I get alerts when certain keyphrases are mentioned in articles, so this morning I was drawn to SiliconRepublic.com.
SiliconRepublic.com fancy themselves as being a competitor for the likes of eWeek and other well known and respected online publications.
However, unlike eWeek, SiliconRepublic’s writers don’t seem to have “got” the entire concept of hyperlinks.
An article I was reading this morning mentioned at least 4 separate companies and 3 other organisations. Not one of them was hyperlinked, even though the body of the text actually included the domain name!
It’s almost as if SR hasn’t quite understood that it’s an online publication and that hyperlinking is “allowed”.
Even the review of muse.ie doesn’t include a link to the site! What use is a site review without a link?
Talk about frustrating!
Michele Neylon :: Pensieri
Technology, Marketing, Domains, Thoughts
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I think it is really rude actually. Obviously it is not a requirement to link, but it is outright bad manners in some cases. I don’t think they have got the concept of social interaction. (What on earth is web 1.1+ ?)
I have a feeling that Silicon Republic have a very misguided SEO on board that is advising against outbound linking on the grounds of conserving pagerank or pagerank leak.
Is it 2002? Apparently over at Silicon Republic it is.
I think they don’t want you to “clickaway” but if so they should at leadt put links at the end of the article.
It’s also the SLOWEST news site I have seen.
Dave
I’ve no idea what their logic is. They also seem to be duplicating all the content on blog.siliconrepublic.com, which strikes me as really bizarre.
Chris – maybe that’s their reasoning, but if bigger sites such as eWeek aren’t afraid to link out, why should they?
Shame. They could do so well, increase visitors and revenue if they only took on even the most basic advice.
Their RSS feed is TITLE only. Not even an excerpt.
Dave
That’s really bizarre!
I know! Like, what exactly is the point? Pageviews, fine, but pageviews at what price? Give me 30 mins with the site and I could increase their pageviews ten fold.
They stopped thinking long term a long time ago.
Dave
Maybe you should offer them your services? 🙂
Michele
Have never cold called and never will. 🙂 I’m a big fan of respecting privacy.
I rather they come to us. ;P
I don’t think I could cold call 🙂
Maybe they don’t want fo give free Page Rank juice to companies, but isin’t that what rel=”nofollow” was created for/used for 🙂
Ambrand
Links are a two way street.
If eWeek can link out why can’t Silicon Republic?
It makes zero sense
Michele
@Ambrand, no, that is not what is was created for. It was created to indicate to search engines that a link was not editorially approved. In the case of silicon, the companies clearly are.
Regarding giving “Free Pagerank Juice”, it is the companies they are writing about that give them their news. If they didn’t exist, neither would Silicon Republic.
Linking is the bread and butter of the web. Silicon Republic is so far stuck in the past, they cannot see that linking out gets returned tenfold.
It’s their own fault.
What’s the bets that they cant publish hyperlinks due to their CMS?
Dont read their site, but if you find a lack of HTML elements (images etc.) within body text then it increases the liklihood that the CMS implementation cannot handle HTML markup with text blocks.
Wouldn’t surprise me…
Richard, it appears they can:
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single8602
Albeit not functional. 🙂
A year later and nothing has changed. Nothing.
They’ve rejigged their site layout, but they still don’t link to anyone, so articles are more and more meaningless as they mention companies and organisations that people have to find externally
Talk about annoying!