Reciprocal Requests - When Should You Accept?
If you’re site has been around for a bit, you’re most likely getting emails every now and then that say something like this:
Dear Web Master,
We have just started the process of link building of our site and have found your site very relevant and similar to the theme of our website. We’re looking at becoming your link partners.
If you are interested in exchanging link with us then please add our Link on your site
Title: Blah blah some title
URL: http://www.some-url.com/
Description: Some description of their site…blah blah blah
We would further request you to inform us about the page where you want your link to be placed, else we will put it as per the topic of our resource page.
Regards,
Webmaster
There are different formats that they use, but most of them follow this type of a format.
So what do you do when you receive one of these emails? Well, part of the answer to this question depends on who the website is that’s making the request. Simply put, if you’re getting link exchange requests from sites that have nothing to do topically with your site, then you should either ignore the email or politely decline. For example, every now and then I’ll get a request from sites that sell prescription drugs. I don’t have any websites that have anything to do with that! Most of the time I honestly ignore these emails and just delete them, because I want to keep my links on relevant sites/pages.
Take that as the general rule of thumb. Now, if it’s a site that IS related to your topic you could go ahead and agree to the reciprocal exchange. Reciprocals are not necessarily bad. They’re OK as long as they are from a related site. But with that being said, you still want to keep them to a minimum compared to your other link building. Reciprocals should never be a large percentage of what you do.
Next time you get one of these emails, before you get all excited make sure it’s a related site. Otherwise, just let it go.
Happy Link Building!
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Space on my page is far too valuable to give away to just anyone who asks for it. Aesthetically and financially. The problem with reciprocal link exchanges is that they’re rarely reciprocal. Even if the other person does hold up their end and link to you, chances are their link is not worth much. There’s a reason they’re offering to exchange links, and it’s not to drive traffic to YOUR site.
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Rich,
I completely agree with you. I always keep reciprocal links to a minimum.
Another trick that a lot of these companies do is they’ll say “Here’s the page where you link will be located: http://www.whateveraddress.com/blah/blah” or whatever. So you’ll see that they have a page but if you go to their home page you’ll never be able to navigate to that page. This is what we normally call an ‘island page’ and essentially they just tricked you into giving them a one-way link. Tricky stuff, and that’s another thing to be careful with on reciprocals.
Thanks for the comment!
[Reply]
It is my understanding that exchanging links is not very helpful for page rank.
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