I’ve received a number of emails to not only my personal account but also to the email address assigned for Perfcast from individuals asking to exchange links. Each time I read an email like this, I get a nostalgic feeling because this is how links were exchanged 3-5 years ago. In this day in age, exchanging links in this fashion doesn’t work anymore so please, stop wasting your time.
Instead, create an awesome guest post for a popular site that is either within your niche or is on the fringe of a related niche. This technique is a win-win for both the publisher and the post author. Generally, the blog author will allow you to place a link to a blog of your choosing either at the beginning or end of the article. This means your link will be displayed within the content of the post and not in some obscure location such as the sidebar or the footer. This my friends, is how to exchange links in 2008.
If you don’t feel like guest posting to get links, you could always create accounts on a wide assortment of sites and services with each account having a link pointing back to your own site. That way, you are in full control of your linking structure and you don’t need to rely on someone to publish your content. In fact, if you are just starting a blog or have recently launched one, you would be smart to grab yourself a Twitter account and at least publish one tweet with a link to your blog. Twitter is being crawled by Google Search engines what seems like every second of the day. Who needs SEO buffs to get listed in the search engines when you can use this technique and be listed in sometimes, under 15 minutes.
13 thoughts on “Asking For A Link Exchange Doesn’t Work Anymore”
I agree with you. I also think you are right about Twitter but I question how long it’s value will last. As you say, times change and search engines moveon.
I own a law related website that has started to rank at the top of the first page on Google for many keyword phrases through a lot of hard work of my own over the past year. It still amazes me how many link exchange requests I get from webmasters who have sites that are not even related to my own.
Even when the sites are related to my own, I can’t help but think to myself “You go right ahead wasting your time trying to get those worthless link exchanges and I will keep doing what has been working for my site”.
Like Shirley mentioned above, I too get roughly ten requests for link exchanges every week.
Something that I don’t think anyone mentioned here is that a lot of the link exchanges requests you might get are coming from supposed “SEO Experts”.
A lot of people out there have put up a website and then contract with another company or hire an internal marketing person to market their website and don’t even realize that they are throwing their money away on these SEO tactics that working 5 years ago.
It amazes me how many people out there market themselves as an SEO expert, but truth betold, they don’t have a clue when it comes to SEO and how it should be done. They think just because they’ve done some marketing in a brick and mortar business that that experience translates to Internet marketing, WRONG!
Thanks for the tip about using Twitter. I don’t know a lot about Google’s linking science, but it does seem as though two site operators should be able to link to one another without penalty provided they have similar audiences and subject matter; it just makes sense. Of course if you run a blog and fifty outbound links to spammy sites, then you’re probably going to get slapped. Since there is so much advice out there, I think perhaps I’ll just try a bit of this and a bit of that to see what works. Now I’m off to check out Twitter!
In fact, I have some mail to ask exchagne link form some web and blog, when I signed my webblog here: http://freshhome.wordpress.com on their web or blog. I got the error to sign. It is really waste my time, and I think this is a reason almost people should’n exchange link with them. Do you think so?
My webblog here: http://freshhome.wordpress.com
So, you can check how to I exchage link with other web and blog.
I’m not assuming. The link requests I get are primarily from blogs.
Ian
Why are you assuming all of the sites out there that want to gain links are blogs?. There are millions of site out there offering some kind of service other than writing posts everyday.
Hi
I once contacted 30 sites in a day, I had a high content site and at that time was on page 2 of google.
I got one link for my trouble, but it was a very good link, I am not suggesting that 1 positive reply out of 30 is worth it, far from it.
I was turned on to blogs as being a good way to get backlinks, I write up two keyword rich blogs every week and I am allowed to include two html links from the blog, I deep link these to whatever of my sites I am promoting.
I like this method as you put in a certain ammount of work and get a predictable benefit from doing so.
Other ways to get back links include posting on related forums, I serve a craft niche and regularly scan the two biggest craft forums to see if I can offer inteligent help.
Publishing articles, another good way to get your name about and get backlinks.
Ooops I think I have gone on for too long.
Richard
I am still newbie about this. I also read on other source that exchange link is no worth anymore. But I still have a question about this. Is it ok if we do link exchange with sites that are related to our and have good content?
I think guess blogging’s concept is as like as we submit articles to article directory. We can get backlink from article directory. Do you think that article marketing still counted by search engine?
Lately, I’ve been getting about 10 of these requests per week. And every time that I delete one of these requests I wonder why they keep asking. You know, someone must be obliging them and giving them links…
@Ian. Yes, these sites are largely poorly designed spammy sites with low pagerank and bad content.
I have no problem linking to other websites, but only when it is a high quality website with content relevant to what I am publishing.
Completely agree. I’ll exchange links with high quality bloggers who post on similar subjects to my blog (Sales Excellence). But I get so many automated link requests nowadays from people whose products or interests are so unrelated to mine it’s just not funny. Most of them are PR 0 too. Why do they think I would dilute my own PR and end up with a spammy looking site?
Ian
I agree with you. I also think you are right about Twitter but I question how long it’s value will last. As you say, times change and search engines moveon.
Jeff,
You once again hit this one out of the field! In today’s New Media World, link exchanges are too “old school” and just don’t fit. People aren’t coming to your blog to read the blogroll, instead they are coming to read the posts. Definitely agree 100% with your thinking here!
Rob White, Host
Podcaster Training
http://www.learntopodcast.com (blatant plug!)
I definitely don’t think it works either. I mean if you are a friend with someone or a blogger buddy that it might work but otherwise people are scared to get caught by search engines.
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