Here is the article - Swapping Links: The poor man's SEO - http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/14/c...nge/index.html

Anyway...what do you guys think?

A lot of talk about very little. Orientated to the uninformed. 600 words that can be summed up to about four sentences.

Links are the currency of the web
Link exchanges are an old system for getting web sites ranked.
Google judges sites by the quality and content of the site s linking to them.
It's probably not against Google's guidelines.

Hmmmm I think it's a pretty decent article providing some good inside information on SEO, might be good for beginners.

If the article was a post on some newbies blog I would have said good effort
But CNN? I expected better content. Not basic stuff

Thanks for sharing. This article just mentioned some basic SEO. But as always, I don't have any expectation from CNN.

Originally Posted by Niche

If the article was a post on some newbies blog I would have said good effort
But CNN? I expected better content. Not basic stuff

Well, I guess what is natural of cnn to assume is that it is an article to be read by the general public basically. Come on, they are not giving a tutorial or something.

What discomforted me about the article is that it is very vague as to the pagerank/ranking relation.

PageRank is the currency of the Web.

?

Originally Posted by Earnest

Well, I guess what is natural of cnn to assume is that it is an article to be read by the general public basically. Come on, they are not giving a tutorial or something.

Well I also think it is for the public or for those normal people who doesn't have any idea about seo. It is a good article actually and states clearly the advantages and disadvantages of link exchange.

But it was quite long for an explanation anyway.

I don't think link exchange is must to optimize a web site.It time taking and generates low traffic.

Originally Posted by Matt32

I don't think link exchange is must to optimize a web site.It time taking and generates low traffic.

Hi,

Generally most of webmasters do link exchange to increase number of backlinks not for traffics because as i see that most of site using link exchange page as directory or link farm and no one will found any suitable link there.

If site is giving you link from homepage or footer then you have some chance to get traffics.

In short link exchange is just to increase your PR juice not for traffics.

Thanks

yes i read this few days. interesting article . are we poor here?

Originally Posted by Hostingref

Hi,

Generally most of webmasters do link exchange to increase number of backlinks not for traffics because as i see that most of site using link exchange page as directory or link farm and no one will found any suitable link there.

If site is giving you link from homepage or footer then you have some chance to get traffics.

In short link exchange is just to increase your PR juice not for traffics.

Thanks

Funny, when I look at large, high traffic sites, none of them are doing link exchange.

Why emulate low traffic small sites with link exchange?

I'd prefer to emulate the guys that are succeeding.

i was expecting something about Honest search that google is planning to launch... but this was really an embarrassment. i was expecting a better researched article from google, the heavy words used in the article really confuse you! Gill has given a very correct summary of forur lines

Pagerank is the currency of the web? Must be true.. cnet said it...

That article has some really good information in it; especially for those of us who work with backlinks. Thank you for posting this information.

Originally Posted by Gill1005

A lot of talk about very little. Orientated to the uninformed. 600 words that can be summed up to about four sentences.

Links are the currency of the web
Link exchanges are an old system for getting web sites ranked.
Google judges sites by the quality and content of the site s linking to them.
It's probably not against Google's guidelines.

You nailed it!

It just offers basic information but it shows that everyone is getting aware of the importance of search engine optimization. This is a positive side of this article.

Links are the currency of the web????
good analogy
right, it can also be bought and exchanged and earned
good point

When every person know SEO and how it works thats when most of us need to find another job

Originally Posted by Phreaker47

Links are the currency of the web????
good analogy
right, it can also be bought and exchanged and earned
good point

yea it can be said so "Links are currency of web" and you are very right on it frd as they can be bought, exchanged or even sold.

The article is very good one and informative as to recommend newbie webmasters trying to know about backlinks and link exchange as they go on spam around

I personally don't like link exchanges at all. But I do like that "Links are the currency of the web" analogy.