Will SE penalise if they find links of Link Exchanging websites on our website?

[harish318]

Will SE penalise if they find links of Link Exchanging websites on our website?

Some Link Exchange websites say they will approve our application only if they find the link of their website on our website.

As I do not want to get penalised I would like to get some feedback on this.

Harish

[Marcia]

harish, it depends on what you mean by a Link Exchanging program. Some, if not most, individual sites who exchange links want you to link to them first. That's OK. But if you're talking about those link exchange programs that arrange links among a big volume of sites, that's a different story.

The search engines warn in their guidelines that they frown on artificial linking schemes that are for the purpose of inflating search engine rankings. Yet, you'll see a lot of sites who participate in those - with links to them on their sites - doing just fine. It seems to not be hurting, but there have been sites hurt for being involved in just those types of programs in the past - big time. Like PR0 at Google for a long time, and at one time excluded from Alta Vista.

It's a very "white hat" conservative answer, but it's up to you to make that kind of decision for yourself; whether seeing others doing well doing it gives you enough confidence to do likewise, and whether you'd be able to withstand a risk, however small, of incurring a penalty if an engine decides to clamp down in future.

That's why some people do two sites, with no traceable connection between them. It's so they can stay squeaky clean and ultra safe with one, and be a bit more aggressive with the other.

[harish318]

Thanks Marcia. I would link to linkmarket.net, linkalizer.com, linkexchanged.com, linkateer.com ..... Will it be possible for you to now tell me if I can link or not. Your previous answer was slightly confusing.

Harish

[Anthony Parsons]

Your kind off asking for a personal stamp off approval mate, which I doubt you will get on all of them. I give a stamp of approval to the new linkmarket.net site for its ease of use, but not necessarily its sites within its index. Lots of spam in their. Their linking process is the best I have seen though. As Marcia stated, it is your decision ultimately to link to whom you feel comfortable. If it looks like spam, don't link to it, if not, then link to it.

[harish318]

I think I making everyone get confused here. My straight question is can I put the link of linkmarket, linkexchanged etc. on my site so that visitors of my site can directly click and go to linkmarket, linkexchanged etc.

I am not asking whether I should link to the sites listed in these Link Exchange websites.

Also I am going to put links manually on my site.

[mcanerin]

If you are just linking to the sites themselves, that's different. You are not really engaged in link trading, unless I have misunderstood you. You can link to them without necessarily being a participant in a linking scheme.

The issue comes when you start linking using their automatic system with no practical relevancy check in place.

I once had a client that participated in one of these and ended up with a huge amount of sites linking, but also a huge "directory" that was mostly off topic.

I didn't think it was a coincidence when his rankings dropped. I had some time on my hands so I actually went through the list and found a few hundred "normal" on-topic websites like his that had joined up because they did not know any better. I manually added links to them to his site and dumped about 3000 sites, along with the automatic system.

His rankings went up. That normally doesn't happen when you get rid of links, so I feel there was a penalty involved of some sort. Or an amazing co-incidence. ;)

I'll say right now though - it's not necessarily these systems that are the issue, it's how they are being used.

Almost every one of them warns users to aim for relevance and to be careful, but in practice those warnings are treated the same way as CD copying software warnings about backing up only your own stuff are - ie ignored.

Ian

[harish318]

Thanks Ian. You have understood me right. I will be putting their links on my site i.e I will have link "www.linkmarket.net" on my site. I just wanted to know whether it is safe to do so.

Regarding directory of links in these sites, I will not be using their automatic system or their software. If I find any site safe then I will add their link manually.