I got a question from a client recently who asked about link exchanges on her web site. The conversation was spawned from an email she received asking her to list a random web site URL on HER site, in exchange for this other random person linking to her. I thought this topic was important enough to share with the rest of you.
“I’ll link yours if you link mine…”
Don’t be fooled by these link exchange seductresses!
There are a few things here:
Having links from other websites that point back to your website IS valuable. It increases your “legitimacy” and likeability in the eyes of The Almighty Google. HOWEVER, you want to do link exchanges with legitimate sites (ahhhh, we knew there would be a catch!), AND (for the sake of your reputation) you only want to link exchange with businesses that you know and like. Otherwise, you don’t really know where you are sending your visitors.
In this particular email that she got, we saw that the URL led to a random, web site about dentistry. This client of mine is an EFT Coach. Does anyone see a match here? No? Me either.
Sometimes (although, I’d say rarely), you will get a legitimate request for something like this. But, it will probably come from someone you know. For instance, if my client wanted to link to a local holistic health care provider who knows and practices EFT, that might be interesting and beneficial to her people. In turn, he/she might want to link to an EFT site to provide their patients with alternative ways to manage pain and suffering. That would make sense.
Mostly, you can consider these requests to be spam.
Delete. Destroy. and most importantly – do not click on links in emails from people you don’t know! (and sometimes – don’t click on the ones from the people you do know) lol.