Today's research is based on a post comment asking about link exchange. I fully support helping each other up the very steep promotional hill but when I checked the requesting website, my first thought was "hang on, this subject area has no relevance to my subject matter". My thoughts then turned to whether any links are good links. So, true to form, I did a little digging, and here's my thoughts on the matter:
While some may view any link as a good link, the Search Engines don't necessarily share that viewpoint. Since Search Engines rank your site on your topic, if you accept copious amounts of links from sites with a completely different subject matter, the search engines will try to rank you on every topic contained in your site. The outcome of this is that your site will potentially end up ranking lower. It's also better for visitors to your site to have links to related topics. If we take the human perspective, and you've run a search for Affiliate Marketing, are you likely to be interested in a link for new shoes? Well, maybe the women among us (myself included) would click on the link, but I'm sure you see the point in what I'm saying. Maybe that was a bad example :-) Seriously though, contentrating on link exchanges with sites that are relevant to yours will help the search engines rank your site as more important to your topic than if links are random and chaotic. Having said that though, if you get the opportunity to exchange a link with Article sites, definitely go for it!
The Reciprocal Link Rule Book
If you are going to go ahead and build link exchanges, here are a couple of pointers:
- Email a request to the site owner explaining the subject matter of your site and any information needed to complete the link exchange.
- Include a link to your site in the request so that they can view your site.
- It's good practice to have added their link to your site before asking if they will include your link.
Conclusion du Jour
Reciprocal linking is a good way to build a link directory, which is useful both for your site's visitors and obviously to you in terms of search engine ranking. Whether you choose to exchange only relevant links is entirely your choice but my advice would be to stick with similar or relevant sites. If you build a link directory into your site, don't over-do it. Try to keep it fairly concise. Nobody I know is prepared to scroll through colossal lists of anything.
