Just Ask Matt - Answers

Do Link Exchanges Still Work?

QUESTION: (Gerald) I have a number of people asking me to exchange links. I have read that this is good, but can’t find anywhere how to do it. Any suggestions, or is there an article you have that would help me. Appreciate it.

Good question, Gerald, because we really don’t hear as much about link exchanges as we did in the past.  I think the big reason for it is it’s effectiveness (or lack thereof).  Search engine spiders are much smarter than they were 2 or 3 years agos.  And most will recognize a “link exchange” rather easily.

For those who don’t know what a link exchange is, it is when you approach another website (usually with similar content to yours) and ask them to place a nice, keyword-rich anchor text link back to your website.  In exchange, you will do the same for them.  Remember that an important part of SEO is backlinks (i.e., receiving links from other websites pointing back to you).  A few years ago, a lot of this “linking power” was represented by a Page Rank.  Getting high Page Rank websites to point back to you effectively will increase your own page rank.

Personally, I think Page Rank is a bit of a farce these days (at least the public one).  I do think the major search engines (like Google) have there own ranking system based on popularity, but it would not be public.  Still, getting links from “authority sites” with relevance (to your niche) is always key. 

Now getting back to the question…I think link exchanges (or “reciprocal linking”) is really not going to help or hurt you.  Any backlink (in most cases) usually will help you.  But if there is a reciprocal link, the spiders will usually recognize this and probably not give you proper popularity for it. 

Again, like everything SEO, this is speculation, but I know there has been a lot of abuse of link exchanges over the years (like link farms, paid text links, etc.) to draw a lot of attention to it.  I used to do it quite a bit.  I don’t really do it any more (unless I am quite friendly with the website and we exchange primarily for the traffic, not the SEO).  I think your efforts would be better suited to article writing/submission, press releases, even directory submissions. 

You can also consider n-way link exchanges.  For a 3-way link exchange example: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, and Site C links to Site A.  You can do this rather deeply, too.  But still, the search engine spiders are smart and may start recognizing the linking footprints.  The larger the “n”, the better off you are…but of course, this is a hell of a lot more work and requires some skillful coordination.

Personally, I have become somewhat of an a-hole about link exchange requests.  I don’t get as many as I used to, but when I do I usually ignore them. 

cheers…matt

P.S. If you want to know more about Getting Backlinks, check out SEOExciter.com.  (There are 10 free videos over there that shows you how!)

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Matthew BredelMy name is Matthew Bredel and as of March, 2007, I am a full-time, work-at-home internet marketer. For close to 10 years, I worked for a defense company which was an OK job, but I was so uninspired in life and frankly, I needed some more money. That is when I first discovered internet marketing! Now I admit that I didn't start making thousands in my first couple of months (in fact, I lost my shirt!), but I finally saw the "internet light"...

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Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Part 2) - CPA Networks

December 4th, 2008 . by Matthew Bredel . Tweet This!
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(Sorry about the quality here…I fought, a lost a battle with Camtasia to produce a high quality video for YouTube!  That story is for another post, but if you want to see a “clearer” version of the video, feel free to watch it here. It is in MP4 and requires the most recent version of [...]

(Sorry about the quality here…I fought, a lost a battle with Camtasia to produce a high quality video for YouTube!  That story is for another post, but if you want to see a “clearer” version of the video, feel free to watch it here. It is in MP4 and requires the most recent version of Flash installed.)

After looking over the free PDF (which can be obtained at here), I came to the conclusion that everyone’s biggest initial question is “What is a CPA Network?”.

As the video describes, CPA stands for “Cost per Action” (or some may say “Cost of Acquisition”).  The funny thing about this term is that “definition” is really what separates it from affiliate marketing.  The two are really the same.  The CPA world uses its own terms and definitions (which we will discuss in part 3), but in reality we are talking about affiliate marketing here.

So these two guys that make $100,000/day are nothing more than affiliate marketers.  Being an affiliate marketer (and a successful one at that), there is nothing phony about what they are doing…they are doing it to an extreme, though.

There are three major keys to making this work, though:

  • Finding the right product
  • Conversion
  • Money management and scalability

This sounds like we get back to the same basics that all online marketing is based on, right?

For now, get the free report at the Arbitrage Conspiracy website at:

http://www.matthewbredel.com/vegas_report

Tell me what you think…cheers…matt

******************************************

Learn more about using CPA Networks to make insane amount of cash here.

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10 Responses to “Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Part 2) - CPA Networks”

  1. Matt,

    Thank you for the great info. This looks a lot like the program that Carlos and Lupe Garcia were offering last year. I met and had lunch with Carlos at Eben’s Altitude seminar in LA last October. I’ve been very interested in moving in this direction with CPA networks and will keep an eye on this launch.

    David

    Posted by: David
    December 6th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

  2. Yes, David…it is similar. These guys take this to quick an impressive level, though.

    Posted by: Matthew Bredel
    December 6th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

  3. Matt: I have heard of this method before, but did not try it because it seems to me you need a lot of money for PPC to make it work well

    Posted by: Bruce Hauck
    December 8th, 2008 at 7:43 am

  4. Bruce, you are kind of right here…Money management is one major key here! This has a lot to do with managing cash flow, but these guys go over (in detail) on how to ramp and scale your efforts accordingly (so you don’t lose your shirt or need to come up with big cash immediately).

    Posted by: Matthew Bredel
    December 8th, 2008 at 9:58 am

  5. [...] Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Pt 2) - CPA Networks [...]

    Posted by:   Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Part 1) by Inside the Internet Marketing Mind
    December 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am

  6. I have a quation where can i get more info about cpa network and what i need to know about cpa network

    Posted by: Maxim
    December 8th, 2008 at 11:49 am

  7. I was just wondering what sources they use to get the leads that allow them to make that amount of money a day? I’m guessing they will elaborate more on the ppc era of this?

    Posted by: William
    December 8th, 2008 at 6:31 pm

  8. About CPA networks…I talk about them a bit in this blog and the Arbitrage Conspiracy free PDF provides a list of other ones as well.

    As for the traffic, believe it or not, but these guys use mostly PPC for their traffic. (They spend a lot of time finding keywords with both volume and quality…kind of interesting, actually!)

    Posted by: Matt Bredel
    December 9th, 2008 at 7:57 am

  9. [...] Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Pt 2) - CPA Networks [...]

    Posted by:   Definitions: CPA, EPC, eEPC, PPC, CPL and more by Inside the Internet Marketing Mind
    December 10th, 2008 at 8:43 am

  10. Matt,
    Your videos and your honesty is what made me order through your Affiliate link instead of the big guys. You explained to me what I was not finding in the gobs of text that everyone has out.
    Thank you,
    Ana Seidel
    http://www.TheVeryBestChocolate.com

    Posted by: Ana Seidel
    December 11th, 2008 at 10:56 pm

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