If this were your sports betting site, would you do reciprocal links?

I recently started a sports betting information site, maybe 2 weeks ago. I had it submitted to 300 directories and am planning to submit to some paid directories at some point in the future.

The plan is to get some traffic and link popularity to make ads on the left sidebar attractive to sportsbooks, ticket brokers, and online casinos. I guess the search engines have indexed me, because I just started getting link exchange requests.

Now I hadn't planned to do any reciprocal linking with this site, mostly because it's extra work for me. Now I am reconsidering because

1) they are coming to my PR 0 site so it's proably not that much work to get lots of link partners. Lots of link partners = more link popularity and better search engine results = more valuable ad space for my advertisers.

2) they might advertise on the site - they send a link request but may be interested in more.

3) they might be interested in my paid inclusion directory

So are these benefits worth the extra effort of installing and maintaining yet another links driectory?

 

Not for the amount of spam you'll have to filter out.

 

Do you think I'll get more email spam if I have a links directory? Or that I'll get spam submissions to the directory?

 

I got out of having links directories on my site.

Now if someone wants to trade links with me, it is main page to main page only.
No more buried links, no more link farms, etc etc
Just you put my link on your main page and I put your link on my main page.

 

That's interesting, but I prefer to reserve the main page for paying advertisers. How many links would you allow on your homepage?

 

this was exactly how i also feel and i am trying to advocate to my clients...infact i had started a discussion on this and directory submissions in SEarch engine watch forum.....take a look at the topic and there and in particular to post # 16 where i bring up the concept that you are telling above...

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=8696

all your comments on this are welcome....

 

I would also advise you to stay away from the "I exchange links with every site and list them in my well hidden link directory" approach many (mostly spammy) sites take. Rather do some quality exchanges with big sites in your niche because those will also bring you highly targetted traffic in the end.

 

I avoid putting casino ads on my site for ethical reasons. I know they are high paying but sometimes morality is better than greed.

 

I don't consider casino links immoral, so that's not an issue with my site