FAQ’S
Below you’ll find a list of Frequently Asked Questions related to the plugin and the network in general…
Note: You’ll also find more detailed information about the network in general in our Documentation section.
How long does it take before my blog is approved for participation in the network and when will my links become live?
It usually takes around 24-48 hours before your site has been reviewed. This might occur sooner, or in rare cases slightly longer, depending on how active the network is at any given time. Your links will become live on other blogs (and your own blog will start displaying partner links) immediately after being approved. If things are taking a little longer than usual please just be patient and ensure you leave the plugin activated otherwise you’ll be removed from the moderation queue and have to start over.
How do I know if my blog has been approved?
The first thing you might notice is that other partner links start appearing on your own blog posts (assuming there are links to assign) but otherwise you’ll notice that your status in the “Contextual Partnership Dashboard” (in your WordPress admin area) has changed to “ACTIVE”.
My blog was declined from participating in the network. Is there anything I can do?
If your blog has been declined it means that other members feel you’re not abiding by our Quality Control Guidelines. Please ensure you make any appropriate changes necessary to meet our specific guidelines and then request a reconsideration (from within the Contextuaul Partnership Dashboard). NOTE: You will only be able to make 3 reconsideration requests before your domain is banned from the network permenantly.
I installed this plugin, but I didn’t put any code into my template, and I don’t see your links showing up anywhere. Is it done automatically, or is there a code snippet I need to put in?
Once the plugin has been activated there is nothing further you need to do (other than define your settings in the respective fields). You do not need to place any additional code etc into your pages, the plugin takes care of this automatically on the backend of your blog.
Why is there a discrepancy between outbound links and inbound links in my statistics? Am I giving away more links than I’m receiving?
Don’t worry too much about this - it’s completely normal. More often than not (99% of the time) your outbound link stats are always going to be slightly higher than your inbound link stats. This is simply due to the dynamic pace of the network and the time it takes to update everything.
For example if you make a new post, the system must check each keyword term and find partners to match them to in order to grant you additional points. Once this has been determined the system then searches the network to see where it can assign you new incoming links. There is always a lag between these two actions so it’s completely normal. Please also read the answer to the next question…
The discrepancy seems to be unnaturally high and has remained like this for a long time, something must be wrong here?
It is possible that the network is taking longer to assign links to you based on the keyword terms you’re targeting. If they are very obsecure keyword terms (not many other blogs are likely to contain these) then chances are the network is still waiting to find more instances of these terms before it can assign you new links.
If you think this might be the case then it’s time to review the keyword terms you’re targeting and look at using more popular terms. It’s ok to include obsecure terms (longer tailed keyword terms), but you should also make sure you have at least one popular term related to your niche to ensure you’re running at full potential.
What happens to the links I’ve generated if I deactivate or delete the plugin from my blog?
If you deactivate the Contextual Partnership WordPress Plugin (and /or delete it from your blog), all incoming links you’ve generated to date will be removed from the network (and all partner links appearing on your blog will also be removed). The links that were allocated to you will then become freely available for other active members of the network.
If you wish to keep the incoming links you’ve generated to date, but would no longer like to include new posts in the network, leave your plugin activated and simply set the “Default New Post Setting” to off. This will exclude all future posts you make to your blog from the network by default (although you can manually include selected new posts when making or editing them) and retain all incoming links you’ve generated to date on previous blog posts.
I have another website / URL that I want to promote via the network from the plugin (other than the domain the plugin is already installed on). Can I do this from the one installation of the plugin?
No. You can only obtain contextual links back to the domain / blog that the plugin is installed on. Third party URL’s will not be accepted. This is a quality control measure to ensure that no partner can bypass the moderation process by having a high quality blog accepted, only to begin advertising a very poor quality website from that blogs plugin, that would otherwise not match our quality control guidelines.
Why am I restricted to targeting only 10 different keyword terms and URL’s in my Contextual Partnership Dashboard?
This is temporary limitation of the network that we do plan to review in the near future. It will be raised when we have a clearer understanding as to the impacts and implications of increasing this limit on the network as a whole (and assuming partners wish to see it raised).
Understand that with 10,000 partners in the network, each with 10 keyword terms loaded in their dashboards, that this presents a total pool of 100,000 keyword terms that the network must keep track of, whilst also sorting through and assigning these links to several million individual blog posts, a process which happens several times daily. This requires some serious processing power as you might imagine. In the meantime we feel that 10 keyword terms is more than enough for the average partner to get things off to a good start.
More FAQ’s will be added as they come to hand…
Note: You’ll also find more detailed information about the network in general in our Documentation section.
