Affordable Website Promotion

11 Jun

I have sounded off before on these pages about how I consider links directories are a waste of time. Look at the maths and you should agree - you need thousands of links from a PR0 links directory just to have any potential impact.



What surprises me about the constant flow of emails, such as today's (shown above, click on it to view it in detail) is not that people are still link building and wanting directory link exchanges. That is understandable - new website owners research what they need to do and there is enough old information out there and plenty of these convincing emails doing the rounds to convince them that link exchanges might in some way help.

No, what amazes me is that companies are still paying for this as a service. How much money are these website owners are paying so called SEO experts to add a script to their website to create a links directory and a contact form and then just to send an email out to their contact list?

At least usually the emails from this company are associated with a links directory that does actually exist and is usually linked to from the home page, so there is a remote chance of getting a little benefit. But, if suddenly this site is link exchanging, they are going to be seen by the search engines to be adding tons of links to all of the usual suspects that still believe Emily's email and think that link exchanging works.

On a bad day, Ms Ackers and friends have been known to send me dozens of these emails. I'm hoping it is just the one today!

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8 Jun

Every day I get loads of requests for link exchanges, but I just delete them all. They are worth next to nothing. You would need thousands, if not millions, of link exchanges to make it worth while. Here's the maths to prove it!

18 - The magic number?
Search engine optimisation experts who have studied page rank vary in their calculations, but there is a magic number in the range of 18 - 20 that they come up with. What is this magic number?

Well, it is the number of themed links from a page ranked page that you need to get the same page rank on your site. So get 20 links from PR4 mortgage pages and your own mortgage site should also get a PR4, for example.

There are loads of "ifs" and "buts"! The page should have no more than 50 external links and should be closely themed. More external links increase the number, less decreases it.

Does this hold water?
Does this work? Well, looking at the page rank calculation in a very basic way and you receive 85% of a share of the page rank of the pages that point to you. So if 1 PR4 page points at you and that only has your external link, then you get 85% of that PR4 (about PR3.4). If that page has 2 external links, then that share is halved.

Apply that to a link exchange directory
So look at the typical link directory page. Say 40 external links on the page would mean that on a PR4 page, the links value is worth 1/40th of 3.4. But most links directory pages are lucky to have even a PR1!

Looking at the maths again, if you accept 100 exchanges with links directories with page rank 1 pages and each has 40 outbound links, then you receive back 85% of 1/40th of a page rank of 1, 100 times. Work that out and it seems quite good - it would indicate a low Page Rank of 2.

Getting a Page Rank of 2
Going back to the magic number 18, the same experts also state that about 105 links are need to get a page rank of 1 above the donating site. So 105 links from PR1 sites should give you a PR2 - agreeing with the formula calculation above

Surely double that number for a PR4? Well, actually no. The experts calculate that again the magic number goes up by a factor of around 5 to increase the ranking to the next stage, so around 500 - 600 good PR1 links give a PR3 and 2,000 to 3,000 PR1 links give a PR4.

What does a link exchange need?
So, what does this mean for the average link builder? Well, trying to find a good number of links from directories is difficult enough, especially when the pages must be themed and must be at least PR1. When many link directory pages are less than PR1, the maths really gives us huge figures and makes frightening reading.

But, the result is that to get a decent page rank through link exchanges would require literally thousands of link swaps through highly themed sites with at least a page rank of 1 with no more than 40 external links per page. Difficult enough to find a couple that fit this description. But 3,000 of them?

I think not. That is why I just delete every link exchange request without looking at them.

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22 Apr

Every day I receive and delete lots of requests for reciprocal link exchanges. I no longer value them and think everyone should delete their links directories! Why?

First, let me say that I do not include in my sweeping statement proper link exchanges. If you run a website and want to list a couple of related sites that are carefully hand picked that your visitors can benefit from, then continue. This is great and lets get back to that. Keep listing further information links, but can we just delete all of these rubbish link exchange directories and stop sending so much spam trying to get new link partners!

Why, when there is such a huge industry based around these activities, am I so against them? Well for a start, they no longer fool the search engines.

If you have a set of pages linked to under the name links, partners, directory etc, then you have just told the search engines that you undertake links exchanges and so do the people listed. Whilst linking in itself is not a problem, search engines do not want to reward links that are just there to manipulate the search engine results. And pointless links directories definitely come into category.

Over the last couple of years I have seen sites with both link exchange directories falling out of favour. Actually, one site jumped to the first page of google when all of the links were accidentally deleted from the directory. And with two similar sites, the one with the least effort put into links and no links directory has always done better than the partner site I have link exchanged heavily on.

The other problem with bulk link exchanges is that quite often they come from paid professionals who will do anything to earn their payment and by finding a new link exchange. They do not care what quality of link they give you or whether you keep the link up after their customer has paid up. Therefore, the quality of links that you receive from these sort of people is usually very poor. You give a decent link, risking being dropped from the search results because you are now linking to someone who is paying for links, and get a link that could well be hidden on a useless directory somewhere.

