 Exchanging links – Is it worth it?Published Date: 2004-07-19 13:29:41 WorkOnInternet.com
If it was that simple we’d all be at number one in the Search Engines for every search combination and be millionaires! There seems to be a mad rush at the moment for web designers and developers to get as many inbound links to their websites as possible, but linking with sites that have nothing to do with your content won’t help you at all. Why do you have a links page? Is it to give your users a choice of information and resources or just to increase your Search Engine rankings? You need to ask this question. The best way to approach link exchanging is probably a little bit of both. Always try to exchange links with websites that are connected in some way to the subject of your website. If you sell Digital Cameras then try to link up with websites that offer information on photo editing or sell imaging software. There are hundreds of photo tutorial sites online and many of them may consider exchanging links with you. This way you have provided you visitor with a useful link and also helped generate an all-important back link, which can help, you search engine ranking. This approach can work with virtually any product or type of website. Search Engines are getting wise to all the ways that we try to influence their results and eventually they will all be wise to the fact that we are only getting link exchanges to increase our rankings. Always remember this: A search engine is there to provide a web user with a quality and accurate search. They are NOT there to list your site for free! How do you go about finding exchange partners? One way is to pick a subject related to your website and search for that subject using one of the major search engines. Have a quick browse around the sites you find and then decide which ones you’d like to exchange links with. Send the web master an email requesting an exchange of links. Always remember to include your linking details which would include a title, description and of course the full URL or web address. Another way of finding exchange partners is to sign up to a link exchange website. One of the newest is UK Link Exchange (http://www.uklinkexchange.co.uk), which has a categorised database of websites/web masters that are looking to exchange links. Using this system will save you a lot of time, as you know that the person you are requesting an exchange from is actually interested in swapping links. Again, always remember to request links from websites that are related to the content on your website. How can I tell if the website I’m exchanging with gets any traffic? There are a few ways to check to see if a website is worth exchanging with. Take a good look at the site, if it has forums then see how many posts there have been, this can give you an idea on how popular a website is. Go to Alexa (http://www.alexa.com) and check the traffic ranking. Whilst this is not totally accurate you can get an idea on popularity. Another way is to install the Google Toolbar (http://www.google.com). This provides you with a Google Page Rank, which is a round about way of determining importance of a site. If a website has a page rank of 4 then it is perceived to be more popular than website with a page rank of 3. If you can, try to exchange links with websites that have a greater page rank than your website. How do you display the links? The real answer to this is “any way you like”, as long as it looks good and doesn’t look like one huge web page full of links going to just about any type of site. If you only have a few link exchanges, the best way is to have a neat list including the title of the website and a short but informative description. If you have a lot of links then think about categorising it into a directory. You can get free PHP/CGI/ASP directory scripts, which will look after your links online and make it a little easier to update them. If PHP/CGI/ASP makes you go Eh(!) then just create a separate web page for each category and link to it from a main directory page. This way your links will be well laid out and categorised for your visitors convenience. Is exchanging links worth the time and effort? Oh, yes. Think of it like this, the more websites that link to your website makes your site look more popular to the search engines and in turn helps improve your rankings. Remember the golden rule. Only exchange with websites that have content related to yours. Having links pointing to your website from just about anywhere does not help. Just look at the amount of sites around with thousands of unrelated links and then check their traffic levels with Alexa or their page rank with Google. If you spend some time and effort finding quality, related exchange partners your website will grow, and so will your profits. ========================================================= About the Author Jon Tromans is the designer and owner of UK Link Exchange and also runs a small web development company in the UK. Jon has spent many years involved in front line sales and also spent 10 years working in the Radio industry. Name: Jon Tromans Email: jon@spinweb.co.uk
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