Comments on: Think before soliciting a link exchange

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:28:30 +0000

Sutocu – There is often a reason why some tasks are easier than others. Often the harder ones are the most rewarding, though

By: Sutocu

Sutocu — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:14:52 +0000

Well, of course you should personalize the email. What I mean is, it may be easier to find sites that are not so well targeted. Whether it is worth it to link exchange with a site does not only depend on how targeted it is, but also its traffic, and how well you think it will develop in the future.

I agree with all you’re saying in the article, but that’s just not the whole story. Although I guess you couldn’t fit the whole story in one article…

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:57:15 +0000

Sutocu – Sure, aiming for targeted sites may well take more time than sending link exchange requests to any old website. I think this is time well spent, though – particularly if you are able to use the time to personalise your emails to each website.

I would always recommend spending 5 minutes to target a specific and well targeted website to exchange links with, rather than spending 5 minutes to approach 5 irrelevant and unrelated sites with a standardised email.

By: Sutocu

Sutocu — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:51:58 +0000

I agree that you should aim for targeted sites, but that is an even more time consuming process. If you have the possibility to exchange links with a quality site that is not that relevant to yours, but you think you can get away with minimal time spent, I think you should often agree.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:24:48 +0000

Sutocu – Thanks for your comment. I agree that every now and then a targeted visitor may well ‘convert’ and become a member of your online community or meet another of your goals.

In this article though, I was talking about targeting specific sites and their audiences for link exchanges. I feel that in this case you should only aim to share traffic with specific, targeted sites.

Soliciting link exchanges can be a time consuming process. Why spend this time targeting unrelated and untargeted visitors when you can go after sites based on similar subjects and with an audience highly relevant to your site?

As for link exchanges for SEO benefits, I briefly covered this area in my article on link building to improve search rankings.

By: Sutocu

Sutocu — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:17:51 +0000

“Poorly targeted visitors are worse than no visitors at all – they will consume your bandwidth and almost certainly leave within seconds. The time you spend in attracting visitors through link exchanges will be wasted if you are not exchanging links with relevant sites.”

I must disagree. Even poorly targeted visitors may convert. You should always prefer links from highly relevant sites, but less targeted links may help.

You are not taking into account the second main reason why webmasters exchange links: SEO. Although search engines too prefer targeted links, an off-target link from a high PR site may help, too.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:01:50 +0000

Julian – Thanks for your comment. I rarely worry about what search engines will think about my linking strategies – I develop websites for people, not for the search engines.

As you will be aware, on this blog I remove the ‘nofollow’ attribute from comments and also provide full return links through the ‘Recent Comments’ and ‘Top Contributors’ section. Am I worried about what the search engines think? Not at all – I am more worried about what my readers think! I want to reward them for visiting and contributing to my blog.

In my article ‘Link building – Gaining direct traffic‘, I included a sample link request email. The key is to be personal and show the person that you have taken the time to investigate and understand both them and their website.

Daniel – You are right that it can be a real challenge to get the more established and popular sites to link to you.

Be personal, be original and perhaps be a little cheeky! Either way, differentiate your email from all the others and make it clear that you really understand their site.

The key is to ensure you detail the potential benefits of the link exchange in your email request.

By: Chicago 2016

Chicago 2016 — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:34:29 +0000

But will high quality sites really bother with too many link exchanges? They can link to whatever they want!

By: Julian Paling

Julian Paling — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 09:20:15 +0000

Oops I also forgot to mention there is a great post here: http://seoblackhat.com/2007/06/06/great-example-of-link-request/

Which shows some good examples of link request emails.

By: Julian Paling

Julian Paling — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 09:17:16 +0000

Hi, I agree link exhcanges can be valuable but don’t exchange with low quality sites, I have seen this really hurting a site’s ability to rank.

Also Martin I just wanted to add that I like the new blog design, good well!

Julian.