Another problem is the sheer amount of time that it will take you to maintain a links directory. You have to be constantly checking that the sites you are linking not only still exist, but also that they are linking to you without hiding their links. I used to expect about 30% of links to have been removed within a month of receiving the request. What a waste.

Overall, in the last few years the value of reciprocal links have been destroyed. They are pointless and no longer carry any weight. So please do not email me asking for a link exchange - your email is just going to be deleted without being read!

So how do you get links in to build up your page rank and improve your site? If you do not already know, then call across to our marketing blog and read some website promotion ideas to see what you really should be doing these days.

Written by Keith Lunt.

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19 Apr

If you are a website owner you are probably plagued by link exchange emails. But why? There are next to no benefits. Read on for why I think they are a total waste of time!


As a website owner, each day a variety of emails arrive telling me of the virtues of reciprocal links, how vital they are and how I should be link exchanging with the sender's customer. Some go into great lengths to explain what link building is and why it is important. Others try to convince me that I should be party of their three way link exchange, or triangular linking as it was once called.

But, they are all a total waste of time. There is a benefit to proper linking, but absolutely none that I can see from link exchanges. Here is why I just delete every link exchange offer I receive without even reading it.

First, most of these wonderful offers are sent by people who earn their income by sending out such spam in mass. Yes, I call it nothing more than spam. Many of these paid professionals are using underhand techniques to give the links back, or giving you a link back from a directory created for such a purpose. There are loads of ways they hide your links, but I will not go into these in detail - in case someone uses the list to learn a few cheats.

You have probably seen the offers that arrive telling you that they have personally visited your site, you have a wonderful site that provides good information and they want to link exchange. But because of spam problems, please use the contact form rather than emailing. This email is often forwarded to me by my customers, word for word the same, but just the website names changed. I have also frequently received this email regarding sites that have been deleted!

This mass emailing of the same email and targeting old sites to me is evidence that it is nothing more than computer generated spam. If they have not the interest to find proper sites, then they are just bulk creating links. Usually the person requesting it wants you to put up a link first and they will then put up a link.

This is very one sided. They want a link on your website, they are hoping from a content page, in return for a link from a huge directory, possibly one that is not even search engine listed.

And it is this mass industry of creating spam link exchanges that is destroying itself. The major search engines do put great weight on the links into a site, but they are clever enough to spot a link from a huge links directory, which they then can ignore, as opposed to a single link from a quality blog post. No doubt they also assess on blogs the proportion of blog posts that are linking to other sites to attempt to work out which are genuine and which are link building, but that is a different story.

Very few sites still link build the traditional way, I have no problems with that style of linking and encourage it. But I cannot see the benefits of reciprocal links any more. My best performing sites are those that have never engaged in these activities and so I now steer away from these requests.

If you want to know more about how to get you website optimised and how to get affordable website traffic, call into the website. There are plenty more website promotion ideas in store for you.

Written by Keith Lunt.

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26 Jan

Link building through link exchanges is a total waste of time. There, I've said it and I stand whole heartedly behind my comment!

It sounds rash, but it's a fact. It doesn't matter whether you are paying a so called SEO expert a wad of cash each month to arrange three-way links to links directories or whether you are being more honest and open and running a genuine link exchange system. The effort, or money employing someone else, would be better off spent elsewhere.

Do I really believe this? Certainly, I do. I have spent hours, days, months even maintaining link exchanges on my sites to try to edge my way up the rankings. And yes, in the past I have seen results. Usually when my system has crashed and lost all data and been rebuilt from scratch - but that is another story.

I don't think that search engines pay any notice, or very little if they do, to link exchanges through link directories and the such like. Yes, they see and record them, but you never see any good results. And it must be so easy for a search engine to detect a fake link building directory as opposed to genuine content. For a start, look for similarly named pages, with up to 50 external links, a lot using important keywords as anchor text, each with a short description of the site following it. It's not exactly hard to miss with their programming power!

So how much time do you need to spend on a links directory? Well, ignoring the initial install and setup, each week you need to check your partners are still linking to you. Have any removed your links back or the sites been deleted? What about detecting sites that are hiding you links in some way - there are a lot of ways of doing that and they are sometimes difficult to detect.

And then you have the task of going out there, finding sites to link with and arranging a link exchange. Oh, if it was only that easy! How many won't respond? How many will demand a link back first and then not respond? How many will demand that the link be placed on a PR5 page with no more than 4 other outbound links, in return for a grey barred page with 500 other links? Exageration, but not far from the truth!

It takes hours to maintain a good links directory. Even if you are getting link requests by the dozen, you still need to chek each one out. Watch out for those SEO experts and their devious little tricks to get one way links. I've fallen for enough of those in the past! On one directory I deleted two thirds of links because they came from the same 5 people, all offering links back from one or two hidden pages, which they had carefully disguised as different to my checking software.

Do yourself a favour. In the time it takes each week to check and maintain your reciprocal links, you could have written and published an article using a system such as the Free Traffic System. Then you have 60 links back to your site, that need no further maintenance and don't clutter your site with a links directory. It's time far better invested.

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