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[W197]Web Hosting Link Exchange

by Richard Adams, Ric

But there are still an astonishingly large number of ways in which web masters make it difficult for other people to exchange links with them.

And let's be honest - the easier you make it for other web masters, the more links you will end up with.

So let's examine some of these ways as examples of tactics you should avoid if at all possible in your campaigns. All three of these examples are things I have seen on live websites in the last week or so, so these are really going on right now.

1) Demanding A Minimum PageRank (PR)

To many web masters, PR is the be all and end all of link swapping. To a certain degree this makes sense but be aware that Google is getting smartrer all the time. If it spots a site with no PR0 sites linking to them then this may well look unnatural.

And Google doesn't like annatural. It's one way Google ascertains whether you're trying to "game the system" and if you get caught you may find yourself delisted from Google altogether.

What's more, a PR0 site will likely gain Page Rank at the next Google update if it's a new site, so you would have had a quality link on that site if you were willing to be patient.

Infact, I've had sites go from PR0 to PR4 in a single indexing (and plenty of other people have experienced the opposite as their Page Rank vanishes overnight).

So the point is - you're making decisions based on a highly fluid and flexible quality like Page Rank whihc will be constantly changing. And as a result you're shooting yourself in the foot.

Make the *quality* of the site in question the primary decision-making factor and I think you'll have a far better long-term strategy.

2) No Blog Links

It's true that spam blogs (or "splogs") are rife but equally there is an ever growing number of good-quality blogs with excellent content, high readerships and lots of incoming links.

Excluding blogs altogether rules out exchanges with a huge pool of sites that are perfect for link exhcanges so take off your blinkers.

Indeed, with blogs being accepted into standard search engines and directories *as well as* specialised blog and RSS directories, this can even mean that they offer your site even more that a standard website.

3) No Link Exchange Form

Too many sites still expect web masters to email them to exchange links rathet than filling in a small form on their website. Not only is this frustrating for potential linkers because it's so slow but emails increasingly get lost in cyberspace or in today's spam filters and so may not even be received.

So use a contact form which makes life easier for visitors to your site and also ensures you get all the information you need to make a decision about te suitability of potential link partners.

However you have to be careful of the different websites you reach through these links as some websites can cause problems to the efficient running of your computer. Sometimes, you may end up in a site where its owner encrypts the source of the website for protection from its content getting stolen or to cover up malicious code that harms his or her computer.

You can find out if the site that you visit is an encrypted site with tools like urlaudit, in addition to finding out if the site is a risk to people using your traffic exchange. Then there is a possibility of urls leading to a 404 error page.

This page proves to be very irritating to the surfer as it leads to a blank page, and is a waste of time for the surfer. This is why if you have a site exchange service, that you never direct surfers to pages with a 404 error page.

If you do direct them to the page, they lose interest in using your site exchange service and lose site traffic, which proves to be disadvantages to you. You can prevent all this by using tools like urlaudit which scans the links of your site exchange service to ensure that visitors don't lead to wrong or missing pages in your urls.

Sometimes, you may find some sites with urls having a 404 error with urlaudit. You then have to contact the site owner to inform them of the sites so that the right steps can be taken to fix the problem. The site owner usually resolves the error wherein the missing page is replaced or updated, as required.

If you are providing a site exchange to people, you have to remember that there are many people who are not interested in links to sites having sounds and video as these sites take a long time to load.

So you can use tools like urlaudit to ensure that the links that you provide them don't have any audio or video matter on the site, and then decide whether or not to include the links in the site exchange list you provide to your client. You could contact the site owner to request for the removal of this audio and video content, if your client wants the link to the site to be included in the link exchange.

There are also many sites that have adult content; you have to decide whether you want your link exchange to include these sites, depending on the needs of the client. You can find out which sites on the link exchange have adult content with the help of urlaudit and include or exclude them from the link exchange site, as per the requirements of your customer.

So all this shows that with tools like urlaudit, you can cater your link exchange service to meet the needs and requirements of your customer.

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About Author

Both Richard Adams & Marvins Dreyers are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Richard Adams has sinced written about articles on various topics from Travel and Leisure, Quit Smoking and Computers and The Internet. Richard Adams is the creator of an exciting, brand new course on how to build your own website from scratch in 7 days or less with no technical knowledge. Take a look today at. Richard Adams's top article generates over 1830000 views. to your Favourites.

Marvins Dreyers has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet, SEO linking. . Marvins Dreyers's top article generates over 1300 views. to your Favourites.