Are Link Exchange A Bad Idea

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi, i am wondering if link exchanges are a bad idea. I have seen a company called link market where you join and exchange links with other companies and i am just wondering if this is now a bad idea.

The last thing i do not want to happen is for google to get angry if i done link exchanges

[gcdtechnologies]

Hi Diane, link exchanges have the potential to do more harm than good, especially if:

• The link partner is low authority and/or low quality
• The link partner is in an unrelated niche
• The link partner has lots of other outbound links

One-way links give a lot more juice than link exchanges, so it's better in the long run to invest time and effort into producing quality content on your own site that might attract links. I would only ever consider a link exchange - on an individual basis rather than a scheme, which is against Webmaster guidelines) if the site was high quality, useful to my readers, in my niche but not a competitor, and had the potential to give me a lot of traffic through direct clicks.

Google guidelines on link schemes may help to clarify: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

[AndreVanKets]

I agree with Alice.

I ignore most link exchange requests, however i do find the odd website with great authority and rather than simply exchanging links on links pages, I try to to discuss and negotiate exchanging links via guest articles or editing an existing (relevant) piece of content with our link.

This doesn't happen often though, but its sometimes worth analyzing each request to find the gems. (Real webmasters promoting their REAL websites, and not some agency creating websites just for link exchange)

Greg

[ClaireH-184886]

thanks for that alice. The problem we have had in trying to gain one way links is, our content is being stolen and we are not getting the credit for it.

People also use sections of our content but never add a link to our site which is very frustrating.

[AndreVanKets]

Diane, try contact the author and request that they reference the original source and threaten that if they don't, you will report them to Google.

You can file a DMCA request with Google to remove pages that are stealing your content.

Read here for more info: http://www.ecreativeim.com/blog/2011/12/report-stolen-content-to-google/

[gcdtechnologies]

Hi Diane, I'm sure that's very frustrating. It's certainly worth contacting the Webmasters to request that the content is removed or credited correctly, and you can also file a removal request with Google.

[ClaireH-184886]

thank you for that advice everyone on contacting the author, i will start doing that. It is very annoying when you work on an article and then people take it or use part of it without you getting any glory for it.

[DougRoberts]

Hi Diane, I can completely relate to the problem of stolen content. I'd come to accept that for one particular project content will be "stolen".

As Greg says, try contacting the webmaster and asked for proper credit and a link back. (Although, make sure you actually want a link back from the site first!) They may be more responsive to this than a request to remove the content...

Another tactic is to embed links to other articles on my site. Make sure the links are absolute links (full domain/path). It would make moving the content around later a pain to manage, but does mean that if the content is copied and pasted onto a different site, you'll be getting the inbound links. Make sure the links a relevant/useful. I like to reference my older content etc.

Hope this helps.

[SanketPatel]

Hi,

Link exchange sounds great but according to me Google LOVES the inbound links not reciprocated links. Link Exchange is a good if  the site linking to you has relevancy and provide DoFollow link . It would be even better to purchase advertising space from other sites in your niche that has high page rank and traffic so, you get traffic to your site without sending traffic away from your site.

[KeriMorgret]

Do keep in mind that it is against Google's guidelines to buy links for the purposes of passing page rank.

[roquelagellera]

Take into account what Keri says!!!!