How should I respond to a link exchange request?

[Andrew Crisp]

I received this email today (see below) - what should I do with it? Will it genuinely help with SEO? Is this black hat or white hat SEO?

[FONT=&quot]Dear Webmaster,

While browsing I came across your great website!! I am building back links for one of our
website and would be glad to get our site placed in your related link page at :

http://www.compromiseagreement.org.uk/links.htm

Could you please consider posting our link in your website if you like its content.

Our Linking detail is given here :-
..............................................................................................................................................................
URL :- http://www.yourmarriagecounselor.com
Title :- Marriage Counseling, NJ
Description:- Dr. Marty is a New Jersey Licensed therapist who provides a wealth of information on marriage counseling and therapy through his website.


<a href="http://www.yourmarriagecounselor.com"> Marriage Counseling, NJ</a><br>Dr. Marty is a New Jersey Licensed therapist who provides a wealth of information on marriage counseling and therapy through his website.<br>

..............................................................................................................................................................
Your link will be added on our relevant and good PR link page after your positive response

Hope you'll consider to my mail , waiting for your reply soon,

Thanks in Advance!!
kabir
Email:- [email protected][/FONT]


I get this sort of thing quite often - any thoughts?

Thanks

Andrew

 

[fisicx]

Add to the junk mail filter.

Look at the senders email address. It's someone working for a link building company, probably in India. In fact it's quite likely your email address has been sold on by the company who did your link building.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

It would be worth considering if it's related to your field, and UK based.

Most other links are a bit of a waste of time. (which is why the good ones are such hard work )

 

[shef26]

Exchanging links with other websites is one of the best ways for your website's popularity and is a component of SEO . One thing that should be kept in mind is to exchange links with the websites having a similar theme/field. If you are receiving emails from websites which are similar to your website theme/field, you can exchange links with them by accepting their offer and adding their url to your website link page. In return tell them to add your link also. This is the way of reciprocal link exchange.

 

[Birmingham]

i get a lot of these. it's just spam. don't respond. it will do you more harm than good.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

 

[Pembrokeshire Directory]

We get a lot of emails that this, as we offer a link exchange for businesses to promote they product either from the UK or if they delivery to the UK. when looking at they website we see they have NO links page on they site so we either refuse and hit spam button or offer them a one of payment to list they business on one of our links page

 

[acee]

The offer always sounds genuine, but in reality you will probably find you'll give them a far better link than they can offer you.

You will also probably start to receive similarly worded requests from other companies subscribing to the same link building scheme.

 

[loredan]

Don't bother with these emails...I call them link beggars

 

[deniser]

Does anyone still exchange links? I thought they were worthless these days.

 

[ForexPro]

Definitely add to the junk mail. You don't want to exchange any links in reality because Google does not like this and it may affect your search rankings negatively.