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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As more and more women are coming to the forefront of Internet marketing, Rhea Perry is one name that is at the top of the heap. Her annual Entrepreneur Days events are creating a buzz in the online world, particularly for those who are interested in building a family home based business.

As more and more women are coming to the forefront of Internet marketing, Rhea Perry is one name that is at the top of the heap. Her annual Entrepreneur Days events are creating a buzz in the online world, particularly for those who are interested in building a family home based business. Perry utilizes her own personal family success story to help others succeed in making money online, and the result so far has been numerous families learning the ropes of Internet entreprenuership. Are you and your family next?

As a mom of three young children myself, I can only imagine how exciting it might be to include my children in a family business someday. It would be even more amazing if my husband could leave his draining office job to join us in our endeavors. In the past, this has seemed like an unattainable dream. However, taking a look at Perry’s inspiring story, the family home based business dream begins to feel more and more possible.

Who is Rhea Perry?

Perry is not your average Internet marketer. She is a homeschool mom of seven children. She has also worked as a curriculum counselor for a large publishing company where she developed homeschool books and programs. Somewhere along the way, she determined that she wanted her children to acquire more than just book knowledge. Rather, she wanted to prepare them for financial freedom by helping them to develop home businesses.

Perry began helping them to discover the possibilities of home business and taught them how to use the Internet to make money. Soon, her determination paid off, and her oldest son Drew became a successful real estate investor by the age of 18. He even surpassed his father’s income within three years, and soon his dad left his own job to join the family business.

Pretty inspiring, isn’t it? It gets better! Today, Drew is a millionaire in his twenties who teaches others how to make money online–particularly through eBay. Drew also works with his mother in her event called Entrepreneur Days. This annual seminar in Atlanta, Georgia, is Perry’s vehicle for bringing families together to teach them about how to find financial freedom. Children, teens and parents from all around the world attend this conference in order to get a real business going that can help them to meet financial goals.

The goal of Perry’s Entrepreneur Days conference is to teach families how to work together to develop and build home based businesses. Her own family success story provides an excellent foundation for her conferences, but she also works with a team of experts who bring their wisdom and experience to teach others principles and strategies that lead to financial success. From Web 2.0 and increasing website/blog traffic to stock market investing and eBay sales, the primary theme of Entrepreneur Days is teaching others how they can harness the power of the Internet to change their financial futures for the better.

I’m going to keep my eye on what Perry is doing in the online world. It is an exciting time to be a woman and a mother involved in Internet marketing. As Perry has demonstrated so well, the sky is the limit for ourselves and our children.

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