Link exchange strategy

[Buddy.]

Hi all

I've noticed over the last couple of years that many of the 'super' affiliates and other successful affiliates have completely changed their linking policy. Many have gone away from reciprocal links (and have actually removed reciprocal links from their sites - with and without informing other webmasters) and have gone down the one way inbound paid links route.

Paid links seems to have progressed since then where some affiliate sites appear to be asking for what appear to be considerable sums for links. (In fact I'm sure there are many an affiliate out there that provide this type of service as their primary income source.)

I'm interested to hear peoples opinions as to how to price a link to arrive at a 'fair' value for a link?

My list of items to consider would include:

1. Age of site (older the better)
2. Number of outbound links on page
3. Nature of site (Blog, Static, regularly updated CMS)
4. PR of site
5. Unique content updated regularly
6. Number of inbound links to the site
7. Perceived reputation of webmaster (GWPA, CAP member).

I'd like to arrive at what everyone considers to be a fair price range for a paid link and would appreciate your thoughts and comments.

Thanks

[briscoe.reich]

I've noticed over the last couple of years that many of the 'super' affiliates and other successful affiliates have completely changed their linking policy. Many have gone away from reciprocal links (and have actually removed reciprocal links from their sites - with and without informing other webmasters) and have gone down the one way inbound paid links route.

Some remove because Google might consider that pages a link farm.

And isn't paid links another practice that makes Google's red flag raise.

[AK]

Pick and choose your link friends closely. I try to avoid linking with any site that has more then a few outbound links.

Paid Links is the way to go.

$500 a year for around a PR4 with descent traffic is a great deal. Pick and choose wisely as there is some good deals to find. Try to get links with .gov and .edu as they help tremendously.

Sites like poker.com could run you $10,000 a year or more for a semi hidden page link.

[waitetom]

We often get asked how much we would sell links for.
IMO your best bet is to avoid selling links however tempting extra cash is.. . If you must sell links I think it's best to avoid sites which:
1. Have no relevance to your site
2. Link to lots of other sites (Many outbound links)
3. Are in foreign languages.

If you do link be sure to check the content you're linking to. Run it through Copyscape, if its duplicate your rank could be hurt. Also be sure the site does'nt visibly sell links itself. Many say that linking to a site which visibly 'sells links' can negatively affect your rank. -I believe its true.

Many of the requests we get come from large companies who want us to link to their clients spammy, duplicated sites which are often in foreign languages...

Thats just my opinion!

[Chalkie]

I think the main reason that a lot of the more established sites have dropped reciprocal links is due to the fact that links exchanged are of very little use when it comes to SEO. Infact, my impression is that links exchanged are derogatory to your seo! How many of these sites have actually owned up to dropping exchanged links i wonder? Not many i dont suppose, and shame on them too! My advice to anyone with reciprocal links is to contact the reciprocating party and try to come to some sort of agreement, especially if each has more than 1 site, then you could both get a couple of non reciprocated links which will no doubt bode well with google and the like.

With regards to buying links, well why not? This has to have a positive seo effect surely! Unless of course with a link farm. How can a search engine can dechiper between a purchased or i free link? I know that technology is good, but surely not that good! I would have thought that a purchased link from a reasonably established site selling just a few links would be a great addition to anyones seo.

Bearing in mind that people are convinced of link farms being no good, why is there a view that links such as forum signatures are a great addition! Surely with so many links in one place they must look like a link farm to a bot?

With regards to how much you should pay for a link, well, how long is a piece of string? Buy any that you think are worthwhile and reasonable in price to your budget.

I have noticed very good results from news sites and post press releases whenever i can. Free ones work well, however, the paid ones are excellent.

Well, they are my uneducated thoughts! disect at your leisure.

[offyourface]

I wouldn't say link exchanges are of little use, I know many successful affiliates where link exchanges work just fine, as long as you keep them quality and dont go overboard. The reason I think most of the top dog affiliates don't do link exchanges from their main websites is because they have a ton of other smaller sites that suffice for all their link exchange needs.

What annoys me though is when they treat you like you just fell off the turnip truck and want to give you a link from their junk pr 1 site that never gets marketed or updated in exchange for your quality link. Thats just a shitty thing to do, especially to unsuspecting new affiliates that don't know any better than to take the link offer.

[Chalkie]

Agreed with you there, however, looking around and reading around it seems that the general concensus of opinion is that reciprocated links are discounted by the likes of google.

[ck8795]

No reciprocal links are fine but it depends on the quality as well as other factors. One of my sites is mainly rec links, we havnt gone out of our way to go and purchase links and its doing just fine now. Our link page has maybe 20 links on it but I also do internal swaps and I also link out freely on my own.

lol someone approached me for a deal on one site and I asked if they would be interested in doing a swap. They say sure let me get our webmaster to contact you. He hits me up and says you can have your pick of these three sites if you link back to the site I originally requested. I looked at the sites and as nicely as I could told him he must think I am naive to accept that kind of offer, they were small 15 page sites with random content on gambling and mega links on the bottom of the page. People who do this insult others, and while that instance didnt really relate to the original deal I could have cared less to work with them all together and let the entire thing drop.

