Is Reciprocal Link Exchange Dead?
|
|
The sun seems to be setting on the world of reciprocal link exchange. Sites that major on that may have to switch to a new paradigm, or go down like the titanic.
The major search engines seem to frown at reciprocal link exchanges, and gradually it is becoming obvious that chasing reciprocal links for the purpose of enhancing search engine rankings is becoming a dying art.
It was pretty contrived while it lasted. You set up a link page, and dump links there. Some webmasters did not bother to categorize the links. On the same page, you will find viagra, mortgage finance, debt consolidation, travel agency, Chinese porcelain, psychics and all the work. Visitors hardly visit such link farms.
Reciprocal link exchanges, as practiced by most webmasters and link exchanges were attempts to artificially inflate link popularity. The interest of the visitor is hardly reckoned with in the transaction. What webmasters look for are Alexa rankings and Google Page Rank of the sites they want to exchange links with. They are ready to trade links with a non-English sites. They know nobody goes there, except search engine spiders. Some webmasters block out search engine spiders, so as to fool the engines to believe all they have are one way links.
Ultimately, human visitors determine the success or failure of a site and not search engine spiders. Humans deliver the most required response, be it placing an order, clicking through to your affiliate merchant site, subscribe to your newsletter or whatever. Search engine spiders don't do that. If you manage to trick yourself into top search engine rankings, your fifteen minutes of fame will not do much to your bottom line. You will get lots of visitors if you show up tops in Google (Coming out tops in MSN and Yahoo does not necessarily translate to a quantum leap in traffic). If your site does not hold visitors, more visitors makes not difference, the returns will be close to zero. Like a high street shop, if all your visitors are window shoppers, you will soon be out of business.
To make matters more interesting, search engines figure out how long visitors stay on your site. How do they figure this out? Simple: let's say you show up number two in Yahoo! for ezine marketing. A visitor clicks through to your site. Fifteen seconds later, the guy is back to the same Yahoo! results pages to check out number three site listed. Look at it this way; Yahoo! sends a visitor to your site, and the visitor is back in a jiffy. It means your site does not have the content he is looking for. Imagine the visitor comes back an hour later. It means the site was useful, but he still needs more. What if he does not come back? This means he has found what he is looking for. Effectively, your visitors are giving feedback to Yahoo! If this happens over and over again (15 seconds visits), this is an indictment on your site. It spells you don't have valuable enough content to belong in the top ranks. Check out your ranking at the next database update. Sure enough, your site drops off the radar. The party is over. You may be tempted to go and try new tricks. The vicious cycle continues.
Reciprocal link exchange is not dead, if you provide links for the benefit of your visitors. Linking for the sake of visitors is a win-win scenario. You have a page that delivers valuable content, and at the end, you list recommended sites that deals extensively on the subject matter. Your visitor gobbles up your content, clicks through to your recommended site, and finds more valuable content. In summary, he finds what he is looking for. You send targeted traffic to your link partner, in return he sends targeted traffic to you. You both win, the surfer wins and the search engine wins, by delivery relevant results to the searcher. Since you help the search engine to win, they reward you with high rankings.
Surfers are looking for content. Search engines are looking for good content sites to serve up to surfers when they key in their search phrases. Since search engines cannot use humans to review all the sites in their index to rank them according to keywords, they use algorithms. Webmasters have tried to beat the algorithms, so that they come out tops in search engine results pages (SERPS) whether they have good content or not.
If the search engines continue serving non-relevant, low content or keyword stuffed pages that look like gibberish to the human eye over and over again, they will soon be out of business. To stay in business, they have to develop complex algorithms that are always a step ahead of smart webmasters who are more interested in high rankings than good content.
If you have very good content, other sites will link to you. You become an asset to them, since you are helping them deliver good content to their visitors. I have linked to sites without asking for a return link.
Again, you can exchange one way links with other sites. For this to happen, one of the webmasters has to own two good sites with a relevant theme. The down side to this is that this too can be abused. Webmasters can exchange one way links for the sake of the engines, and not visitors.
You have to keep in mind that by linking to a site, you are endorsing that site. If you endorse a poor quality site, your visitors and the search engines will penalize you for poor judgement. You are better of with a few high quality links than a quantum of low quality links.
The bottom line is for webmasters to mind their business, literally. Focus on building your online business. If you are building a content site, focus on delivering good unique content. Provide links in the appropriate content pages to resources you'd be proud to recommend to your visitors. Keep building your business, and satisfying your visitors. The engines will eventually take notice, and reward you with high rankings for being a useful partner in their business model.
Anytime you want to exchange links, stop and think, if there were no engines, would you go ahead with the link swap?
