Link Exchanges - the novice version
Draft
Link exchanges are one of the processes you have to embrace to get your site noticed on that big old web. Ideally you’d never have to do it because your content would be sooo good that people would link to lots of your pages just because they’re great. Nice idea but for most of us that just isn’t going to happen. Instead we have to make it happen.
Making it happen
You can build your site’s popularity in the search engines by a number of means - both good, bad and iffy. I’d recommend taking the good means every time. So it may take longer, it may take more work, atleast you won’t be fretting everytime the search engines decide to change their algorthms that you’ll be penalised. They all have different ways of assessing your site but by taking a conservative route you’ll meet all their requirements and not trip over any of the gotchas.
If you find yourself needing to read the Google Patent to try and stay on the right side then you need to pull back, reconsider your priorities and remember that it’s not that hard!
This article deals with link exchanges and not general SEO principles but the mindset is the same.
White Hat Link Exchanges
- Links between sites where there is endorsement of the others business
- Links between sites where there is no endorsement of the others business
- Links between a directory and a site
Black Hat Link Exchanges
- Links where one party creates invalid links back - either by using robots.txt, javascript or redirects
- Links where one party uses a valueless subdomain to hold the links
- Links where one party uses a third party to manage and publish the links
- Links where one party insists on a banner on your home page in order to list deep within their site (more)
- Referral Spam
Themed links
Even if your site has only one page, it has a theme. Identify the theme.
This site is a technical site. Because I’ve added personal stuff into the blog, and the fact that the sites I’ve worked on tend to be property investment related has made it a bit muddled. But if you have a site representing your business it will have a theme. It’s real estate, or engineering, or law.
Link only to sites related to your theme. Find a discrete little page to link back to the sites that have helped you technically if you want but make that a minor part of your links section.
And don’t use the word links if you can help it 
This may leave you cold but you need a database to manage your links.
You will find plenty of directory scripts that you can use such as wsnlinks and lma and there are others that use text files rather than real databases.
Bite the bullet and pay someone to set it up if you need to. You’ll be grateful later when you have hundreds of links to check and maintain.
Make the first move
When you visit a page that you want to link to you will often get rebuffed if your home page has less than PR4. Perservere - it’s a catch-22.
- Find partners that will allow you to link.
- Find forums dealing with your pet subject. Only participate if they will let you have a signature (more) and make some useful (not spammy) posts.
- Finding New Links
* Themed links
* Spammy links
* Traps
* When to be generous - Marking links as recipricol
- Processing link request emails (more)
- Checking link exchange forums
Administration of your directory
- Checking recipricol links
- Checking duplicate links
- Checking dead links
- Breaking categories up
Information about link exchanging has been written before, will be written again and I don’t really want to “recreate the wheel” but I get questions so I thought I’d put together my thoughts as a resource. The links contained are pages which may hold extra information which may be of use.
Greetings
My name is Lavanya Joseph. I have a doubt about link exchange. i.e.
1. For saturation of link exchange, how many links must have in each page of the links categories.
2. In google search how much page rank must have our site for saturation of link exchange.
3. Is there necessary to come all keywords of our site to position 1 in google search.
waiting for your reply
Thanks and Regards
Comment by Lavanya Joseph — July 13, 2005 @ 11:22 pm
Saturation
This is a biggie debated all over. Google reckons no more than 100 links on a page, and that probably counts all the internal links. Remember that the pages have to cater for humans too so I prefer no more than 50 and preferably 20.
If a category gets to more than 60 (3 pages) I look for similarities and create new subcategories. Now that can be bad because the index gets deeper but the theming gets stronger and it’s better for the humans.
Page Rank
PR4 seems to be the magic figure but I’m flexible on that if the page is “real” and the site owner is committed.
Do you have to be at #1?
Page 1 is always good but you may be setting yourself up for failure if you’re trying to be #1. SEO is, like anything, a trade off between effort and results. You can put alot of effort in and get small gains which translate to significant business. But if you can’t convert the traffic to revenue generating business then you might as well be happy with a lower SERPs ranking and put your energy into something else.
Sarah
Comment by sarahk — August 18, 2005 @ 10:13 am
I am really beginning to doubt the value in the Google PR rating. I have a PR 0 (zero) site, yeah I dropped over night from 3 to 0.
Guess what, if I search for Computer Consultant in Google for UK first page (No 3), Yahoo first page, MSN No 1. How can that be ?!?
So the idea of worrying about yoour PR rating is more than likely diverting your attention away from the real issues you need to solve.
“Links” - just don’t rely of reciprical or exchanges to boost your PR.
