SEO Tycoon

**pathfinder_05** · 05-19-2009, 03:51 PM

Hi guys,

What is the best way to approach a website you would like to swap links with?

Do you ask the business themselves? Look for a webmaster link?

I would like to do it the right way to begin with and not bug people.

Thanks.

DB

**vangogh** · 05-19-2009, 05:17 PM

The best way is to focus on something else. The value of reciprocal links has degraded over the years.

However if you want to ask for a link just be real. Show the person you've actually visited their site and find some way to honestly connect with them. Make your email personal.

But do know there are much better ways to spend your time.

**journey08** · 05-20-2009, 07:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vangogh

The best way is to focus on something else. The value of reciprocal links has degraded over the years.

I agree that reciprocal links are not that much effective. I think instead of offering a link swap, it's better to do three-way link exchange wherein you can place the link of your link partner on your blog and in return, they will provide your main site with a backlink on their site. I think this method looks more natural in the eyes of SEs.

The best approach for link exchange is to send them an email containing your link exchange request. You must indicate on that request that you are highly interested on their site. You should also state on that letter that it would bring benefits to both of your site if you'll do exchanging link.

Hope this helps..

**bogs** · 05-20-2009, 08:35 AM

well it still count as BL but you can try other link building technique other than exchanging link.. by the way the easiest way to trade link is to contact the site webmaster via email of phone..

**journey08** · 05-21-2009, 03:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bogs

well it still count as BL but you can try other link building technique other than exchanging link.. by the way the easiest way to trade link is to contact the site webmaster via email of phone..

Or you can also contact webmasters directly on forums and send them a PM. I think this method is the best way for exchanging links because dealing with them is much faster compared to sending them an email link request which may take some time before they respond to your request.

**vangogh** · 05-21-2009, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Or you can also contact webmasters directly on forums and send them a PM

Of course that is also often considered spam on a lot of forums and can be a quick way to get your account banned. Just make sure you know the people in advance before sending out PMs. And mass PM requests are definitely spam.

**VirtuosiMedia** · 07:14 AM

To put it another way, think about the amount of time you would actually need to spend to do an effective link exchange.

First, you need to find good candidate websites to host a link. If you go with the first result in Google for your keyword, find a page on their site for your link, and navigate to their contact page, it will take at least 5 minutes. Add another 5-10 minutes to write a single email or message. It usually takes a day for most people to respond, but it can also be much longer or never. Now factor in your success rate...Let's be ridiculously generous and say that half of the people you write to requesting a link actually respond and agree to exchange links. Then you'll need to write a thank you email and put their link on your site. 20 minutes.

By my count, for each link, with a success rate of 50%, that's going to take a minimum of 40 minutes of work, not counting time spent waiting for responses.

Now consider the following:

The value you get from that link may or may not make any difference in your rankings. You may have to repeat the process tens or even hundreds of times to make a difference. 10 times? That's 400 minutes of work or 6 hours, 40 minutes. 100 links? Try 4000 minutes, which is 66 hours and 40 minutes.
You aren't guaranteed to get the link text you want.
The link could be taken down at any time and it takes additional time to constantly recheck to make sure your links are still there and remove the links on your page if they aren't.
All of this work is for 1 page and you'll have to replicate it for each and every page on your site that you want to rank well. Getting 10 links for 10 pages on your site? Again, that's 4000 minutes of work.
You aren't going to have a success rate anywhere near 50% in a link exchange request. You might get 50% to open your email and probably a third of those people will respond, a third will mark it spam, and a third will just delete and ignore it. If enough people mark your emails as spam, you could get blacklisted and your open rate will be closer to 10%. What's your conversion rate in that scenario? Around 3%. What does 3% mean in terms of work? It means that to get a single link, you'll have to find 33 sites and send out 33 emails. That's 340 minutes of work for each link, 3400 minutes for 10 links, and 34000 minutes for 100 links. That's 566 hours and 40 minutes or just under 24 complete days.
If you are getting the highly competitive wage of $10 per hour, that means that a single link could cost anywhere between $6.67 (with a 50% success rate) and $56.67 (with a 3% success rate). Even if you had a 100% success rate, the link would cost $5.

Conclusion? It's not worth it.

**sijugk** · 05-22-2009, 07:10 AM

Wonderful analysis I appreciate the usage of your time to write it

.

**VirtuosiMedia** · 05-24-2009, 05:06 PM

No problem. I knew that it waste of time, but running the actual numbers really put it into perspective for me. I have to say, I was surprised at the end result.

**journey08** · 04:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vangogh

Of course that is also often considered spam on a lot of forums and can be a quick way to get your account banned. Just make sure you know the people in advance before sending out PMs. And mass PM requests are definitely spam.

That's not what I mean Sir. I just suggest contacting webmaster through forums for link exchange because you can receive their response much faster if they are online and you can also know whether they are interested in your site or not. Unlike with sending them an email link request which may take some time before they read and respond to your email. I think as long as you only send a PM to a member that posted a thread for link exchange that is related to his/her post and it's not done excessively, I don't think moderators will ban you for that.

**baxy** · 05-26-2009, 01:41 AM

Reciprocal links do not hold much value in the eyes of search engines; still if you want to exchange links then you can join some link exchange sites.

**vangogh** · 05-27-2009, 01:47 AM

Sorry Cecille. My apologies if I made it sound like what you were saying was bad. What you're suggesting is fine. I just meant to be careful about sending out mass link requests through the PM system. It would certainly be fine to PM people who were asking for link exchanges and I think it's ok to even ask a few people as you get to know them.

**ericajoieake** · 05-27-2009, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pathfinder_05

Hi guys,

What is the best way to approach a website you would like to swap links with?

Do you ask the business themselves? Look for a webmaster link?

I would like to do it the right way to begin with and not bug people.

Thanks.

DB

2years ago it was effective but after several google updates it becomes useless and a waste of time, instead of doing this its better to build you quality and related backlinks.

**billyao007** · 03:24 AM

My knowledge base has fallen far behind, dropped away from this field for years. This forum is truly an eye-opener and short cut for me.

**billyao007** · 06-01-2009, 03:23 AM

As long reciprocal link does not be valued by Google as much as it used to be! Can we try some new tricks? Three way or Multi-way link exchange, by doding so, we can make sure every partner site get a higly relevant one way back link?

**baxy** · 06-01-2009, 03:56 AM

Yes, three way links are better then reciprocal link exchange. I think the best approach is to get some inbound one way links, hard to earn but most effective. Article submission can be very effective in that way, just write some original articles and submit them to high PR article directories.

**willcode4beer** · 06-01-2009, 12:14 PM

I wrote a post about this some time ago: Get Traffic By Giving Traffic

**VirtuosiMedia** · 06-01-2009, 07:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by billyao007

As long reciprocal link does not be valued by Google as much as it used to be! Can we try some new tricks? Three way or Multi-way link exchange, by doding so, we can make sure every partner site get a higly relevant one way back link?

If you read my post above, a 3+ way link exchange is going to multiply those costs by far more than a factor of two. It doesn't scale well and it isn't effective for the reasons I pointed out. It simply isn't a good way to spend your time or money.

**emofree** · 06-01-2009, 10:48 PM

well one way to do it is contact the webmaster of the site itself and ask him politely to a link swap.

**Catherine_zhang** · 06-02-2009, 12:00 AM

Hi,everybody,really thanks for above suggestions,I'm a new one who deal with link exhcang,you know, my first lesson was how to make reciprocal links.