[universal4]

Interesting discussion.

Actually, this is something that comes up here every 6 to 10 months it seems, but it never gets tiring and its nice to see the differences of opinion and it helps each of us form our own opinions.

I too am of the opinion that recip links are still ok as long as they are of at least some quality.

I will still accept links from pages that are straight exchange pages, but the link in return will be similar. (coming back from an exchange page)

But I also look for links from content pages. I offer a link from the footer of a content page, and I only ask for something similar in return. I am careful to match the theme as close as I can. If I link out from a blackjack page, I want the anchor text to have a blackjack type of keyword in it, and I want to link to a blackjack site, or a page within a site that has blackjack content on it.

Using the above strategy I will do the links in a straight recip agreement or on a 3way basis.

Anyone interested in exchanging, send me a pm and we can discuss it.

Rick
Universal4

[joeyl]

Nothing wrong with reciprocal linking. It just depends on whether Google's (for example) map of the web 60degrees removed shows you up to be a reciprocal linker.

What a link is worth to buy depends on so many variables, it's not easy to calculate.

The anchor text i'd write in a link to you guy's sites would never be what you'd ask for if you paid me.

I'd rather spend my time writing an article and linking to a site i'd like a link from, than I would spending 5 minutes emailing a request to reciprocate or buy from it.

[msduckland]

I recommend not trading links but building 1 way inbound

[casino2k.com]

I see Google is not considering my reciprocal links at all .
I tried a simple link exchange with few other websites: I don't see incoming links neither in Google search nor in google webmaster tools.
What seems to work better is 3-way link exchange, even if I think Google can recognize them too.
Paid links are ok, but big affiliates with big bucks have so many advantages!

[universal4]

A fair amount of the backlinks I see in Google tools are from straight exhanges. Some are from 3 way exchanges also.

Of the few paid links that used to show in the tools, most are no longer showing up...

Rick
Universal4

[chaosicq]

Seo is a minefield and deciding the best way to go to help your site is an immense task, recently i ran our reciprocal spider and found over 60% had removed our reciprocal link, all that time and effort wasted, personally i don't like three way link exchanges and i only accept exchanges with links pages that are google indexed and im not bothered about the Pr, as i really don't care for it, as it should be about getting visitors after all that's what counts right!.

on another note i recently added about 20 reciprocal links within a week to one of my gambling directories that had no relevant content to my own and placed them under misalaniouse , what happen next quite surprised me as my site is now listed in google for the word misalaniouse at position 1 and yes there is a spell issue here and yes not exactly much competion but thats not the point is it!.

Take from that what you will.

[waitetom]

Bearing in mind that people are convinced of link farms being no good, why is there a view that links such as forum signatures are a great addition! Surely with so many links in one place they must look like a link farm to a bot?

IMO forum signature links can be very useful for SEO purposes. I believe search engines can tell the difference between link farms and forums because of content. Forums generally have lots of text content, specific or atleast related to one subject area (if moderated). Link farms on the other hand are often nothing more than a page full of outbound links... As far as I've become aware search engines give content a huge amount of respect providing it's not duplicate!

Cheers

[ppw]

completely unrelated - but sometimes you get one way links you dont want... I tonight had to email a hosting provider and get a site removed as it was trying to download malicious code when you entered it, I didnt even know it was there through google, I found it through alexa site links.

[Bently]

I just wish Google would down grade the importance of backlinks, it just seems to me that we affiliates have to spend so much of our time trying to get backlinks (in order to compete with every one else) that it leaves little time for producing quality content for our sites.

Also, and there's no denying it, it encourages spam.

[raphnix]

I think you should also consider the development of the site from the design to backlink increases since you might not know if that site is actually SEO updated.

For example, some new site may not be reliable for link exchange but there potential should be considered too.

[casinojack]

Hmm nice thread, thought i would add my 2 cents

Content is king, first and foremost, so in order you should have

1. A landing page / site with the phrase you trying to promote
2. Links inbound only, 1 or 2 outbound links to a good site ( IE wikipedia)
3. Make sure you get the easy inbound links. How many times to this day do I see a site not listed in aboutus.org. This has weight
4. I can list some tips and tricks for easy links, but i would rather have 10 quality inbound links with sites that are relevant with good content, and been around a bit, then a link with tag words.

Also, yes the 3 way farm is penalized by google. Do this instead:

[FurnessPoker]

Wow guys I was just having this discussion with someone last night and you have cleared up a lot of grey areas, many thanks for your tips and advice