML novice there are plenty of website tutorials out there that teach good practice e.g. W3Schools.com and Tizag.com to name two off the top of my head.

Rant over.

Labels: linking

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