While working on an email link building campaign for an Arizona website design company, I received a reply from a potential link partner as follows:

"Well you're using an internal iframe so the place your links are don't have a good Google PR. No thanks..."

I knew exactly what he was talking about, but he was gravely mistaken. The problem was that our client was using CSS2 and a div tag to display the content of their website design directory in a stylesheet generated scroll box.

To webmasters that aren't familiar with this relatively new technique, the css scroll box looks like an iframe and can raise suspicions about link building ethics. The truth is that search engines have no difficulty following links located within a css scroll box.

I replied to the potential link partner that wrote me the email with an explanation of the technique but it was too late. I'd either lost the trust of this particular webmaster or damaged his pride. Either way, I lost a link partner.

I advised that my link building client remove the scroll box to avoid confusion but the scroll box was a consistent element in their design so they were unwilling to change it. This made my link building efforts for this client more difficult, but I learned a valuable lesson that I can apply to future campaigns.

In summary, you should avoid the use of css generated scroll boxes on your "resources" or "partners" pages, if you're running an email link building campaign, until webmasters become more educated about the new design options available with CSS2.

About the Author

Erik M. Cunningham is a writer and VP of Business Development for LinkAssure, a link building company.

Visit LinkAssure for information about link building and more link related articles.