Linking Points...

I haven't seen anything about "linking points". I read a few articles that showed up when searching linking in the AR search bar. I did not see any references to any actual points. Most of what I read was a reference to what most marketers would call back links. You do not get any points in AR for these but they give you credit in the search engines, what is referred to by many including myself as "juice" or "Google juice". These are ways to boost your ratings in the search engines. I didn't see anything on tags but it sounds like hyper-linking keywords. 

Ginger! I've always wondered too! Thanks for asking "it motivated me to find this amazing post which explains it 

The Link That Can Earn You ActiveRain Points

Ok, guess I never thought about getting points that way, so I will read Jon Kolsky's link to find out too. Thanks for pointing this out, Ginger.

Linking points are not in effect as of now - to best of my knowledge. I am sure there will be someone here who can answer your concerns.

Apparently AR no longer issues Linking Points.

Here are a few related links on the topic:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/857389/it-s-official-no-more-external-website-linking-points

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1016515/can-someone-tell-me-how-to-get-linking-to-work-

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1225079/how-do-you-get-linking-points-and-bonus-points-

http://activerain.com/blogsview/845499/linking-points-what-s-the-deal-

As one person noted, I am not sure why AR still shows that in the points summary since it is no longer available.  Would make more sense to me if they "rolled" those over to "Other" but I suppose this is not a high priority in light of the other enhancements they are making.

Your "tags" vs "key words" is more than can be explained in a response to your post.  Check this article out by Tammy Emineth on the subject here.

Hope this helps :)

Ginger, What the others have said, linking points are a remnant of a past practice and are no longer available.

Hi Ginger,

As other's have said, linking points are long gone.  In fact, I believe they were gone when I started back in 07..why they haven't gotten rid of it, I don't know.

A tag is how a reader can find a certain blog of yours.  Many of us (to include myself) do this incorrectly.  Would be a great post to write.  You can use key words for tags (and I believe it may help your SEO but not sure).  

If I tag a certain post San Antonio TX Realtor and a reader is looking for more of my posts with that tag, they can click on the tag on the right side of my post and all posts with that tag will pop up.  

I hope that made just a little sense.  I may write a post on it, but would need to probably learn just a tad more about it so that I don't send folks down a rabbit hole :)!

Linking points were still around in 2008 when I started,  and I don't know exactly when they went away.  You used to get points for linking to your activerain profile from other sites.  I think 400 per site at first and then 400 up to a set maximum.  And I think it got taken away because of abuse of it.  They haven't retro taken away points from people who weren't "gaming" the system because we got those points when they were offered. 

Kind of like they added 100 points per day for logging in and you started getting logging in point moving forward and not retro actively for every past log in. 

I believe both are to boost AR's ranking at the time.  First... link backs helped them, then so many people gamed the system link backs no longer helped them.  Now traffic numbers help them so they give log in points. 

Tags however is a different story and you've just given me something to blog about on my ask an ambassador post today.  thanks and I'll be back with a link.

Here is my explanation on tags.  thanks again for being inspiring to me today.

Ginger, thanks for asking this question.  I searched with the same question and found your post with the answers already here. 

Thanks y'all - I was wondering about these as well.