Link Building Tactic Advice

[365ToursSafaris]

Today, a link builder contacted us, and in exchange for a link to his site he will be willing to give us a blog post on his sites..

The sites he is willing to give us a Blog post/links on are all around PA 25 and DA 25..

The site he wants us to link to has a DA of 78

Can someone advise us on any positives or negatives. on positing on his lower quality sites in exchange for links to his quality site..

Should we go ahead and partner with them ?

[DavidKonigsberg]

How strong is your site?

[365ToursSafaris]

We just redesigned, and weren't very strong before the redesign either.  
DA of 32 and PA of 38 for the index page.

We can write a good quality content and add our link at the end or into it.

But the one thing I am afraid of is penalty via association,
If this tactic of "Neha Gupta" is a spammy tactic, will our link or post on his lower quality sites affect us by being connected to a Bad link Neighborhood ?

[DavidKonigsberg]

You need to look at the sites you will get the links from and see if they are good sites - it sounds like a tactic you would want to stay away from

[365ToursSafaris]

Thank you David,

Do you have any tips of how we can identify bad site? is there a test we can do and it says Yay or nay to exchanging links/posts with a site ?

If we write good content blog and post it on a "bad/spammy" site .. will that still count as a negative.

[DavidKonigsberg]

Look at it and see if the site has engagement and check its backlinks. I just look to see if it was made for seo or for real people.

[simon_realbuzz]

I would be very weary of any such reciprocal link scheme as this would be a breach of Google's  guidelines. Any link exchange of such nature could have a negative impact on your ranking.

Take a look here http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

[MarieHaynes]

I think that the answer to this question has nothing to do with the PA or DA of either site.  Exchanging links is not a bad thing.  It can actually be a good way to get links if you do it correctly.

To answer your question, think of the following:

-Are your sites closely related?

-Would it make sense to have links to each other even if search engines didn't exist (i.e. would it benefit both sites' readers?)

-Does his site consist of good material or is it all a mashup of low quality blog posts from other sites who are trying to get a link?

My guess is that in this case you will find that the answer to whether or not you should do this is no.  But this may not be the case every time.

I'll give you an example.  We have a real estate site.  I have a colleague with a home staging site.  His site is new and has low PA/DA.  My site has really good PA/DA.  I found a page on my site where it made sense to link out to a home stager.  In return, he allowed me to write a blog post for his site.  The blog post was a helpful one that his readers will benefit from.  Google is not going to get upset at a link exchange like that.  However, if you are doing this over and over and over again then it can start to look like a link scheme.