Link Exchange Pitfalls

I was approached by the marketing manager of a certain US based photography company.  In exchange for linking to their website, she would reciprocate by linking back to me from a selection of different websites.  It was a slightly strange offer so I did a bit of research.

The problem with her offer was that the selection of different websites  were clearly link farms.  If I participated in this kind of scheme, search engines like google could actually discriminate against me.

I turned down the marketing manager and would advocate that anyone with a website be selective about who they exchange links with.  More isn't always good.

Exchanges links with your friends, your colleagues, with sites that you consider have relevant or similar content, with sites that have a good PageRank.  Consider getting the Google Toolbar as this displays the PageRank of any piece of content you are looking
at.  A website falsely claiming to be important, relevant or more
visited than it actually is will soon be detected if you use this tool.

Link to sites that you consider to have great content, whether or not you are getting anything in return. 

Finally, focus on developing good content yourself and exposing that content to search engines.  Then people will find it and link to you.

Cool Edinburgh Bookshop

After a morning doing street photography, photographing the performers of the Edinburgh Fringe, I took refuge in a specialist bookshop called Beyond Words,  which turns out to have an impressive collection in photographic publications of all kinds - journalism, sports, portraiture and instruction manuals.  Check it out.

Through browsing I encountered the work of a contemporary model photographer I wasn't familiar with, a photographer whose work I loved.  check out Richard Avedon and see if you agree with me.

It occurs to me that most photographers either alive today or dead but with a considerable following will have their own website, so my next project will be to assemble a collection of links to the photographers I love.

Wired on Photo Finishing

I am a big fan of Wired magazine - both online and print (I get the dead trees version airmailed from the US). It's a good way of keeping track of tech trends in general and has some pretty interesting blogs.

The latest version contains a short piece that differentiates the various different photo services available.   Of the services mentioned, I had never heard of Arles.  Good idea of a product, but it is annoying to me that europeans buying european software from european Servers will now be charged european sales tax.  Way to stimulate the technology economy mister eurocrat!

Meanwhile,  I found a nice PDF file on UK Photographers Rights which covers a lot of legal stuff in an easy to digest manner.