Link Exchange Techniques

But Link Exchange don't work anymore, or do they?
Well, it does and it doesn't.

Link exchanges have existed for as long as the birth of websites, and still is very popular among adult sites for its true purpose of traffic exchanges.

Then, Google came along, and started to rank websites and webpages based on the number of other sites or pages linking to it. And people started rampantly exchanging links beating the real purpose of google's algorithm. Because google ranked websites based on what other websites think about your site in context to the keyword being searched for, and what google was looking for are organic links or natural links. Artificial links beat the purpose of the Google Algorithm.

Link exchanges are artificial, but it can natural as well. You can link out to other related sites as a resource, and the same site could link you back as a resource naturally. And google knows this.

So, while rampant link exchanges or link farming might attract a google penalty, moderate and relevant link exchanges still work.

And link exchange is the easiest method of getting some incoming links. Forget about 3 way exchanges and stuff. Because Relevant Site "A" link to relevant "B" has the chance of being natural, but If "A" links to "B" and "B" links "C" and "C" links "A" and if there are enough repetitions, it looks like a artificial Link Love Triangle.

Link exchanges is best done by soliciting it. Find relevant sites and email them. If you have a new site and you find another new site, you will get an easy reciprocal link exchange. But since both the sites are new, it might not give you much ranking juice.

What you should find is a high ranking, established site.
But, why would an old established site link to you?

For one many established sites have a Link/Resource page.
And second, contrary to popular belief, he has more to gain by exchanging link with you than you would benefit from the exchange.
Why?
Because he is an established site, and chances are he has many other authority one way links, and reciprocal links should form just a percentage of your incoming links, and every reciprocal link becomes more beneficial if you have other forms of links.
Since you are a new site, chances are you only have low quality links, and every new reciprocal link makes your percentage of low quality links increase.

Anyway, so you may get some good established sites reciprocally linked to you.

But I would suggest that you start reciprocal exchanges only after you have submitted to a few hundred or thousand Directories to get at least a PR. Most people take you seriously if you have pagerank. I don't give much importance to PR, but many people still do.

Thirdly, when you approach a webmaster for link exchange, plan it out well.
This is the technique I am going to tell you today.

Say you have a website on Dog Training.
You want to solicit links for your site from other Dog Training sites.

1) Find your target site.

A Dog Naming site, or a Dog grooming site might be more interested in linking to you than a Dog Training site who will think you are in direct competition. Those are the easy targets. Get them first.

But a link from another dog training site would be more relevant.

2) Study the target site on Dog Training.

See what the most popular pages on the site are. See the pages on the sidebar.
Those are the key word variants he might be trying to rank.

Check how he is ranked for those keywords.
Never offer to give a link as "Dog Training" and never ask to get a link as "DOg Training"

Check some Dog Training keyword variants, and find out for which keywords he don't rank well.

EG: He only ranks at number 8 for Hunting Dog Training

Offer to link to him with the keyword "Hunting Dog Training" and ask for a keyword for which he don't seem to care. Like a poorly written article etc..
He will be happy in the offer, and he will respect you for your research.

You can subtly add if he would be willing for an in-content link exchange :)

Happy Link Building

Dealing with Image bandwidth Thieves to your Link Building Advantage

This post will help you manage people who are hotlinking to your images, to your advantage. You can actually use the bandwidth thieves to your advantage by changing the way you upload the pictures.

Are you not tired of seeing new incoming links on your dashboard only to find out that someone link to your picture without giving any credit, and it is just an image hotlink?

I have a blog with a relevant picture on every posts, and since the picture are relevant, I rank very well in google Image search. Well, and I get a new hotlink almost everyday. Sometimes more.

Earlier, I used to mail to leave a comment to at least provide an img source so that I get a link back to my site. They usually don't listen. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they just remove the picture. And I can't go around leaving comments.
Then I realised something.

Understand this:

Image bandwidth thieves are a Lazy Lot.
They could have uploaded the image to their own posts/articles, but they were too lazy to do that. Most of them are blogspot users, and have no dearth of bandwidth.

And just because they are lazy, they just copy the image link source code.

So how do you use it to your advantage?

Usually when we upload a photo on a blog, the code is like img src the image url and then the image links back to the same image using an HREF.

Something like
<br /><br /><a href="www.site.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/pic.jpg"><img alt="About the picture" src="htt://www.site.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/pic.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />

And the hotlinker usually copies the whole lot.. This is where we can use it to our advantage.

So what I have done is is I changed the href part to link back to the webpage and not the image... SO that the image links back to the webpage or blogpost url and not the image placeholder in WP-UPLOAD directory.

The above code now looks like:

<br /><br /><a href="www.site.com/my-blog-post"><img alt="About the blogpost" src="htt://www.site.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/pic.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />
The net result?

80% of my hotlinkers link back to my site, though without an anchor text.
But I use the ALT attribute wisely.

The picture are relevant to my Post or Page and usually the article that is hotlinking is also relevant to my original article, and I get some link juice..

Happy Link Building

Dealing with Image Bandwidth Thieves

Free Directory Lists for Link Building

Here are a links to lists of thousands of free directory.

1) Directory Critic.


2) Directoryrate

3) info.vilesilencer

4) Best web directories

5) web-directories.ws

6) seocompany.ca

7) directorylist.org

8) Addurl.nu

9) Digital Point Sticky on Directory lists