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> Evaluating Link Exchange Partners
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What's in a domain name?
|
 If
you have a website with a links page, your likely receive some emails
asking you to exchange links. But how do you know whether you should exchange
links or not?
Here are some guidelines to help you decide:
- Is their website relevant to yours?
If not, their link isn't going to give much value and your link to them
might detract from your website. A link exchange with a relevant website
can help reinforce your website's theme and potentially send some useful
traffic your way.
- Do I want to associate my business with this company/business?
It is a simple question to answer and should form part of your decision
making process regarding links. Link exchange with poor quality websites
detract from the impression your website creates of your business.
- Do the links on their website use redirects?
If you hover your cursor over an existing link on their website, the
address of that link appears in the lower left corner of your screen.
If the address that appears there is the not direct web address (
eg: http://www.theirwebsite.com/cgi-bin/gosslinks/jump.cgi?ID=1234 instead
of http://www.yourwebsite.com.au), they are using a redirect. Search
engines read redirects as a link to their site and do not see them as
a link to yours. They do not increase your search engine rankings!
- Does the website use frames?
If you scroll down the web page and part of the page (often the header
bar) does not move, the page uses frames. Many search engines have difficulty
reading framed web pages correctly.
- What is the Google PageRank (PR) of the page being linked
from?
Generally speaking, a link from a web page with a higher PR value is
worth more than a similar link from a web page with a lower PR value.
For more information on Google's PR click
here.
- How many links are on their links page(s)?
When your link is being placed on another web page, you preferably want
that page to contain very few links. 15 or less links is good, 100 links
is not great. If there are a large number of links on a page then the
value of each link is weakened. However, if your link will appear on
the page of a quality site or "authority site" an exchange
can still be very worthwhile.
- Is the link coming from a bad neighbourhood?
The following tool checks potential link partners to see if they are
linking to bad neighbourhoods. Exchanging links with a website penalized
by Google could also result in a Google penalty for your website. The
tool can be found at:
http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm
- Is the links page categorized?
If the web page containing the link you are being offered is listed
with hundreds of links all lumped in together, covering every topic
under the sun, then it’s not ideal. If you’re a Landscape
Photographer should you be on the same links page as Marriage Celebrants
and Solicitors? Links are easier to find if well categorised.
- Is the links page being "crawled" by search engines?
It is important that the web page your link is on can be found and read
by search engines. The page should be no more than 3 clicks away from
the home page. You can test if the web page is in the Google index by
going to Google and typing into the search bar:
cache:www.<website-address>.com.au/<links-page>.htm
Google's cache of the web page should then be displayed. If not, there
are a couple of possibilities:
- The web page is new and Google hasn’t crawled it yet
- the website has a problem being crawled by Google
- What if a Webmaster asks me to link to one site, but links
back to me via a different site?
This method of link exchange is sometimes referred to as "3-way
linking" or a "linking triangle". Generally speaking,
there is nothing wrong with this strategy. However, you will need to
very carefully:
- Evaluate the web page you are linking to
- Evaluate the web page you are getting the link from.
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