The Beauty of Kiva.org and Their Profile Pages

I recently registered on Kiva.org after being introduced to the site by a colleague at the office. Kiva is a “person-to-person” micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe. We’re talking $25 microloans, to people who need them. The money really makes a difference so, SEOgadget’s (very, very small) monthly advertising revenue now goes to Kiva.



What’s this got to do with SEO?

Kiva has a very strong, community driven ethos to lending. Groups of lenders form communities or “lending teams”. Here’s Intel’s Lending Team Page.

Open that link and you’ll see that a lending team page links to their member’s individual profile pages. Each individual profile page links externally to the lenders website of choice.

This is not a paid link

I registered on Kiva.org to try to do something useful and get some karma points, not to acquire links. In fact, it wasn’t until my first loan transaction was completed and I went and had a click around to my new profile page that I discovered it was possible to add a website to a profile page. You see, adding a website URL is not part of the registration process on the site. Here’s my profile page.

Would anyone consider this a paid link? I really hope not. For one, the money is lent to an entrepreneur. Kiva.org is a non profit organisation and doesn’t receive money directly – they facilitate its transfer but that’s all. In my mind it’s a simple profile page link, no different to a profile page found on a social media site. The more active you are, the more coverage you receive. That said, I’d be interested to hear your opinions.