Link Exchange Technique

Many SEO specialists will help you promote your website by trying to arrange link exchanges with other websites.


How does this work? The SEO specialist compiles a list of website contact information, and sends out emails which basically say "If you link to this website, we'll link to yours."

Now, there's nothing wrong with this, but it needs to be handled delicately and carefully. Some SEO specialists are neither delicate nor careful; they are more like bulls in china shops.

Here's the problem: it is way too tempting for SEO people to cut corners and take short cuts in seeking link exchanges. I can't begin to count the number of times I've received emails that ask me - the webmaster of an educational website - to do a link exchange with an online gambling website.

Do you suppose the idiot who is promoting that site even stopped to wonder if there was a lamb's chance in a lion's pride of an educational website linking to a gambling site? Of course not! This is an example of a complete idiot getting paid big bucks to do nothing useful.

Although, of course, he can't be too much of an idiot if he's persuaded someone to hire him!

The thing is, intelligent search algorithms figure out how pointless links like that are anyway, so your links to websites that are unrelated really aren't very useful.

Other SEO's write emails that are incredibly rude: "Here's a link to your site. Now link to my client's site in the next 24 hours or I'll remove your link."

Do you really think that's going to be helpful?

If you're going to hire someone to try to get link exchanges, I would recommend that you do two things:

1. Insist on reading the correspondence your SEO sends out.

2. Insist on seeing a list of sites your SEO company is contacting - that way you can spot-check their work, and make sure they're actually contacting webmasters with related content.

Remember that most webmasters are sick-to-death of these kinds of emails, and you're more likely to irritate them than actually get a link exchange.