Usiere Uko is the webmaster of the Financial Freedom Inspiration website and editor of the monthly Financial Freedom Inspiration Newsletter, a free ezine to inspire you to exit the rat race and fulfill your God given dreams. To subscribe or visit the site, please click on the URL below. http://www.financial-freedom-inspiration.com
|
|
|
Created & Maintained by Empower! CMS Web Sites
Host2Sell Web Hosting | Emarketing Workshops | Site SEO Review | FREE NewsletterAbsolute Top Five Search Engine Marketing Myths Uncovered!
It's no secret that Search Engine marketing can drive significant amounts of very qualified traffic to a web site ? as 85% of Internet users utilize search engines to find/research for goods and services. The problem for many companies is the difficulty they face sifting through conflicting information and hyperbole! Here is my top five list of myths that need to be run to ground.Big Picture Myth One ? Search engine ranking leads are not as good as those which originate from other forms of traditional marketing (print, direct mail, PR, etc.) ? t...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Keywords Are The ?key? To A Popular And Profitable Web Site
Keyword Research will reveal answers to 3 critical questions:1. Is there a demand for what your site offers? If not, you need to keep...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Creative Search Engine Optimization ? A Case Study
Search engine optimization this and search engine optimization that. You read and hear about it all day, but what about your site? While there are plenty of articles providing useful information, this article shows you how a real world example met with success. The point of this article is to emphasize creativity when approaching tou...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Here Today Gone Tomorrow
Its a matter of here today, gone tomorrow at the moment with Google so don't get complacent if you are on the first few pages of the searches. Its great, you are making money and think now you can relax and forget about it for a while. No chance, Keep up with linking and adding the odd page every week or two or you will disappear in a twinkling.Here is one instance, No names mentioned that wouldn't be ethical, but my daughter emailed a webmaster whose website was no1 on Make Money Online and no 1 on Work at Home, She explained very nicely that she could not find her link on his site and she would have to remove his if it wasn't replaced within two weeks.The webmasters response was, Go ahead and take it off, I am doing very nicely thank you and making a good living.One week later the site was nowhere to be found on ...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
How To Create Killer Keywords To Get Free Traffic To Your Website
When exploring good keyword choices there are several steps one must consider. The most important step is putting your self in the shoes of the type of customer you want to target. Just make a list of the keywords or phrases you think that customer would enter into a search engine or directory when searching for your company or site. A good tool is WordTracker.com which will help you brainstorm different key phrases....(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Why Search Engine Marketing Has A Passion For Web Site Usability
Watching a recent football game, I imagined two very different teams: one called â??The Hordersâ?? and the other, â??The Huntersâ??. In the game, it takes planning and skill to carry a football a few yards. Thereâ??s interference and distractions. Scantily clad dancing girls are screaming cheers nearby.How different, I wonder, is this from finding something in search engines? You have ads on the sidelines and pages to push through while...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Seo #2: On-page Optimization
Yesterday you should have read the first course out of 6 courses that will help you get a TOP rank in the search engines and get EXPLOSIVE LASER TARGETED TRAFFIC for Free. Today we move on to course #2 and study on-page optimization. Please read today's course very carefully and take some time to test what I'm about to tell you on your own webpage. Alright let's start!On-page optimization1) Now we have selected the keywords that we want to optimize for. If you remember from yesterday, the keywords we selected were yo mama joke, blonde joke, and joke online prank.2) The first part of optimizing your website is to pay close attention to the title on your webpage. The title which appears at the top of the internet explorer page is essential to ranking...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Selecting The Title Of Your Link Exchanges
I want to touch base with selecting the title of the links that are added to other sites. Adding your link on another site is very important for your search engine saturation and rankings.More importantly, what title do you chose?Many seo firms our there now believe that web sites ...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Types Of Links
Internal Linking ? An introductionThe web as they call it is a mesh of links. The wired world is now being counted for what it is. A Network. The more your pages are wired or integrated into the overall web linking architecture, the better it is from search engine ranking point of view. Google specially thrives on crawling on links. Its pagerank is a measure of this.We will, in this article, measure the importance of good internal linking architecture on googles pagerank .When setting up the linking architecture of your site keep in mind that links are of two kinds:-Internal links-External linksInternal links are the constituent elements of the way your web site is organized. They are the bridges by which on...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
The Write To Link Popularity
Incorporating writing as a means of boosting your link popularitycan be a turnoff for many webmasters, when in fact it can lead toa wealth of links.I first learnt about link popularity while researching about many different methods that I could use to market a Geocitiessite I had. After emailing countless webmasters and receivingsome dismal results, I realized that it was hopeless to getpeople to exchange l...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 Empower! Web Design | All Rights Reserved. | Search Engine Optimization