A Bad Reciprocal Link Request Outed by Danny Sullivan
Danny ripped on a bad link exchange request he got emailed to him recently. It's kind of funny because the offender is Brad Fallon, who runs myweddingfavors.com, in addition to SEO Radio and other sites. Brad is a budding SEO expert and actually a lot more of an in-the-trenches SEO guy these days than Danny, but it was definitely a bad idea to email that link exchange request. I'm sure it was an automated process and/or was sent by a clueless employee of Brad's but it's still funny that Danny posted it with the URLs intact, although not linked. I think Danny makes a good point, that link exchanges should be with relevant sites that will benefit your site's users if possible--however, the fact of the matter is, Brad's wedding favors site shows up #1 for his keywords on Google. His tactics are obviously doing exactly what was intended. If Brad sees that he's featured on Danny's site as an example of a bad link request, he might be slightly embarrassed, but he'll laugh it off and he'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
Danny may not have read the email very carefully, or somehow misunderstood that the request was for a three-way link exchange. That means: we put up a link to your site on this site and then you link to this other site from yours. The idea is to basically hide the fact that you're even exchanging links. The email actually explained it pretty well: This exchange will create one way links to both our sites, which is beneficial from SEO point of view. It's actually a very common method of link building and a very good concept if you do it right and can yield very good results in the search engines, as evidenced by this particular site--a fact that Danny neglects to mention (if he even bothered to check the site's ranking). I'm not saying this was a good link request--it was a stupid one, like Danny suggests, all I'm saying is that it's working for now, or at least not hurting their site's ranking in the search engines.
Would I personally use this shotgun approach to link building? No. I prefer the more logical relevant approach to link building. It just makes more sense for everyone and is a lot safer route for long-term success.
Danny may not have read the email very carefully, or somehow misunderstood that the request was for a three-way link exchange. That means: we put up a link to your site on this site and then you link to this other site from yours. The idea is to basically hide the fact that you're even exchanging links. The email actually explained it pretty well: This exchange will create one way links to both our sites, which is beneficial from SEO point of view. It's actually a very common method of link building and a very good concept if you do it right and can yield very good results in the search engines, as evidenced by this particular site--a fact that Danny neglects to mention (if he even bothered to check the site's ranking). I'm not saying this was a good link request--it was a stupid one, like Danny suggests, all I'm saying is that it's working for now, or at least not hurting their site's ranking in the search engines.
Would I personally use this shotgun approach to link building? No. I prefer the more logical relevant approach to link building. It just makes more sense for everyone and is a lot safer route for long-term success.
posted by Dave @ 10:01 AM
3 Comments:
At 10:48 AM,
Danny said…
I would vote for clueless employee. But regardless, however it happened, it was a bad request.
Yep, maybe the bad requests are working for him. Then again, maybe down the line, getting a bunch of links from sites not really about weddings might be devalued. I think you know a lot of people have found this happening with the latest Google update. So it may be laughing to the bank time now, and next month, it might be laughing to the bankruptcy court. Then again, maybe the site is doing well because if you look at it, it seems to be a pretty good site for its topic, link nonsense notwithstanding.
I did read the email carefully and do understand what a three way exchange is all about. But for the newbie who doesn't understand that, this email is going to read as confusing. You want me to link to you and you'll link to me from somewhere else and whaattt??? What's a "one way link" again versus other types?
A better link request that wants to go the three way route makes it clear exactly why they are doing this for the non SEO person. Doesn't make the link better, but it does make it a better request to understand.
Is the tactic working for the wedding site? Nope, I didn't bother to check. But I wasn't writing on whether that link would benefit the site asking for the link, which you're kind of neglecting to note.
I was writing about why it was a bad offer for the site being asked to link. And it is a bad offer. The site linking over is going to get diddly out of this. The wedding site gets some nice home page link love.
Seriously, you wouldn't buy into this link exchange unless you went back and very carefully understood exactly where they were going to link to you from and probably would insist it not be off of some generic link page crammed with a ton of other links.
At 12:02 PM,
Dave said…
Thanks for stopping by, Danny. No offense intened with my post. I agree that it was stupid to send that link exchange request. My point is simply that something he's doing is obviously working...for now, at least. Even so, I'd feel pretty foolish if I were that guy because it is an obvious mistake and he's a self-proclaimed SEO expert and even sells SEO advice and products to other people, yet got caught sending a spammy link request.
At 2:57 AM,
professional web design specialist said…
uhm im fairly new to this link building. a lot were emailing me requesting for exchanging of links and i know this is beneficial to both sides...i guess this isnt bad.
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