Links

[niagra]

Hi all,

First time I've posted in this section of the forum - hope it's the correct one.

I have recently set up my own website and made a start getting a few links together. Today I received an email from someone asking to exchange links, their email has links to websites and with me not being very knowledgeable in these sorts of things I am very reticent to click on them just in case it's a scam of some sort.

This is the email they have sent me, I have removed the urls just in case they are dodgy:


While looking for the potential link partners, I came across your website and found it relevant to my theme and I feel that exchanging links (Non-Reciprocal) would be beneficial for both of us in order to get better rankings in SERP and traffic as well.

In return I will provide your link on my website at :

(Auto Site PR-3 Content Rich) OR
(Auto Site PR-1 Content Rich) OR
(Auto Site PR-0 Content Rich)

If you are interested, you can add our link on PR-1 page with the following info:

Title: automaxi roof bars
url:
Desc: Roof Rack Shop is one of the leading automobile website having a wide range of automotive accessories like roof racks,Thule roof racks and many more.

Thanks for creating a great site. I assure you that this would be a long term business relationship. I appreciate your attention and wish you great luck for your site.

I also have some other websites of various themes. If you are interested, you can ask for your theme.

Looking forward to hear from you.


End


The content of the email leads me to think that I wouldn't want to exchange links anyway but I was just wondering if this sort of request was a normal occurence for people?

Many thanks,
Dario

[GNU]

Yeah this is very normal... often sent out automatically... or by hired help from the developing world.

Look at the pages they are offering links on... see whether those pages actually have PR, and see how many links are already on those pages.

What you often see with these things is that the "PR3 Link" they are offering is on a PR3 domain, but the sending page itself is tucked away somewhere and has no PR, and may not even be indexed... and that this page may have 60+ links on it... which de-values each individual link.

They are often a waste of time... but not always... this kind of link building works if done properly... but as with any "trade" you have to know the value of what you are giving / getting.

There are lots of ways to screw you out of your link too... some people will no follow it, cloak it or deliberately de-index the page in Google so that G does not see they are trading links... stuff like that.

If you get it right 3 way links like this do add value... contrary to what a lot of people believe Google's magic spells do not filter them all out, and as long as you don't go beserk farming stupid quantities of the things on your own site you are unlikely to do yourself any harm with a few exchanges like this... the "bad neighborhoods" thing has largely been discredited as "Google Spin" too...

All that said, they are rarely "good links" I don't usually bother with such trades unless I instigate them...

[david8765]

Yeah this sort of thing is normal. One thing I would add would be to say look at it from the point of view of your websites users. Would the website this person wants you to link to be of any use to your users? If not I wouldnt bother but if it would then its just more help to give your users, if you get a link back in return its an added bonus.

[niagra]

That's great. Thanks for the advice. I don't think I'll bother as I do only want links that are related to what I am selling at this stage.

It's all very confusing - I'll have to read up on stuff like this!

Cheers,
Dario

[MadWeb]

We get these emails every single day - they usually start something like "I found your website and was really pleased..."

There are plenty of ways to get back links, better then random link exchanges with websites you've never heard of.

[david64]

A load of swill-ridden reciprocal links are going to give you a boost in the SERPs. The question is do you want a load of misc. links on your site?

As an example that it works, I recently saw a site on page one for somethign competitive like "data recovery". It had 120 reciprocal links pages - each with about 40-50 links on it.

[niagra]

I think I'll stick to "real" links which are appropriate to the content of my site and the content of the links' sites. As you say, it works to get you up the rankings but it all seems a bit cynical - or is that me being naive?!

Thanks,
Dario

[eventdomain]

We get these emails every single day - they usually start something like "I found your website and was really pleased..."

There are plenty of ways to get back links, better then random link exchanges with websites you've never heard of.


Agreed, it's better if you seek out related links yourself - then you know exactly what your linking with.