Hey. Wanted to hear your thoughts on the link exchange program at FreeRelevantLinks.com. Apparently as a webmaster you install a web script on the website, which automatically puts links to other websites in the network. In return you get free links from other websites that have the same script, many of which are reciprocals. You can select the category which you participate in (to make links relevant) I did a little research on the service, and it seems a fishy. The idea seems like an automated link farm, which can be tracked by Google. Here are some of the opinions I found at Digital Point archives: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=120885 Thanks all for posting your thoughts on this, here is my update: 1. I eventually got 1 link from them in about 40 days. 10 days late. 2. I checked the link, my link want not on the page AND the PR was less than 3 (site claims you need a PR of 3 to get into program.) 3. I checked all of the 5 sites I am linking too and found: a. 1 No longer exists. b. 1 has a page rank of 0. c. 1 has a page rank of 1. d. 1 has a page rank of 2. e. 1 has a page rank of 5. So in conclusion they have lied to me 6 times in all. The only way I could contact them is when I complained about the site that was supposed to link to me, there is no other way to get hold of these scammers! I Hope this post provides enough information to other that want to use the "freerelevantlinks" service. I like the idea, just a pity that it’s badly run. Reply: Hi my name is Rob and I just bought Freerelevantlinks.com in May of 2007 and we have totally revamped and created a new service. We have an 800 number along with Live help and yes we do answer our emails. I do agree that the last service here was pretty much scammy and thats why we dumped it. Please atleast take a look at the website and read about our service, you will not find a better Free Link Exchange service on the web. Thanks. Rob http://www.freerelevantlinks.com 1.877.823.1543 ext 1 ------------------------------------- http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=173802&highlight=freerelevantlinks.com If you add your website to http://www.freerelevantlinks.com people that add their sites after you in your area automaticall add on topic links from their site to yours.. it works pretty well I used it on a couple of gambling sites I had awhile back .. There is a downside though, there's no customer service.. I added it to my first website about a year ago, at the same time as I added it to my ladies gambling site.. a month or so later (I believe the program was still pretty new then.. ) I checked, I had no backlinks from them, so I sold the space and removed them. I forgot to remove them from the ladies gambling site, so while looking through my backlinks I noticed that alot of actual online casinos were linking to me.. I checked and this is where they came from! That was pretty awesome! So I decided to put it back on site #1 .. nope. Banned. Well I ran accross them via email again today, and added them to some of my newer sites, and thought I'd share here The posts are before the purchase of the company by new owners, who claim to have made the service better. Wanted to hear your opinions on this, and other similar services. Is it worth it? Can you get banned? Is this considered a link farm?
I don't think 'automated' link exchange can do you any good. You should avoid link exchanges altogether, if you are still keen, evaluate the sites that you are exchanging links with (not just on the basis of PR).
Don't Do It! It leaves a huge footprint that Google can see Read Google's own guidelines regarding link exchanges... http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356