I set up a link exchange on my website. I have exchanged links with a webmaster that has 22 clients. I have put all 22 of his clients on my weblinks page. He has put up on all 22 sites a link to my webpage. However, he has set up a seperate page not visibly linked to the home page! His links page is not on google. He has created sub urls from the main page of his clients pages. For example, if the web address is www.webpage.com he sets up a sub url that says www.webpage.com/link his original web page is on google. The original webpage has no noticeable link to his links page, and google does not show the links page in its index.

My Url is http://swayzelawoffice.com

If you want to email me my contact page has a direct email program.
http://www.swayzelawoffice.com/compo...act/Itemid,48/


Thanks for your help!!!!!!!!!!

If you think its fishy don't do it.

Just remove his links until he shows you your page is linked up from his links page. This is a good reason to use a link checking tool / link management system like 123linksmanager.com

123 verifies your links for you every 24 hours.

I would avoid link exchanges anyway. If the links are irrelevant to your site, they can only hurt (mainly with Google). This is probably why he didn't link his site to his own link exchange page; to protect himself.

****! Webmasters... Be careful on exchanging links with others...

This is a dirty trick and you should stop dealing with that webmaster.

A network of interlinked sites will be easily noticed by google and wo't benefit you much anyway.

Are you wanting links to send traffic or to help with search engine results?

I am not really interested in the links for increased traffic. Just for the page rank.
I really just started teaching myself SEO about a month ago. Thus far I have been able to get my web page to the third page in google for my key words, and page 1 for msn. Not bad for a newbie. Maybe I should retire from the law proffession and go into SEO full time?

I do have a few issues that I have not worked out. For instance, If a person has a home page ranked high, and they have a second page for links which is ranked low if at all. How would google look at the inbound link from a second page. Does google look at the entire site when someone is linking to you or just the page that happens to link to your site.

Thanks
Cliff Swayze

Originally Posted by caswayze

Maybe I should retire from the law proffession and go into SEO full time?

Does google look at the entire site when someone is linking to you or just the page that happens to link to your site?

retire from the law proffession and go into SEO full time?

- Don't quit your day job.

... I'm just kidding. You should do seo and focus on certain niche in law. Help out the people you know in the industry and maybe it will pay off for all of you.

Those secondary pages could end up having good PR at somepoint. Even if they don't get more than PR1 or PR2 all links help if they are of good quality and related to your website. You can see an example of this if you do a backlink check for the website in my sig.

Regardless if you are getting scammed or not, Remove the links and tell him you don't want to do it.

As soon as google see your links page it's going to think "SPAM!" and rank you accordingly.

Clifford it's good that you're doing what you can to learn how seo works. However in some respects you're going about it the wrong way.

Don't worry about Page Rank. More PR does not equal better ranking. Both come by doing other things. I know many sites that rank well seem to have a high PR, but if your strategy is to improve your PR you're going about things the wrong way.

Those links pages will probably do more harm than good with Google. It's ok to exchange links with sites related to your topic, but even then you probably don't want them on a dedicated links page. Scam or not it's best to drop that page.

PR is part of the algorithm, though it's a part Google has been de-emphasizing for awhile since it's easy to manipulate.

Remember that PR is always updated behind the scenes too so just because an interior page shows a PR of 0 doesn't mean it has no PR. The toolbar PR we all see is really meaningless since it's updated only a few times a year.

Google looks at a lot of things when deciding where to rank a given page for a query. They'll look at the trust and authority of the page and site in question and how relevant the page and site is in comparison to your page and site.

Dedicated links pages though, are typically not going to be seen in high regards.

I think everyone's covered this well and given good advice, the only thing I have to add is another reason to not participate with this webmaster.

SEO is all well and good, but for you, especially, I think playing games for PR is very tricky. You are a lawyer. I'm assuming the main reason you chose to have a website is to advertise your practice and hopefully gain more clients. You more than most will want your website to be professional and to appear extremely trustworthy if you want it to help you.

The only real way to go about this for you is to seek links from sites that exhibit high standards and quality, sites that are considered important to your industry, etc. Not competitors, of course, but peripheral sites that will actually be of use to a visitor to your site. You want your site to provide them with valuable tools and info - not a bunch of random links that go to businesses you bought or traded links with that do not enhance what you do.

It may be slower, but think about what you want people to think of you when they see all parts of your site, including the links page. It should be useful and important, not random. You may want to consider going the article marketing route - there would be any number of topics you could write on, and all your articles would link back to your site, besides helping to establish you as an authority figure in your field.

Good points MelodyAnn. It's easy sometimes to get wrapped up in how things will affect a search engine and forget about the visitors that really matter, the people who you are trying to connect with.

When I link out from my site the only thing I'm really thinking is whether or not my visitors will find some value in that link. If I think the page I link to will prove useful then I add the link. If not I don't

For incoming links I try to think if a person visiting that other web page or site would be interested in my page or site and maybe click the link. If they would I want my link on that page or site. If they wouldn't be interested I don't worry about adding my link there.

Sometimes when you think about people instead of search engines all the SEO becomes much more understandable.

Thank you,
I really appreciate ya'lls advice.

I have only exchanged links with other lawyers, and law firm sites. I am currently trying to find out how to get links from "trustworthy sites."
I guess the real question is what does google consider trustworthy sites? There is a lot of competition in the legal field in regards to internet and google. However, from what I have figured out most of the other law firms don't have the time or don't put much effort into SEO.
Once again thank you very much for your assistance.
Cliff Swayze

Cliff: they put a lot more time into SEO than you might think. It's just that a lot of law firms focus on the end user first, so the SEO in the eyes of many suffers. I'm not one of the many, but that might be what you're seeing.

As vangogh told you, though, you're going about it the wrong way. Why would you want a link if not for increased traffic? Any link you get should never cost you anything; you should be able to get it simply because your site is good enough to receive that link.

Not only that, why would you want to give traffic to a competitor? Why send a potential customer to someone else? (That's just silly talk.)

In other words, change your focus. Go after quality inbound links (as many as you can and as high quality as you can.) If you can get people to link to you without giving anything away, then you'll end up knowing your site is of quality. Big G, among others, recognizes this more than link exchanges, triangle link exchanges, co-op schemes and any of the other artificial traffic generators out there.

In other words, look at SEO from the user point of view, and you'll be much further along.

Originally Posted by Webfu

If you think its fishy don't do it.

Just remove his links until he shows you your page is linked up from his links page. This is a good reason to use a link checking tool / link management system like 123linksmanager.com

123 verifies your links for you every 24 hours.

Can this program be tried?

I have only exchanged links with other lawyers, and law firm sites. I am currently trying to find out how to get links from "trustworthy sites."

LMAO ...

Originally Posted by chrishirst

LMAO ...

I was thinking the same thing.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

LMAO ...

I have to agree. That is one of the better moments I have seen here