Photo of Guan Yin statue taken by myself at Kek Lok Si Temple, Penang.
I have noticed many blogs starting to rewards those who review their blog with a link back. I’m going to take a deeper look on this trend in this post. Heck, I even gonna coin a term to this. Well, I will just call it review karma…
quoted..karma is action and reaction, the continuing process of cause and effect..
What is Review Karma?
Review Karma is a modern blog link exchange method invented by John Chow. The story goes when he was trying out the PayPerPost program, John paid money to those that have taken the opportunity (note: opportunity is a term by PayPerPost, as in Offer by Advertisers) , as well as giving a linkback to the reviewers by mentioning them in a blogpost. Soon, when all of the opportunities were taken, the reviews still keep coming in, only to have a linkback from him.
This inspires John Chow to make this offer running permanently on his blog, promising a linkback for every single review. In addition, he even improved on it by adding more requirements such as compulsory anchor text linking to his website. This requirement alone has push John Chow’s website from hundreds of position down, to the top ranking for a competitive keyword term.
How it works?
Too simple to be misunderstood by anyone, Review Karma works by an offerer (usually a more popular blog) initiates a request that comes with its own requirement and promises for its the readers to review the blog, and promise a linkback. Once readers have posted the review, they will send an email to notify the offerer. The offerer will then fulfill the promise by linking back to the reviewer.
However, in order for review karma to work, one (the offerer) must have a blog with decent PageRank (PR5 and above to be effective) accompany with and/or high technorati ranking, high traffic, even alexa ranking. In other words, the offerer’s blog has to be worthy of getting link from.
Better than Linkbait?
From my own standpoint, it’s better than linkbaiting. Linkbait needs time and resource to be developed and properly promoted. And the level of success (e.g making to the front page of digg) can vary. Review karma works differently. It doesn’t take any resources to create the buzz. And more importantly, review karma gives you the power to control the anchor text. This alone gives review karma the edge over classic linkbaiting.
What about search engines?
For now, I believe review karma is under the radar of search engines. Because the review activity is totally natural and viral, and have no traits or footprints even when search engines want to track down the review karma links.
Regarding the search engine benefit, the advantage goes to the offerer. Think about it, 1 link in one post (in the reviewer’s post) has to be better than 10 links in one post (when the offerer mentioned them in batch). But how can the reviewers ask for more to have a permanent linkback from a more popular blog?
Who did it already?
I suspect more and more blog owners will use review karma to boost their link popularity. Here are some blogs that have implemented it:
Blogging Secret
Jakel Daily Dot Com
Andrew Kuo Dot Net
HarpzOn.com
Tyler Cruz
That sums up for my longest post in a while. So, what’s your thought on review karma for now and in future time?
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Bill 03.22.07 at 11:58 pm
What I like about this is that people are exercising some critical thinking about the blogs involved, and there’s the opportunity for constructive criticism.
Lim CS 03.27.07 at 7:52 am
Thank you for your comment, Bill.
Louiss 03.28.07 at 6:34 pm
Wow…Limcs, just wanna try this since the evil ideas from our BOSS, JohnChow, work successfully. In another word, trade link for PR or Traffic. Just my random thought.:)
David Paul Robinson 04.01.07 at 6:18 pm
It’s a great idea but one that is rapidly spinning out of control :)
Soon every blog in the universe will be making this offer.
Chinese SEO 04.09.07 at 1:06 pm
I wonder what the Google’s point of view. Google doesn’t like paid links. In the Review Karma system, paying is involved, althought the review is natural. People asked this kind of question in Matt Cutt’s blog, however, I didn’t see any reply.
armier 05.05.07 at 3:36 am
Great!….I like to learn more from you guys
thanks