“Key Words” - Links that contain key words: bingo…
Comment by IT Consultant — July 23, 2006 @ 7:57 am
I’m with you there.
However I would recommend a visit to Google’s website tools, verify your site and see what Google is reporting about the site. There may be something wrong and the PR drop is the first symptom.
I have a new, very small, quiet, and very niche site with few inbound and outbound links yet it’s PR5. To me this proves PR is a gimmick and the algo is far more complicated than anyone knows.
Comment by Sarah King — July 23, 2006 @ 8:35 am
PR is a complete and utter MONTIZATION model made up by Google.
Prove me wrong.
-kevin
Comment by kevin from become-a-copywriter.com — December 16, 2006 @ 6:24 am
I suspect you mean monetisation. And I suspect you are right. It certainly keeps us talking Google far more than we talk Yahoo, MSN or any of the other players.
Comment by Sarah King — December 16, 2006 @ 6:32 am
From what I hear lately, the best place to get links is from directories. They look more like an authority site, and they carry more weight than a regular website.
Comment by Doug — December 19, 2006 @ 1:36 am
How long does it usually take before google recognizes your incoming links I have over 10,000 inbound link, yahoo finds them all google zero
Comment by Rich S — December 30, 2006 @ 12:32 pm
Google updates those stats infrequently. You know they are there. Chill and ride it out!
Comment by Sarah King — December 31, 2006 @ 12:40 pm
Great summing up of the types of link exchange there are. I found this article realy useful.
Although it’s alot of work (link exchange ). And if you’r going for it go all out or not at all.
Comment by forum overzicht — February 3, 2007 @ 3:22 am
I had a linkcatalogsite… After a while it grew so fast thanks to the ammunt of spammers out there… Nearly 3000 new urls per day.. So i had to close it…
Comment by Alexander — February 19, 2007 @ 4:34 am
link exchange - dead - finito, thats it.
Comment by jewel — March 2, 2007 @ 10:19 am
But PR ist important as well, Kevin. Jürgen from Germany
Comment by jürgen — March 18, 2007 @ 1:16 am
I hat spamers they are recking the system for everyone
Comment by Paul Francis — March 22, 2007 @ 6:57 am
I think too much relevance is put on google page rank,I think its time the rest of the search engines or the industry overall came up with a page rank system that includes all the major SE players which gives a fairer result.
Comment by mittmoo — April 3, 2007 @ 2:07 am
Would’nt agree with that, Mittmoo, ranking is king along with click / sales conversion, I for one couldn’t afford to pay per click non stop for my site the cost of the adwords for lingerie and related terms is driven higher by massive corporations.
Comment by Dajster — April 12, 2007 @ 5:21 pm
Do somebody knows where i can check links? if they are ok? not reflected etc.? please give feedback
Comment by Martin — April 16, 2007 @ 4:23 am
I’d check out http://www.webconfs.com/ they have all kinds of free seo tools.
Comment by Anita Johnson — April 20, 2007 @ 10:08 am
i think it doesn’t matter about the links in that sense because blogs are a much more effective way of boosting traffic to your site.
Comment by phil poynter — May 10, 2007 @ 10:58 pm
you have to take into consideration that when building your site up links work well but blogs and forums work so much better.
Comment by bucon — May 29, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
What do you guys think about buying links from a place that puts you on like 100 different sites? Great article BTW
Comment by Mandy — June 4, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
Yeah, there is a website called Search Engine Trust or something. They have a network of websites where you can use to link to your site. The membership fee is hefty though.
Comment by Bangkok photos — June 7, 2007 @ 2:50 am
is anyone knows what is the most important things a site should have in order to get google page rank 1 as soon as possible when our site already been indexed by google? so that our linking strategy to get rank higher could be achieve with good understanding how it is attained.
Comment by redspace — June 9, 2007 @ 11:49 am
PR1 is easily obtained - but PR is only updated every quarter so if your link partners are worried about PR then you need to move on and find a better option!
Comment by Sarah King — June 9, 2007 @ 7:39 pm
How long does it usually take before google recognizes your incoming links I have over 10,000 inbound link, yahoo finds them all google zero
Comment by Aani — July 10, 2007 @ 10:43 pm
I always use white hat tactics, dont think I could live with the stress of doing something iffy
Comment by Tracy — October 2, 2007 @ 7:14 pm
Google will never show the real amount of incoming links.
Comment by fel3232 — January 9, 2008 @ 11:26 am
Hi, it can take more then 3 months before google find new links. again is depends on the PR of of page. sites with a high PR are indexed more often than low PR. fx google usally finds a link om a PR5-7 site on less than 24 hours
Comment by spil — April 18, 2008 @ 11:00 pm