Link Exchange Strategy: Do You Turn Down Link Exchange Requests?
October 16, 2007
I imagine that every blogger gets link exchange requests. It’s often difficult to decide whether to accept the offer or not. Sometimes spammy requests will inundate your inbox and you’ll utterly despise the idea of link exchanges. It’s normal to associate negativity with something that mostly comes across as unpleasant.
I too, as all other bloggers, get link exchange requests very often. Since I’ve made it so easy for others to contact me with a dedicated contact page and a nice contact form, it seems like an open invitation for many bloggers to present their link to me for consideration.
I am not against the link exchanges if the links are relevant to my topics, and I urge you all not to form a bad opinion about exchanging links with other bloggers. But make sure you consider the following points before accepting or rejecting a link exchange.
- Make sure the site is relevant – You wouldn’t believe that I’ve got link exchange requests from a real estate blogger and a church blogger. In their case, the decision was straightforward for me. I don’t want to link to a totally irrelevant site no matter how good it is. Do you?
- The site is not a content scrapper – Sometimes a site looks legitimate, relevant, and contains high quality content, but on closer inspection it turns out that it’s a splog, a collection of scraped content. Splogs, of course, are not your cup of tea.
- The site provides value to your readers – A site can be relevant but it might contain regurgitated low quality content, or news clippings from other sites and blogs. I don’t recommend linking to such sites for an extra backlink, because if your readers click through to the site and find it invaluable, it undermines your credibility.
But what if you get a lot of high quality, relevant, and legitimate link exchange requests, but think that you can’t accommodate so many links in your sidebar?
Sidebar links and blogrolls are so old school. There is a much better way to accommodate all the links and still have infinitely more space left. I am talking about inline linking from within your posts. Most of the time, the other guy wants only an extra link to his blog, and he understands that you can’t give him permanent front page space. So the only other way is to link to him from within your post.
If you want to provide value to your readers, link to a post of your own choosing, and keep in mind that the link should be a natural part of your post.
What is your link exchange strategy? Do you find it unethical to exchange links with other bloggers?
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This information should really be taken seriously. You wouldn’t want to link exchange with a porn site, or a splog especially.
I used to be faily open to link exchanges, but now that Blogging Fingers has a pretty full blogroll I have to be offered a very good deal for an exchange.
That is an excellent idea. I had heard this before my had forgotten about it. I am going to start linking to people within posts.
I had my first request for a link exchange come through a day or two ago. I turned it down and to be honest I didn’t even look at the content of the site to see if it was relevant. I have no blogroll on my blog any more and I link out as and when I find something cool that I want to link to. I hope that people will link to my stuff for the same reasons. I just don’t want to get into anything artificial. I’d much rather just let the blogosphere do it’s thing and not worry about it.
[quote comment="692"]I used to be faily open to link exchanges, but now that Blogging Fingers has a pretty full blogroll I have to be offered a very good deal for an exchange.[/quote]
Matt, this is why I suggested linking out from within the posts.
[quote comment="709"]I had my first request for a link exchange come through a day or two ago. I turned it down and to be honest I didn’t even look at the content of the site to see if it was relevant. I have no blogroll on my blog any more and I link out as and when I find something cool that I want to link to. I hope that people will link to my stuff for the same reasons. I just don’t want to get into anything artificial. I’d much rather just let the blogosphere do it’s thing and not worry about it.[/quote]
I don’t and would never send out link exchange emails to anyone, but when I get one, I don’t turn it down just because someone directly asked me to link to them.
Of course, you have a point too. It’s much better to link out to other bloggers and expect them to link back. We bloggers are known for returning the favors
I guess the “Link Love” posts are derived in parts from this idea…
And, thanks for the heads up on the contact form plugin, I was looking for one after mine went bonkers since the upgrade to WP2.3.
I’ll consider a reciprocal link request if it is just a link from one post. I don’t have a blogroll so a sitewide link is out. Any request that shows no personal touch will probably be ignored. I run a weekly links post and a few times I have used reciprocals when I find content that I feel comfortable linking to.
I’ve got bloggers who asked if I was interested in exchanging links with them. But that was when I still have THE blogroll. I have removed it because Bloglines is doing a perfect job, and I don’t have to worry about bloggers who check everyday to see whether the link is still there, LOL.
If you have too many blogs in your blogroll, I’d like to suggest a service called Blogrolling. You may decide to show x number of links instead of ALL links, randomly or alphabetically-ordered, and some other options.
[quote comment="716"]I guess the “Link Love” posts are derived in parts from this idea…
And, thanks for the heads up on the contact form plugin, I was looking for one after mine went bonkers since the upgrade to WP2.3.[/quote]
I am not sure if it’s compatible with WP 2.3 because I am on WordPress 2.2.
[quote comment="721"]I’ll consider a reciprocal link request if it is just a link from one post. I don’t have a blogroll so a sitewide link is out. Any request that shows no personal touch will probably be ignored. I run a weekly links post and a few times I have used reciprocals when I find content that I feel comfortable linking to.[/quote]
This is exactly my strategy too!
[quote comment="726"]I’ve got bloggers who asked if I was interested in exchanging links with them. But that was when I still have THE blogroll. I have removed it because Bloglines is doing a perfect job, and I don’t have to worry about bloggers who check everyday to see whether the link is still there, LOL.
If you have too many blogs in your blogroll, I’d like to suggest a service called Blogrolling. You may decide to show x number of links instead of ALL links, randomly or alphabetically-ordered, and some other options.[/quote]
Well, I am not a big fan of blogrolls, as I mentioned in the post. Linking out from within posts
is much more easier and makes more sense.
I receive a lot of link exchange requests. I don’t even check those sites. I answer politely to all requests that for the moment I don’t see this as an option. I link only to what I like, and even for the paid reviews, I choose only products that I would buy myself.
My strategy with OpTempo is two fold. First, I have my “Free Blog Review” offer where I’ll do a review of your blog for free, no link exchange or reciprocal review expected, as long as it isn’t a splog or ‘bad neighborhood’. The second part is that if you write a good comment on OpTempo I’ll include your site in my next “Link Love” post, same rules apply. Since my focus in this blog is no focus, it works there but I wouldn’t do it on a more tightly focused one.
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I usually accept all link exchange requests, its just everyone trying to get more PR and I can respect that.
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Great list. I run a weekly links post and a few times I have used reciprocals when I find content that I feel comfortable linking to.
You may decide to show x number of links instead of ALL links, randomly or alphabetically-ordered, and some other options.
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Thanks for such a informative in helpful blog.
I only respond and link to websites that provide a quality link back to my site.
Many times though, recip linkers provide lousy links on pages that are not indexed.
Best,
Frank Z
I am kind of new to this link exchange, but I would think that any link exchange is a good thing as long as it isn’t direct competition or inaappropriate. I would be grateful for link exchanges.
This reminds me of an ad for Site Build It! that read, “Don’t Just Exchange Links, Exchange Value”
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that I have really liked reading your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!
Regards,Linda C Barksdale
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