I started a site a while back maybe 7-8 months agao. I got a few link exchanges with other sites. After a while I abandoned this way of doing things but I left the link exchanges I had made on my site because it was a matter of good faith. I assumed the others would do the same. I promoted my site with blog comments, social bookmarking, articles and all sorts of other things and got my site mooved up in SERPS and PR which in turn benefits the people I link exchange with. Tody i was bored so I started to check my links with my partners and half of them had taken my link down. I dont know whether recently or along time ago as I dint think I would have to constantly check. I was very disappointed with this and I am now glad that I abandoned this way of promoting a site as I dont have time to constantly go back and make sure people are genuine so sorry about that and sorry for venting a bit does other people have this problem. The good thing is it was only a few links but still it wound me up what does everyone think
You know what? I always turn-down requests for link-exchange because most of the times, the other website is not upto-the-mark(according to me). I hated promoting websites who have no content, but some copy paste matter. And basically, I don't like the concept of asking, I like to earn it! You may called me egostic or whatever.
Welcome to the shady world of link exchanging. This is a very common link exchange practice done by spammer 'seo' companies. It is very frustrating to deal with. It basically ruins the power of link exchanges for honest webmasters. Back when I was actively exchanging links I had to custom program a link checking script so that I could periodically remove those abandoned link exchanges. At first I took it very personal and would send those people nasty e-mails. I would end up getting some apologetic replies. Sometimes those links were taken down for legitimate reasons...our website being temporarily down, not being able to find their link, etc. Most of the time those links were taken down with evil intentions of turning their link exchanges into one way links. These days I don't even bother with link exchanges. There are more effective strategies that aren't so frustrating.
I always ignore requests for link exchanges as well. It's a really archaic way of getting links and if the webmaster is still on that level then I want no part of him. Quality sites don't need to solicit for links. Spam sites, MFA's and banner farms are usually the biggest offenders and they don't even care what type of site they solicit. I have no insurance or travel sites and I get requests everyday for link exchanges to those sites. My advice would be to ignore them and exchange links with people that you know or have built a relationship with on forums and such. Exchanges with strangers usually end up with them taking down your link in about a week or two. Scammers. If they are contacting you, that means they have nothing to offer. You have a PR 4 page and they want to exchange links on their un ranked, un indexed blog. No thanks.
thanks guys back when i was starting i thought link exchange was only way to go now I kniow different so even when I stopped doing link exchanges I kept their links on their out of good faith anyway enough venting for one day I am calm again lol
gerdywerdy you are not alone....this practice has been going on for years. I had software that would track my backlinks, but it still was time consuming when you consider the process of getting and maintaining links. You email someone requesting an exchange, they post your link, you post theirs, you check and see if your link is still on their site, it turns up missing, you email them, they tell you to send code again, etc, etc, etc. It gets old.
That's just one more reason why you should to do any link exchange with strangers. It's a better idea to do a 3 way link exchange with some friends you have.
We've never used link exchanges. They are a bad idea... Plus, they just don't work for SEO... We've had no problem getting to over 500,000 links while completely avoiding Link Exchanges... RSS. Widgets. Give-aways. That's all you really need. See some of the other threads under Link Development for more on these ideas.