Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

If you have a site devoted to selling baby shoes, do you really need a lot of links to poker sites? Some sites are so eager to exchange links that they will make it sound very attractive, perhaps offering you two links in exchange for your one.

They aren’t even really interested in any PageRank, or what your site is about - they consider the world their demographic and just want to reach as many people as possible.

Do these kinds of links actually help you, though?

Before you get into linking up your site, have a brainstorm session about what kinds of sites could benefit you not just from a PageRank perspective but from the traffic standpoint as well. What sites do you want your link on, and whose links are you willing to display?

A baby shoes site could link to a lot of different things. Parenting sites, sites that carry other baby related items (clothes, diapers, etc), and sites devoted to things like toys, tips and even lifestyles would be good.

Links to totally unrelated sites? Not so good.

A real pitfall is banner exchanges. If you end up in the wrong banner exchange program, you could end up with all sorts of things popping up. A good example of this happened to me the other day.

Our school sends home lists of ‘safe sites’ they use on the school computers for education. They are supposed to be clean and appropriate for elementary school children, and of course to be virus free.

I logged on at home to let my kindergartener work on a project. At the bottom of the screen was a banner - for a dating site. A rather explicit dating site - the kind with pay per minute chat-lines.

The graphic was a photo of lady facing away and bent over at the waist, wearing a g-string and a peekaboo brassiere. I was kind of ticked.

This is a good example of an inappropriate use of banner exchanges. The site was clearly for children aged four to twelve, and the ad wasn’t really appropriate.

This just goes to show that you should be careful when you sign up for link or banner exchanges. You just don’t know what might pop up on your site and potentially offend your visitors, losing you sales. The reverse could be true as well - you don’t want your link for baby shoes showing up on an adult site!

This doesn’t mean all banner exchanges or reciprocal link building is bad. You just need to go into every agreement with your eyes wide open, and make absolutely sure you know both where your link or ad will be displayed, and what you are agreeing to have on your own site as well.

If you use common sense with your linking, you will build a respected site that will grow in popularity and gain a reputation as a solid site as well. Providing valuable information is what it’s all about!

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