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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I know a lot of you have looked into it:  Data entry jobs.  It seems to be the ideal work at home solution for those who are looking to make a little bit of extra cash on the side.  If you do a search on “data entry”, you will find all kinds of programs telling [...]

I know a lot of you have looked into it:  Data entry jobs.  It seems to be the ideal work at home solution for those who are looking to make a little bit of extra cash on the side.  If you do a search on “data entry”, you will find all kinds of programs telling you that a few simple hours per day will result in hundreds, if not thousands, per month.

I’m here to tell you that this is nothing more than (what my three year likes to call): poo-poo rash.  (Sorry, but this stupid term is dominating my life at the moment…help me!).  I hate to ruin a lot of people’s hope, but there is no data entry job that will pay you hundreds or thousands of dollars per month for a few hours per week.  A lot of these “data entry” jobs focus on affiliate marketing.  They claim that if you fill out a simple advertising form (such as a Google Adwords ad), you can use affiliate links to make money.  (i.e., you develop partnerships with other websites and if you refer traffic to them, you will get a percentage of the sale).  Believe it or not, this actually worked a few years ago.  Now, I would not count on it.  In fact, for most this ends up costing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on advertising with nothing to show for it.

So what about freelancing?  There are tons of freelancing jobs like writing articles, submitting links to directories, writing in forums, etc.  All of these jobs require very little skills and are virtually mindless busy-work.  Sounds good, right?  Well, there is a new problem that is emerging and that is the global economy.  Yes, people will pay for these tedious tasks, but the new global economy that we are living in is making it more difficult to compete.  Outsourcing overseas is becoming a bigger trend by the minute.

Would you take $2 per hour for 10 hours per week to submit articles to websites?  (That is $20!)  In the US, probably not.  But in foreign countries $2/hour may be considered a respectable minimum wage.   So how are we (as Americans or Europeans or Australians) going to compete?  Unfortunately, for these simple skills we don’t compete.  Having skills is still essential to make money as a freelancer.  Learning to write articles, fast and effectively is a good skill.  Learning graphic design skills using tools like Photoshop or Illustrator can bring in good money with minimal time commitments.

But whatever you choose to do, remember that easy money really do not exist on the internet.  There are always exceptions to this rule, but if any ad is promoting that a few hours per day can pay your mortgage through simple data entry, move on.  And if you really want to do freelance work, your time is better spent in a classroom or a tutorial website learning a skill that not everyone can do.

- Matthew Bredel

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One Response to ““Data Entry Jobs”…in America”

  1. By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

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