# The Truth about Link Exchanges: Knowledge is Power



## tiffhlove (May 10, 2006)

What's poppin' everyone? I have a questions please. I have read about sharing or exchanging weblinks to boost your websites business; what is that and how do you exchange weblinks? Is there a fee involved?


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## tiffhlove (May 10, 2006)

*Re: Knowledge is power!*

Please excuse my typos.


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

*Re: Knowledge is power!*



tiffhlove said:


> I have read about sharing or exchanging weblinks to boost your websites business; what is that and how do you exchange weblinks? Is there a fee involved?


A link exchange is simple: you put a link to site A on your site B, and site A puts a link to your site B. _How_ is pretty self-evident, and no there isn't a fee since _in theory_ the link exchange is mutually beneficial.

There are differing opinions on the value of link exchanges - some people swear by them, while others feel they actually harm your search engine standing.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

*Re: Knowledge is power!*

If you think about links in the frame of mind that it is another way for potential customers to get to your site, then you're on the right track. 

If you think about adding links to your site that will benefit your website VISITORS (not your website ranking), then you're on the right track.

For example, if you sell t-shirts about chocolate labs, then visitors to your website might like to know more about bringing up a chocolate lab, they might want to see chocolate lab pictures, they might want books on chocolate lab behavioral habits. Those are the links you might want to add to your site to help your website visitors get more information.

Conversley, someone reading an article or blog about the day to day care of chocolate labs might also be interested in buying an "I Love My Chocolate Lab" t-shirt. So you may want to ask a site with that type information for a link.

If you are just doing searching for any site that has "link exchange" in your topic and you just swap links with any webmaster in the hopes that it will boost your search engine ranking, then you won't be building a long term promotional strategy for your site. 1) The visitors that actually click the links are probably not going to be interested in your product and 2) Any search engine benefit from those unrelated link exchanges will be temporary and maybe even non-existant.

Another way to think about it is that if you create a site that is so unique/beneficial/outstanding/funny/interactive/informative, people with websites and blogs will naturally want to link to you without even asking for a link back (the best kind of link )

Like wikipedia.org, it is a wealth of information and people freely link TO wikipedia without asking for a "link exchange". A more commercial example might be amazon.com or threadless. They have so many products and make it so easy to shop, that people freely link to their product listings.


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## revperrin (May 15, 2006)

*Re: Knowledge is power!*



Rodney said:


> For example, if you sell t-shirts about chocolate labs, then visitors to your website might like to know more about bringing up a chocolate lab, they might want to see chocolate lab pictures, they might want books on chocolate lab behavioral habits. Those are the links you might want to add to your site to help your website visitors get more information.
> .


Those are called relevent links The search engines in most part not all are relevancy search engines so like when I was looking for relevant link partners for my site I looked and T shirts since that is my product and I looked at Christian sites since that is my product specialty. 
When I looked through some of the T Shirt sites I found this one. which put alot of people with sites with simular relevancy all in one place. 
When I hired stores online for their web builder tools and marketing tools and online store interface web linking was one of the best free tools there is to help your statis with the relevancy search engins. The other thing is the link partners statis on the web. You can find that out easiley if you down load a free tool bar from google. You want sites to post a link to your site with a 3 or greater rank. I have a 3 but if a 1 wants to trade links I still do it if they are relavent to what I do. Who knows I may be helping them more than they are me now but what if they evetually become a 10 ranked site then they will definatley boost my site up.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> The other thing is the link partners statis on the web. You can find that out easiley if you down load a free tool bar from google. You want sites to post a link to your site with a 3 or greater rank.


This is what I call the WRONG way of thinking of "link exchanges".

People used to link to sites they just "like". Since search engines started putting weight on links TO your website, links have become sort of a commodity. So much so, that my inbox is filled with "spam" requests for "link exchanges". Why, because someone searched their favorite search engine for t-shirts and saw that my site ranked well and they want me to link to them to "boost them up". Most of the time the emails are automated through some link exchange management company that checks PageRank and sends out emails for their clients. They get marked as spam. Be careful when sending out emails trying to ask a webmaster for a link exchange. Too many emails that I see all read the same. Like the person on the end either copied a template, never visited my site to figure out what it's about, or fully automated the process. Get personal. Try to address the webmaster by name. Show that you've actually been to the site. Don't bring up things like "pagerank" and "google rankings". Talk about relevancy to their site and how it will benefit their site and site visitors.



> I have a 3 but if a 1 wants to trade links I still do it if they are relavent to what I do. Who knows I may be helping them more than they are me now but what if they evetually become a 10 ranked site then they will definatley boost my site up.


Pagerank is nice, but it isn't the end goal. Building a site that is useful for your visitors and gets them where they want to go is.

Even one of Google's own employees (Matt Cutts), doesn't recommend "Link Exchanges" in the way they are commonly done these days:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-link-exchange-emails/

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/


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## revperrin (May 15, 2006)

I try to make a web site easy to navigate. Give my visitors a welcomeing experiance and provide them with a good selection at a reasonable price. There are probley thousands of sites with tens of thousands of $s sank in to them that never get seen. The credit card monthley charge ant the hoasting fee and start up loan payment goes every month. I find my self scrambling to stay up and running. I believe in what we do so I keep trying so if you know other free ways to improve page rank on the search engines I would love to hear it so I can try that as well. I know I got off the link subject a little but it kinda fit sorry about the spelling before some one makes fun of me. LOL


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## MotoskinGraphix (Apr 28, 2006)

content, keywords and research!!!!


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## Xenyo (Jun 9, 2006)

I agree with Rodney on this subject that a site should focus their off site links on things that would benefit their viewers. However, such is the case with the current way that search engines work that there will be webmasters that link freely for improved pagerank.

Usually when I see a site that has many links to obvious link exchange farms, I get put off - but maybe that just me.

The best way really is as in any business to build a business based on a good product or service. Then try to get good traffic in by participating in related communities, link exchanges with worthwhile sites, submission to related directories, etc. 

I am not saying pagerank isnt important, just that I feel alot of people are getting carried away and getting bad exchanges may hurt your site.


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## dub3325 (Jun 7, 2006)

So, if I linked my website say....on hundreds of forums, would this be considered ways of boosting my rank? Not to say that i would troll forums, and spam ads, but if I was a regular member, with a link in my sig. 

Are those counted by search engines?


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> So, if I linked my website say....on hundreds of forums, would this be considered ways of boosting my rank? Not to say that i would troll forums, and spam ads, but if I was a regular member, with a link in my sig.


Probably wouldn't increase your rank that much.

See post 10-14 in this thread:
http://www.t-shirtforums.com/showthread.php?t=3455


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## dub3325 (Jun 7, 2006)

Thx Rodney, 

You're the man!


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