Thank you Charlie. In our case, our .pdfs contain no links in them at all. There is nothing for a bot (or a human) that will navigate them out of the .pdf....not even the back button.

Considering that, and EGOL's response below, would the best course of action be to include, at the very least, an active link back to our homepage from all of our .pdf files?

We have as many as 6,000 .pdfs.

Thanks,

Dana

Hi Bob,

I'm going to take your questions one by one:

1. (1) Do charity websites or company websites with link pages ( about5-10 other links) or links / logo's on the front page offer value even on unrelated sites?  - YES, definitely. This is a great way to get .edu links. find out what universities are selling sponsorships for their websites, or contribute enough to make a good scholarship fund and then ask to have your company logo and link on every page of the site. THere is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Several e-commerce sites have done a good job of doing this.

2. What happens if 80% of the link building I am doing comes from blogs? - FABULOUS - I don't see any problem with this unless you are out there planting blog comments that are spam.

3. I have links that are clearly spam - GET RID OF THEM (I'm sorry, Did I shout????)

4. The "key" here is genuine....c'mon, your next door neighboor  kcan tell if that page is keyword stuffed or not. If you read a page and think to yourself "Gee, hmm, I wonder if that's keyword stuffed..." - It probably us. Rewrite it.

I hope this helps a little!

Dana

Hi Sean,

My gut reaction is "Heck Yes!" I would move the documentation, but perhaps, if you can convert it to .pdf file types,  so you can embed a link back to your relevant page or main website from inside the document. This will also keep a link in the document if someone decides to share it off site somewhere, making for some handy links back to your site.

Interested to know what others think!

Dana

Hi Bruce,

We are transitioning to Wistia and have about 20 Wistia videos up on our site already. To my knowledge, it is not necessary to do anything special in order to assure that the embed code any users might copy and paste into their own sites will link directly back to your site. This is one of the biggest advantages to switching to Wistia in the first place. Here's an example URL where we have a Wistia video embedded:

http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/allen-heath-me-1-personal-monitor-mixer

If you click the "Embed" icon just below the video you will see an iFrame code appear for people to copy and paste if they want to share the content on their own sites. This works just like a YouTube iFrame, in that it directs the visitor directly back to the site where the video originated...in this case it would divert people directly back to your site giving you full credit for the content.

I hope that's helpful. Did I understand you question correctly? Or are you seeking to do something different with anyone who wants to embed your content? Let me know, cheers!

Dana

P.S. Here's the embed code for the above video if you want to try it out:

<iframe class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" src="http://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/fdnz3j82q4?version=v1&videoWidth=560&videoHeight=315&volumeControl=true&controlsVisibleOnLoad=true&plugin[socialbar-v1][buttons]=embed-twitter-linkedIn-googlePlus-facebook&plugin[socialbar-v1][logo]=true&plugin[socialbar-v1][badgeUrl]=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccisolutions.com&plugin[socialbar-v1][badgeImage]=https%3A%2F%2Fwistia.sslcs.cdngc.net%2Fdeliveries%2F39051b62d0e4f252affe3b7fe5b95279dc143941.jpg%3Fimage_crop_resized%3D100x20&plugin[captions-v1][onByDefault]=false&canonicalUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccisolutions.com%2FStoreFront%2Fproduct%2Fallen-heath-me-1-personal-monitor-mixer&canonicalTitle=Allen %26 Heath ME-1 | Personal Monitor Mixer" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="480" height="298"></iframe>

I completely agree with this. Well researched and reputable directories are still worthwhile. As long as they are part of a mix that includes some link diversity, I think they can be a very valuable way to jump start a brand new site.

Hi Kelly,

I am much more familiar with Volusion and 3Dcart, but I imagine that Big Commerce might work in a similar way. Inside the admin panel, when you are building products and categories, it is very easy to assign one product to multiple categories.  As CleverPhd suggests, this is accomplished because the products aren't nested under category directories, they have their own.

Here is an example of one of the 3dcart stores I manage. This product: https://www.celebratecommunion.com/prefilled-communion-cups-with-wafers-box-of-500.html  actually belongs to 3 different categories: "Prefilled Communion Cups" "Communion Supplies" "Home Page Specials"   However, it retains the same URL across all categories. In both 3dcart and Volusion, when you are building a product you can customize the URL and then simply select with drop down boxes which categories you want that product to be applied to. I imagines Big Commerce would be quite similar, but having never used it I can't say for sure. As long as the URL for the product page doesn't change, you could put it in 100's of categories and it would never be considered duplicate content because it only has one unique URL.

I hope that helps a little. Let me know if my answer raises more questions than it answers

Dana

Thanks so much to you all. This has gotten us closer to an answer. We are consulting with the folks who developed the Web store to make sure that these solutions won't break other things if implemented, particularly something mentioned to me by our IT Director called "Sim links" - I'll keep you posted!