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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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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
(We will return to the Frustrated Affiliate Marketer next week)
I want to digress here for a second to write about something that has been gnawing at me for the last couple of weeks. I don’t know if it is the season or the weather or perhaps a full moon, but I have been reading a [...]
(Continuing from The Frustrated Affiliate Marketer Part V: Your First Blog)
Your blog is now up and running! You’ve tested your affiliate links. And you’ve gotten your Google Pay-Per-Click Ads all set up. At first, you are a little bit disappointed still on how few clicks you are getting. Your Click Through Rate (CTR) is rather [...]
(Continuing from The Frustrated Affiliate Marketer Part IV)
You recently created your first blog. There is a sense of accomplishment here because it looks pretty darn good. It took a little bit of trial and error to get those affiliate links right and the integration of Adsense required a little bit of research, but [...]
(Continuing from The Frustrated Affiliate Marketer Part III)
A Landing Page! You come to the conclusion that you need a landing page at this point. You have been spending some time online looking at what others have been marketing (and making money on). In fact, you have spent close to 2 weeks just [...]
(A quick digression from the Frustrated Affiliate Marketer)
So here I am, sitting in San Diego Airport waiting for my delayed flight on Delta to finally arrive (I really do not like Delta, but they are only one of two that goes directly to Atlanta). Thanks goodness for Free Wi-Fi at San Diego Airport. I am [...]
Continuing from The Frustrated Affiliate Marketer Part II…
You are now convinced of a few things at this point:
1) Affiliate marketing is NOT the easy $500/day that everyone advertises
2) ”Google Cash Methods” of affiliate marketing really does not seem to work.
3) Still, the CONCEPT of affiliate marketing makes a whole lot of sense and you start to [...]
Continuing from The Frustrated Affiliate Marketer Part I…
So they are now in the hole about $77 on Google Adwords with nothing to show for it. They spend a little bit of time asking questions on the forums and possibly even go out and buy another book or two. They come to the conclusion [...]
A common story:
A person goes and buys an eBook about affiliate marketing. They create a blog, a website (or even try to do a bit of direct affiliate marketing…known as “Google Cash” methodology) and then create some Google Adwords campaigns. They bid, let’s say $0.10 per click and wait for the money to roll in!
They [...]