Link exchange: waste of time
In the recent 4-6 weeks I have spent (wasted) much time trying to improve the link popularity of some of my websites.
The website topics are different, but the result of my approaching hundreds of websites is next to nothing. I killed hours and hours searching for the websites in Google, DMOZ, social bookmarking sites, digging link pages of authority sites – ALL IN VAIN.
What did I do for link exchange?
- I tested various message subject (info about your site.com, will trade or buy a link form your site.com, John P., a question about your website plus 5-10 more variants).
- I experimented with e-mail extensions (some e-mails sent from gmail, yahoo, site.com). The only achievement with this test was the ban of one website for spamming.
- I tried many body text versions where I addressed the website owner by his name, asked to buy/ rent a link from his website, admired his site pointing to some cool features, etc.
- I searched websites to contact from various sources (Google, DMOZ, social book marking websites, digging link pages, etc)
- I approached my direct competitors and those websites that complement my sites perfectly.
- I tested week days, weekends, holidays.
- I tried to approach .com/ .org/ .edu sites
- I contacted old sites (started in 90’s) and quite new sites (started in 2000 and later)
Important notice: the websites I tried to gain links for are at least 8 months old, min PR2, do not look like crap (they look pretty for me), not purely commercial, designed on the same level like this website, with unique content.
I did get some replies – most common:
- we do not trade links;
- you are welcome to buy a link from us for $60.00 month (a PR4 website with extremely low Alexa ratings).
I have got three links so far that I am aware of: one from .ca, .nz and .com sites.
Summary: the only reasons of this as I see it – summertime and most website owners are on vacations; or – link exchange does not work anymore (I think the second option is true).
In this situation it is reasonable to stop time waste to exchange links by contacting other websites. It is cheaper (you save time and Internet bandwidth) and much faster to buy a few links from the websites of your choice on webmaster forums, eBay.com or special marketplaces (www.tex-link-ads.com and similar).
The extra time you get since you drop the inefficient link exchange work – time to develop extra features of your website and focus on generating more content.
[tags]links exchange, affiliate marketing, home based business, work from home, dmoz, google, links, seo, website promotion, e-commerce[/tags]
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