Link Exchange Question

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Permalink Reply by Katherine Corkill on March 16, 2010 at 10:04am

In terms of link exchanges anymore, they are a waste of time and google no longer gives them any weight, basically they cancel each other out. I stopped pursuing link exchanges or accepting any over a year ago.

The only way a site gains ranking now is through inbound links only. So your objective is to get others to link to you because they talk about your products, or like something you wrote, etc. etc. This can be difficult to accomplish and requires a lot of effort on your part by interacting with others, sharing information, and basically do a lot of social networking.

So, personally I would disregard their request and move on to getting others to talk and promote you to get better SERP.

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Permalink Reply by IBN Member Charlene Sevier on March 16, 2010 at 12:26pm

Katherine,

I appreciate your advice and will take it into consideration. The search engine rules keep moving and there is so much to learn. It does not make sense to me that someone would ask for a link exchange and then have a problem giving you the correct web site. Probably not worth the time for many reasons.

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Martin on March 16, 2010 at 2:03pm

Maybe this person is requesting what's called a 3 way link exchange with you? As Katherine mentioned a regular link exchange is of very little value these days to a search engine, so sometimes people will do what is called a 3 way link. For instance you own site # 1, and the other person owns sites #2, and # 3. In a 3 way link exchange you would link from your site #1, to their site # 3, and they would link to your site # 1, from their site #2. This type of linking is perceived to have more value in terms of search engine rankings.

I don't mean to suggest that this particular link exchange is a worth while venture for you, it's just a guess at what might be going on.

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Permalink Reply by Katherine Corkill on March 16, 2010 at 3:48pm

Ewww...very tricky, yet sounds interesting. Hadn't thought of that! Eventually Google will figure this out too and find some way to minimize its' benefit as well. It seems they are always outsmarting us when we think we have it going on....including paid links which are also damaging to SERP so we need to be wary these.

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Martin on March 20, 2010 at 3:25am

It is a little interesting. It's probably best executed when you actually own all three of the sites. I try to avoid linking out from any of my main sites. An e-commerce site rarely has enough "word content" to make up for a bunch of external links. Internal links on the other hand are great the more the merrier but like you said people should be wary of mass linking services. Quality links are much more beneficial than a high quantity of links from sites with non related content. For instance 1 link from a cosmetic site to your cosmetic site is more valued than five links from non related sites. My advice for a person who needs a link is to make it themselves by writing several blogspot blogs, or publishing an informative lens on squidoo, etc etc, and then link those high quality hand crafted sites to your stores. Sorry if I'm babbling it's 3:30 in the morning and sleep escapes me.

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Permalink Reply by IBN Member Charlene Sevier on March 20, 2010 at 8:43am

Hi Bryan,

I hope you got some sleep last night. Thanks for your comments. There is so much to learn and keep abreast of with the search engines. I think your focus on quality vs quantity is a good one. I'm not sure what the people who are contacting me are trying to do, I think I will focus instead on what I am trying to do.

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Permalink Reply by Christine White - Scandle LLC on March 22, 2010 at 11:07am

Hi Charlene,

Hope business is going well? Yes, Google keeps changing the game on us! They used to put weight on link exchange, but I'm not sure what the story is now. What you are describing sounds shady. I only accept direct links meaning that they have to link to our site directly from their site and their links page can not be 16 pages deep (for instance). :D I have my assitant go through every few months and make sure it's active. I haven't had any new links added in over a year, but when I was seeking them out...I only linked with sites that had keywords I was trying to target.

Right now, I think the biggest help for rankings is what Katherine mentioned "inbound links," which we have achieved through blogger reviews and giveaways.

Christine
Scandle LLC

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Permalink Reply by IBN Member Charlene Sevier on March 22, 2010 at 12:45pm

Hi Christine,

It's nice to hear from you and I hope you are doing well. I appreciate your insights on this. It is a good idea to check the links from time to time - both to make sure it still works and also to see if they are still linking to you. In this case, I've politely declined.

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