Massive Link Trades

Once again the law of moderation comes into play.

Trading with anybody and everybody, with no regard to the content of the other site, or the relevancy, is not a good idea. There are several ways this can bite you - some painful, some deadly.

Search engines reputedly count relevancy. Now, we must understand that they cannot do so with any great degree of accuracy, so they are going to miss some of the time. If you link with sites that obviously have similar keywords, then they will count it. If you link with sites that are relevant, but not obviously so, then they might not, but it is still a link that will help you more than harm you.

What does hurt is two things:

1. Massive numbers of irrelevant links that appear overnight. Search engines might consider that to be a spam tactic.

2. Link trades with disreputable sites. Those sites, if linked in to yours (their link on your site) can get you outright banned. It can also stop you from using many other types of advertising, because other site owners will judge your site in part by the links coming off it.

So, get your links a few at a time.

Get them on sites that you really like, or that are a good resource for your site visitors.

Check the out the other site. Look for hidden text or other elements that might get it banned, look to insure that it is good quality, and make sure it does not have links off IT that go to bad sites. And run it through a Google Ban Checker online, to make sure it has not already been banned.

Do not worry about the pagerank of the other site. I mean, if it has a 4 or higher, well done! But if it is lower, link anyway. A good variety of pagerank backlinks is more "natural", plus today's pagerank 1 may be tomorrow's pagerank 5.

Keep your links as natural as possible, and build them honestly, and without trying to get them all at once. It will benefit you more in the long term, and will help you to establish a permanent reputation and traffic stream online.