Years ago, when I worked for CBS Interactive, I had a particular marketing manager who would often ask me what we could do to prevent folks from linking to our sites. And of course, my answer was always “nothing.”
First off, you can’t control who links to you from an external sources. Secondly, aside from trademark or copyright issues, why would you devote resources to prevent folks from giving you an unsolicited inbound link – the holy grail of SEO?
This mentality is the hallmark of an old-school offline-oriented individual or institution that simply doesn’t get how the web works. What’s interesting is that even today, this perspective continues to manifest itself in hilariously ironic ways.
This morning, for example, I was going through my daily email newsletter from slashdot.org and came across an interesting little internet tussle in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
The gist of it is this; a local woman is suing the city of Sheboygan because of their attempts to bring about a criminal investigation based on the fact that she linked to the police office’s web site.
The article focuses in on the legal precedent that this case has set, but my favorite part of the story is just how hard the city worked to prevent someone from linking to them (I’m guessing that the city doesn’t employ an SEO).
You thought that Google’s paid link crusade was bad? Imagine having the long (and inane) arm of the law come after you based on where you chose to link to on your site.
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Greetings – Wow, what a great forum
Just registered and wanted to say hello.