Sir or Ms:

I seldom exchange links but I do allow others to link to my site when they find the info on Earthtym.net helpful to their customers.

Link association is not a two way street.
That is without discernment and relevancy.
The FEW links I place on Earthtym.net are there because they can assist my visitors, whether they wish to exchange links or not.

If your site IS linked on mine, it is my assessment that visitors to Earthtym.net CAN find relevant content of interest and quality, as an extension of the content and issues on Earthtym, to contribute to constructive solutions for their personal requirements.

If your site is NOT linked on mine, it may be because its subject matter is not a relevant extension of mine, and thus, not helpful in focus.

If your site is NOT linked on mine, it may be because you do not apply to one or more of the below qualifying points.

If your site is NOT linked on mine, it could be because I have not heard of your site, visited it, or yet evaluated it.

The below are my standards for linking Earthtym.net to other sites.

Reciprocal link exchange has long been promoted as a way to increase traffic to one's website and increase one's position in the search rankings. This has NOT been my finding and can even be the opposite, in some cases. A primary rationalization of this common and old strategy is that if one can show more links to one's site, and, more visitors, one can justify charging higher fees for ads placed on the site.

Earthtym.net has never charged fees for any of the few ads placed on the site.
Profiles of business and services are presented solely to provide options for choice and a basic and personally qualified resource to inform and assist them. A visitor with integrity and self-direction will find a membership fee to be a very small investment for the uncluttered presence of ads, the lack of privacy presented by most cookies, and the lack of distraction and unconscious manipulation posed by pop-up, flashing, and moving ad images.

1. Quality Coding:
If your site is linked to another one which has poor HTML coding, is not compatible with the major browsers, has a difficult to follow layout, expresses attitudes of either intolerance or greed limits (no distinctions of quality or relevancy, all promises and no delivery) ... others linked to yours will be associated with your values. I AVOID linking to such pages. My content is VERY practical, effective, and relevant for the health conscious. I have no wish to lessen its impact with useless fluff, or the necessity to have a technical degree to navigate.

2. Persistence:
Longevity on the Internet IS a means to better search engine ranking.
You have to earn this ranking and it is all the shortcuts promoted by the commercially minded which try to defeat this reality. As the internet has grown, so also have restraints used to exclude those who misrepresent their site or try to jump the cue through deception. I seldom link to sites which have been so poorly organized or maintained that their page URLs quickly become broken, lost, or modified. It just increases my work to have to periodically check them, and, those visitors who use the link from my pages, get annoyed at being directed into oblivion. The addresses of the pages on earthtym.net have never been changed in 10 years, even though they have been recoded at least 3 times in that interim.

3. Search Assist Coding:
Use of META codes can assist in the indexing of the content on your website, IF, it is done with relevancy. An excessive use of words and phrases to reference the content of a webpage will likely result in the major search engines screening OUT your pages, and possibly your site. Using META descriptions which do not apply to your content, just to trap browsers and search engines into your site, will eventually lead to your site being DENIED from the better search engines. I DO link to pages which I find relevant to the interests of MY visitors and which I find contain the content which they promise in their META coding.

4. Easy loading:
The blatant use of promotional spam on your pages in which you sell priority and presence for dollars rather than legitimacy will soon result in visitors AVOIDING your site and those you link to. These sites demonstrate that their ratings and inclusions are worse than distrustful. I may not be able to easily trust what is in a search engine. I certainly cannot trust what is in a hash listing. I never link to these sites. I have always made an effort to use small storage images and avoid the use of cookies and extensive javascript.

5. Relevancy of Content:
Link irrelevancy and glutting can make the structure of your website appear confusing, irrelevant, and wasteful. If you are simply going to add lists of sites to your site, I am better to use a search engine, and, specifically AVOID what has been added to your lists for the purpose of greed. I extremely seldomly link to such sites. If the attitude presented by your site is that your product or service will benefit EVERYONE and that it has no limitations, then, in my assessment, your site is promotion and promotion is always, by its nature, deceptive and manipulative.

6. Invitation, not intrusion:
Cookie glutting, especially by third party sites advertising on your website, area a certain way for others to begin AVOIDING your site as your page loading is slowed down, or even halted, by their presence. This is a major way used to add visitors to spamming lists. Increasingly, browser users are turning off or limiting cookie access to their computers. I never link to these sites.

7. Joining in, not manipulation:
Use of pop-up ads, often in the background, or pop-up pages, especially when these are difficult to remove or limit with regular browser controls, are a certain way to show that you are desperate, manipulative, and deceptive. I never link to such sites.

8. Freedom, not Privilege:
Links exchanged on the basis of payment or promise are always AVOIDED by me. If I have to pay for other people clicking on a link on someones else's site in order to get to mine, I have no rights over nor control of HOW that prospective visitor is going to be directed to my website. It may be an automatic transfer without their selection. I may have visitors arriving who have no interest in my content. These visitors may have been directed to my site through lies and deception ... which can only make them negative in attitude to my content BEFORE they see it. I know of sincere business persons who have lost their life savings by being ignorant of these deceptions. I never pay for promoted link placements.

9. Legitimacy:
You may provide a number of services on YOUR site which could be helpful to some, or all, of my visitors. There is a great difference between potential and reality. The usual only means of discernment between whether your offers and declarations are truthful, consistent, and helpful ... is personal experience. If I have not PERSONALLY found your content beneficial in these ways, I will seldom place your link on my pages with the suggestion that I have prescreened it. Spiritual Guidance is another means to link evaluation and I DO sometimes link to other sites when this sanction is provided.

GREATER POPULARITY in the search engines is neither automatic, magic, nor association with pages better than yours.

My Recommendations for Search Engine Presence are to know your visitors needs, provide them with relevant content, write the best HTML code you can, avoid technically complicated systems intended to deceive and manipulate others, add META code to your pages, seek other sites with related content and a high degree of integrity to link to, follow an open linking policy rather than a yours-for-mine sellout, associate yourself with honesty and not manipulation. It is easy to join with those of the latter. It is special and respected to choose standards which help all people rather than just oneself.

Guidelines which may assist you.

John R. Sennett

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