by Leslie Truex, 6/14/2006

Link exchanges are a good way to help increase your traffic and improve your page rankings in search engines. Unfortunately, not all links are created equal. There are more and more websites using deceptive link strategies that not only don't help your traffic but can hurt your reputation. Link exchanges with disreputable sites can actually hurt your Google page rank and, in fact, lead to a penalty by Google.

Everyday I get several emails from webmasters asking me to exchange links with them. In their emails they are very complimentary about my site and "remind" me how important reciprocal linking is to a website's success. They have already, in good faith, added my link to their site and provide a page URL that I can check to make sure its acceptable. In return, they ask that I provide a link to their site from my website.

Lately, nearly every link request I've gotten has been deceptive. For a link exchange to be fair, there not only needs to be a link to each other's sites, but visitors need to be able to find those links preferably with a link to a "links" page from the home page. What I have discovered is that the link to my site is posted at the URL the webmaster sends me, but when I visit the home page, there is no link to the links page. There is no way for the other site's visitors to find my link.

I feel certain that other sites are getting the same types of emails, but I wonder, do they check out the link? Do they verify it can be found from the other site's home page? In a Google search, I found just a few articles related to dishonest link exchange schemes. Nevertheless, I was shocked (although I'm not sure why with the rampant dishonesty on the Internet) to find several other ways dishonest webmasters trick people into linking with them. Since web traffic and internet marketing is a must for online success, it's important that all good webmasters know how to protect themselves from link scams.