Perhaps someone can enlighten me. How are link exchanges good for your site??? If you send 1 visitor to another site, they may or may not send 1 back to you. Even if they send visitors on a 1:1 basis, you don't gain anything since you have sent the equal number of visitors away from your site! So, can someone tell me, what is it about link exchanges that I maybe missing?
Hi , im not sure if you are joking or not? You're asking about link exchanges and you're promoting web directorys Only kidding.. Where i see them beneficial is backlinks.. I exchange links for my finance website with other finance sites and Google sees them related and better quality links!
In moderation they are fine... It is the way of the web to exchange links... one blog links to another and vis-versa... As for it being a serious SEO strategy, then don't go there... it was something that was beneficial years ago... but not anymore... You are familiar with White Hat SEO... and Black Hat SEO... but link exchanges are Old Hat SEO...
well, many of the biggest and most established sites particularly in the humor and entertainment sectors do it. Not sure if they will agree that it is 'Old Hat SEO'. Also, it is typically not for backlinks, since it is reciprocal and is definitely not why sites do it....
I quit doing link exchanges a couple years ago because I got tired of the time it took to keep track of whether my links were being reciprocated or not. One way back links via various marketing methods and good seo practices have paid off for me many times over.
Well ok, but that doesn't say anything about their effectiveness and why everyone is still doing it. Anyone else has opinions?
They are good if you want your readers to click on them and read that content... I have seen some good sites linking to many non-related sites. Unless there is a value for your reader, even search engines aren't buying sites that do link exchanges. Google wants you to use the "nofollow" tag to links on your site, so that their spiders can make sure that your site is clean. In that way, linking out to sites would then be good for the reader, but bad for the spider! I guess you can safely use them with "nofollow" added, because ultimately it is your readers who get you traffic.
Let's say you get a visitor to your site. After he's seen yours, he goes away elsewhere, or closes the browser window. Either way, you no longer have him on your site. If you use a link exchange and that helps you get more visitors, that's more beneficial than not using it. Some people work out traffic exchanges rather than just link exchanges for just this reason. Plus, you could structure it as non reciprocal linking (3 way or more) - in which case, it still helps in backlinks. It may or may not be worthwhile for your specific site; you need to evaluate it to decide whether to implement it or not. But as a generic strategy, it's one more possibility that still has reasonable value.
Link exchanges don't give you visitors on a 1:1 ratio they usually give you one link from your site to and one link from the reciprocating site. The visitors that flow back and forth are not controlled. The higher the PR of the site you exchange links with the better. This helps your SEO - Search Engine Optimization - the search engines views your site more worthy. This is not the only thing they do to rate you. You also want the back link from a site that is of the same or related topic. For example if you have a food related site you don't want to link to a car related site. Neither your food site or the car site would benefit from the exchange of visitors. However you may also link to a site that may not help you. You do not want to link to a site or IP that has been blacklisted. You can search out similar sites and request a link exchange but then you have to add their link and check to see they add your link where it's supposed to be. Then you need to check repetitively to verifiy the links still there and active. If it's not there contact them and ask why and if they want you to maintain their link on your site to place your link back on their site. If they do not restore your link take their link off your site. Higher PR sites and blogs can charge a monthly fee for the links they allow on there sites. You really need to check their site and check your link if you have paid. So if you go that way you need to pay on top of the work you put into it. Link exchanges are not all created equal. I use one that does all the work for me. Including check the link on the other site is active. The sites are in good standing. Gets me 1 way links from good PR related sites. They even update the links on my site. I just pay and they do everything else. Visitors leave your site many ways. They may just leave and go do something else. They may have found your site doing a search in their browser and click on back browser to go through the search results some more. If you have Google AdSense on site they may go that way. Whatever the reason once they decide to leave they're gone. If you want them to stay around for a while "you" need to give them a reason to stay. John
i used to do link exchanges religiously they are pretty much old school idea now, still fine if they are related sites and have pr, authority, etc, but there are way better ways to get links now, commenting on blogs, forums like this, press releases, articles, etc and they are 1 way links which are better and of more value in the search engines, reciprocal linking when i was doing it was like a full time job and that was no fun!
Those are the two main reasons. Believe it or not, but many webmasters are still exchanging links with the aim of increasing the Google PageRank of their website, hoping that will give their website a better position in the search-engines. They are totally unaware that that is not the case and that they should limit their link-exchange practice to relevant websites only, use the nofollow attribute on non-related websites (or simply not bother to exchange links at all with such websites), limit the total number of exchanged links, link only to “good-neighbourhood†websites, etc, etc. I'm with you that one of the main factors of link-exchange is that there should be a value for your readers. However, I think you are overlooking a factor in the use of the nofollow attribute. Webmasters should not link to dodgy websites at all, not just using the nofollow attribute on such websites. To answer the original question: yes, link-exchange can be very beneficial. To give you a bad example: I know of one travel-related website that has the top position in Big G's ranking for some 250 keyword phrases (I kid you not!) in a competitive field. They've accomplished this through excessive link-exchanging with half a dozen related websites, by creating purpose-built blogs and by submitting articles that are only related to these few websites. All this using those keyword phrases as the anchor text. Of course, this is definitely not an ethical link-building practice, but it is a very effective one...until you get caught. They're so busted if caught!
My rule of thumb is: backlinks are best but only when they are relevant to my customers, backlinks are even better when they are relevant and come from a site with better pr than mine, backlinks really can propel your site up the rankings but a link is not a link is not a link! (if you see what i mean!) Dave
My rule of thumb is: backlinks are best but only when they are relevant to my customers, backlinks are even better when they are relevant and come from a site with better pr than mine, backlinks really can propel your site up the rankings but a link is not a link is not a link! (if you see what i mean!) Dave
Yes, I second that. I apologize if I mislead someone with that previous line, but I really meant, if you want to link out, link out to useful content, but also use the nofollow attribute. Hope that's ok .