link exchange trends/effectiveness (Full Version)

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Joe Hussar -> link exchange trends/effectiveness (2/15/2007 9:03:18)

Hi.............

My "reading" of link exchanges with sites (having some synergy with your own) is that the value of link exchanges may be limited, but still have some merit.

I get a lot of requests for links exchanges - and have noticed a distinct trend:

(1) many request links to their sites, but the link they offer to post in return post is on a "directory" (that isn't directly accessible from their home page)

(2) Many requests also offer to post to a directory (that IS accessible from their home page) but has a completely different URL than their "base" web site.

(3) many requests are totally irrelevant - product/service wise to my site's visitors

I thought that for an exchange to have any merit at all (generally speaking):

(1) it should be directly relevant to your own site visitors

ie: my site is about cake/candy making - a link to someone selling shoes is a total waste, and may in fact be worse than that (?)

(2) links to directories are generally a waste of time - most of the ones I look at seem to exist just to "collect" links, have bad layouts, not logically put together, and I can't imagine myself (or anyone else) going there to find something - doesn't 90% of the world use MSN, google, yahoo (?)

(3) links should be directly accessible form the "swapees" [(if that's a word :- )] home page, and the actual url of the "swapees" link page should reflect the same web site - not something entirely different

ie: if I were to swap links with a site called: www.cakefrosting.com then their links page should be (something) like this: www.cakefrosting/links.htm

However, there seems to be such a trend (in a different direction, as described above) maybe I'm missing something?

Am I just out of date??

Any comments are really appreciated!

Thank you.



Mojo -> RE: link exchange trends/effectiveness (2/15/2007 14:04:42)

There are several things at work here.
1. Reciprocal links have been downplayed by the search engines. They don't seem to count for very much any longer.
2. Home page links are not necessarily the most important page to have your link located.
3. Links pages are also downplayed by search engines. Link pages could also be a quality indicator - or lack of quality indicator - to the search engines.
4. Links do not have to be from a site in the same industry to be of value, but a link surrounded by the proper text or on an on topic page will be stronger than one that is not. Think context.

This last comment is where many people go wrong. I can link (and receive SE credit) from a digital camera site to a knife site with the proper introduction. If the camera site has an article about the best cameras for taking product pictures and then uses knives as an example - this would be a good link for the knife site. Even though the camera site is unrelated, the article would be spot on and phrase matching by the search engines will connect the dots.



noelx99 -> RE: link exchange trends/effectiveness (2/22/2007 16:45:09)

I think that the traffic from links is an important factor too. I'll willingly trade links when it makes sense to - because the users of my site might actually benefit from the link and the users of the other site might actually like my site too.




DebSpecs -> RE: links and blogs (2/26/2007 14:24:51)

I've heard that blogging everyday can help SE rankings. I've kept a blog for awhile that highlights our new products of sun & reading glasses, but a marketing specialist encouraged me to blog more often.

My question is: How can I tell if the backlinks from Blogger to my site are getting indexed?

When I GOOGLE "link:www.debspecs.com", I see many backlinks, including my signature from this forum, but none from my blogger site.

Is the indexing of blogger backlinks necessary to have a positive effect on SE rankings?

thank you!
Falala



jurgen -> RE: links and blogs (2/26/2007 20:10:15)

As Mojo mentioned before I think links, as far as SEO concerns, are out dated. They are not relevant anymore as they have used to be.
Yes, you should have outgoing and incoming links. I look at it this way, if it is helpful information for my visitors by no means go for it. But certainly do not link to each and everybody out there. if you are looking for linking for the sake of SEO, think again. In these days content is the key and no shady link scheme.
Yes, you should have links in and out, but that is not priority anymore. Looking at my stats there are hardly any visitors from my "link partners" so why bother. The main traffic I am having is from the main search engines and "direct refferals".



Reflect -> RE: links and blogs (2/28/2007 13:56:50)

Jurgen,

I respectfully disagree.

Links are not dead...far from it.

I think you might mean FFA (Free for all/non genre specific directories) links are dead. Even then they are not, they just give much less weight. Think 1 on genre link= 50 non genre links in terms of SE love/weight.

I am NOT saying content is not king. I am saying link weight is far from dead and it is still a pice of the overall puzzle.

Take care,

Brian



jurgen -> RE: links and blogs (2/28/2007 15:19:47)

Hello Brian,

let me rephrase my post. I did not say that link exchange is dead. And yes, you should work on your linking scheme. What I ment to say was that you should put much more energy in your content and SEO than fiddling around with link exchange. With the right content and a few relevant links you will do as good, if not even better, than "so-so" content and LOTS of non relevant links. Than again, this is just me talking..... :-)

Jurgen



Mojo -> RE: links and blogs (2/28/2007 23:12:09)

quote:

As Mojo mentioned before


I didn't say links are dead. I suggested that recip links have been downplayed.

quote:

With the right content and a few relevant links you will do as good, if not even better, than "so-so" content and LOTS of non relevant links


Hmm... there are plenty of example of sites ranking with little content based upon incoming links (search on googlebomb), but I haven't see the opposite.



Reflect -> RE: links and blogs (3/2/2007 11:00:25)

Jurgen,

Depends on what genre you are targeting. Things morph from genre to genre. What works great getting you to page one in one genre might have you burried in another genre.

Try breaking into travel sites without a few thousand links and get ranked. Even with great content, it just isn't going to happen.

Don't get me wrong though. A website is there to have great content that changes and draws surfers back. It's just getting the surfer to the site to begin with.

Then again PPC is a persons best friend for a jump start until SERPs set in.

Take care,

Brian



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