SAVE YOUR MONEY! |
Don't Buy Another Money Making Product Until You Watch These FREE Videos! |
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!)
More Questions & Answers...
My 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"...
Twitter: MatthewBredel
Yes, I am on another plane to Atlanta at the moment and since I knew I would be limited to only 2 hours of laptop time, I forked out the $12 for Seth Godin’s The Dip at the terminal (rip-off) bookstore. Still, I had seen “Breach” three times this month on various airplanes and [...]
Calm down! I did not mean to disrespect the Google gods in any way from my title. Still, I have people reading a lot of your emails and many of you are rather peeved right now with Google Adwords. Realize, though, that being frustrated with Adwords is part of your journey to [...]
I am sure this is one of those questions that all of you have thought about at one point or another. If you were to join a wholesale or dropshipping network, could you use it to just buy products for yourself? Sounds like a great idea and a good way to save yourself money. [...]
I just got back from eBay Live yesterday after a transcontinental trip to Boston for the weekend. I have a few things to admit, first:
1) This was my first eBay Live! that I have attended.
2) I had little to no expectations of this event.
3) Honestly, I gave very little credit [...]
I am not one to usually touch the topic of religion in my blog, but this was so interesting to me that I needed to share it. Being an online marketer requires some mental toughness and determination for most people. Many internet marketers were telling me about The Secret by Rhonda Byrne and her posse [...]
I just got back from Altanta from the quarterly 3-day Stomper LIVE seminar. Being a member, I do cherish these seminars not only to learn but to meet fellow marketers, as well. I came out of this conference a bit frustrated, but it was a good thing (I think!). This was my [...]
I was on a conference call a few days ago and a person was rather frustrated over the fact that their website was not getting any traffic nor were they appearing in Google organic search results. Here was the situation: They worked for a major health care firm that provided their members with [...]
OK, so I had my first mental breakdown about a week ago. No need to worry (yet), but some of the realities to building your own online money making business from scratch can to fruition.
I have now surpassed the two month point of working from home. Some of the concerns that I had never transpired. [...]