Link Trading – Avoid being Scammed
I have been cheated; you’ll be cheated. When you get taken too many times and it sours your attitude about Online Marketing. So what can you do to avoid the rip offs and scams? There are steps you can take to avoid wasting your time chasing link exchanges from unscrupulous webmasters.
The Internet is full of BAD KARMA and people who think they can get ahead by cheating you. Foster and Build relationships. I can not tell you how many times over my Online Marketing Career I have fulfilled my end of the link trading bargain only to check back as little as a few days later to see my link had been removed. This is why I focus on content and creating my own links with relevant complementary comments and social networking.
Companies wanting to get traffic will hire people to contact you to build links. Often they tell you how great your site is or some other cheesy flattering remark. Or they have some “trick” they are proposing like you link to Site A and then we link back to you from site B. Be wary – tricks have a way of backfiring and are not worth your time.
Here is How One Primary Linking SCAM Works
The professional link company gets you to link to the site they want to promote. They continue to build the list of links for the client. Then a few months (or even weeks later) they remove the links page from the main site. You’re link is still on the original trading page, but nothing is linking to the link page where your link resides so it’s effectively dead. Of you have linked not to their crappy links page, but to their HOMEPAGE. So they incur no penalty for running their link farm, but they gain all the benefits. Don’t fall for it! If you can not reach the links page by manually navigating from the Home Page of the Site asking for your link then don’t bother.
Here is Another Very Common & Deceptive Practice
A site asks to trade links with you sends you an email stating they have “Already Linked to Your Site”. This is intended to make you feel obligated; but is presented as a gesture of good will. So you go to the site and there is your link. So you link back to them and forget about it. How long will they keep that link up? Who knows. Do you have time to go back and check it later. I hope you are too busy for that. Make sure if you participate in this kind of linking you verify a couple of things first.
1. The site is actually related thematically to yours – if not then pass.
2. They are not hiding your link from the Search Engines will Nofollow Tags (Check the Page Headers not just the link) or programming scripting.
Don’t Bother with Link Lists Unless they are Crawled
Being on a link list will gain you no traffic (Honestly have you ever used a links list that had more than a few listings?). People simply don’t use them. Link lists are viewed the same as “Banner Blindness”. They just don’t get much use. You can verify if a link list is crawled by checking to see if it has any Pagerank or doing a search for the page of links in the Search Engine. If it doesn’t appear, it hasn’t been crawled and there is no point in trading.
Audit the Important Links and Forget the Rest
If you are using a link management tool that can verify links by crawling other sites then I suppose the occasional check may be worth your efforts. But you’ll just get caught up in a lot of Non-Marketing activity adding and removing links – and it won’t make much difference – effectively wasting your time.
You should “audit” link trades with significant partners. Those partners that actually send you traffic or have very high Authority. You do this to keep in good with these links. You want your RELATIONSHIPS with these sites to remain on good terms. Sometimes other sites will use link checking software and for some reason they don’t see your link on your site so they remove the link from yours. If the link is important it may warrant your sending a quick polite note. Again if you worry too much you’ll waste time spinning your wheels and not accomplish anything.
Ask People to Link To You – Social Bookmarking
It’s a good idea to have some way for people to Bookmark your site easily and add it to a social bookmarking service. Make this visible and simple for your visitors. You should also consider a page on your site with graphics and simple code so people can link back to you. There are actually people who may really like your site and link to you from the graphics you provide without even asking for a return link. WordPress makes this easy by installing simple plugins. Make great content and people will automatically bookmark your site! Big Win!
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