Bad Marketing Idea: Link Exchange Programs

If only they lived up to their promise... The drawbacks to these depend largely on how you use them, and what you expect to get out of them.

The term Link Exchange Program can be used in several ways. We'll discuss two types of link exchange programs:

The first is nothing more than a listing on a site of sites that are willing to exchange links. This type of program really gives you very little advantage. It has the following drawbacks:

• You do all the work. Ok, you have to work for anything worthwhile, so no biggie, but with Link Exchanges, you do a LOT of work, for the potential of a tiny return. You'll send out a ton of requests just to get one that agrees.
• You have to review every site that you want to exchange links with. You'll have to check to insure that they have not been banned from Google, and you'll have to insure that the content is relevant and good quality. You also need to review it to insure that they are not using tactics that will get them banned.
• Some Exchanges are categorized, some are not. For those that are not, you'll have to sort through the sites just to find something that is relevant to your site.
• Most people leave their site on those sites because they want others to do the work. They don't stick around to search for sites to trade with. It is similar to the Safelist issue - everyone is selling, no one is buying.
• If you have low pagerank, or a brand new site with no pagerank, you may find that others do not want to trade with you. Many people who do link exchanges think that they should only get links with sites that have a higher rank than they do - utterly silly, because using their reasoning, why would the other site want to trade with THEM?

This kind of exchange is preferable to the automated type, but it is still not an easy way to get links.

The second type is automated. Usually you have to pay. Sometimes they are free, but if they are, then you won't get much leverage out of it.

Free versions often track impressions. This means that your site will get only as much exposure as you give someone else's site. If your site does not get good traffic yet, it will barely affect your traffic.

Even paid versions do not provide code that can be read as a link by search engines. That means that paying for this type of links won't help you as much as a hard won, personally negotiated exchange.

Overall, Link Exchange programs are not a productive use of your time or money. There are more efficient ways to get links, even to get trades.

I find that through the course of working with other people, and during the course of my own participation on forums online, I encounter people all the time who have sites with similar topics to mine. I have the chance to get to know them a bit, and to see their site content, and then I can propose ad swaps or link exchanges, and it is a very natural process instead of forced and distrusting. The best way to get them is to invite them with an invitation on your site, and then to just wait for opportunities and act on them as they come.

See Google's page on link schemes to learn more about why link exchange programs are a bad marketing idea.