As a reader of this blog, you’re likely aware that Strider operates a number of web properties, including the leading site in the florist industry, FlowerChat.com.
When you own and operate even one site, some things are a given. You’re going to get spammed by people who want to take advantage of you, people who want to sell you offshore SEO services (shudder), and – of course – the ever popular link exchange request. FlowerChat is a big site. We get a lot of link requests.
Most of the time I trash these requests upon arrival, perhaps pausing to snicker at the new ways the author has contrived to mangle the English language. Recently, however, I received a request that caught my attention. The email was fairly well written – good enough that the author was probably a native English speaker – and the email clearly offered “compensation” for the link.
Since I’ve become bored of messing with “Nigerian princes” who have millions of dollars to offer me, I decided to play along with the link request. After a bit of dialogue I was able to to learn that the link request was for a category page on YellowPages.com. This was unexpected, to say the least!
The ultimate insult, though, was that the link buyer was only willing to offer $50! For a permanent link on an industry-leading site, $50 is a massive slap in the face. (Note: We do not EVER sell links from FlowerChat, or any other site, and we advise clients to adopt the same policy.) For a measly $50, he expected us to risk violating Google’s guidelines and whatever penalties Google might apply.
I wasn’t going to publicize this at all, until I saw the results of our 2010 Florist Directory study. Who was the big winner, and the only directory to make significant gains? YellowPages, of course 
I have to wonder if there is any coincidence involved?
Wow! This is a huge shocker! It’s pretty clear now that YellowPages did not learn anything at all from their past experience and they are still employing the wrong people for SEO purposes. Instead of focusing on offering better quality to their potential customers and rise in ranking the fair way, they turned to buying links! And $50! Come on?! I mean, they should have offered you at least $300 :)!