Link swaps don't work anymore

[highlander]

Over the last 24 months, we noticed link exchanges not work for us, and the time spent link hunting wasn't paying off for our company. We made the decision to stop much of this activity.

The new way is to buy cheap paid link spots eg: £20. £30 etc and then the link is permanent. Problem is the once 'one fee only' sites, are changing to yearly fees - bcos their webspce is now highly sought after and as recip links are dead, people have to pay to get promoted.

We have no choice but to accept this or we can't be found.

[Robdale]

I don't agree with you, Link exchange do help us a lot. Nowadays Link Exchange is the most effective way to get good results in SE. And google don't like paid links and are consider as spam. Natural link building is always good.

[highlander]

I don't agree with you, Link exchange do help us a lot. Nowadays Link Exchange is the most effective way to get good results in SE. And google don't like paid links and are consider as spam. Natural link building is always good.

but what you're talking about is 'webmaster linking', which is NOT the same as requesting links from real companies. Proper companies will refuse and ignore link requests.


The webs biggest joke on webmasters is Pagerank

[temi]

I have used link swap for about 7 years, it works quite well for me. The trick selecting you link partners carefully and also doing 3 way rather than two way linking.

[highlander]

Been link swapping for 6 years, and my first site got 50k of links in 2 years flat so know exactly what I'm doing. Point is it's getting harder and people won't admit it is the case/the way of things.

What once worked 3 years ago link-wise, isn't working now. Times change, people change and methods change, although this seems straight forward enough it isn't.

Can get links easily when linking with anything - that requires no skill. But getting on-target links, now that's different. Why give a link for free when I can charge hundreds for it.

People just aren't giving the freebie anymore, Im not complaining - just pointing out realities.

[karmadir]

It works in some manner, but with theme related sites .

[highlander]

It's harder to do this with small websites. Small websites won't be seen as a 'company', they are seen as a kid in their spare room, which isn't far wrong, so links are tough to get, and webmasters can only really link between themselves.

This leaves thousands of links on large company websites out of bounds, you see these big companies won't link out, they aren't desperate for links and can pick and choose or refuse to link.

Only decent, well run resources with great web design can get links easily.

Eg: a search engine/hub/resource will get many one-way links, people will link to it for free. Normal websites should be linking to the same related sites, as it's easier to get links, but less one-ways will be given.

Websites with high return visitor rates will get tons of free one way links, without linking back. The worse a site looks/is - the more it's ignored.

To be successful involves thinking like a visitor/not a webmaster.

[BFTUK]

I think link exchanges can still be effective but gone are the days of simply creating a page with 100 odd reciprocal links, personally i've found targetted pages with a small smattering of reciprocal links are still effective.

I find most link building task time consuming, particularly when i'm looking to buy links i want to be sure that mine or my clients money is going to be effective.

[highlander]

There are 2 major things to know where linking is concerned:

1. The website is too important to ignore, and building any old site expecting loads of links just bcos you stuck up a website is delusional and won't work. The website must be build from the word go with a quality feel to it, it must deliver a lot of traffic - and pagerank being the last to attract visitors, and the site must stand alone without relying on the search engines.

Building the site to serve a particular group is now the best way to stand out and be special. If you can bring people together more easily than general sites can, you'll have more value and can get links a lot easier, bcos the site is targeted.

2. Link pages are pretty worthless these days. Mine gets no pagerank whatsoever, when 6 months ago it had PR of 3 - evidence enough I think that link pages fail and suck big time.

Link pages have always and will always be away from the best bit of a website, and that tells you, chances are it gets little to zero traffic or interest. Yet the backlink chasers are facinated in such pages, even PR 2's - sorry but that's not attractive, and to be put on a page that's likely so deep in the main site, you'll never be found. Also the only ones looking for this crap are the desperate, who's sites won't benefit enough from these pages anyway. Each useless free link option must result in negativity - it's crap people, just admit it and think of something else.

[Mckee]

I think link exchanges can still be effective but gone are the days of simply creating a page with 100 odd reciprocal links, personally i've found targetted pages with a small smattering of reciprocal links are still effective.