We received this question from a client today via email:
I received this email today for a link request. Do we have anywhere on the new site that would cater to someone looking to establish a link exchange? Is this a safe practice?
Dear sir
I would like to build a reciprocal website link between www.mysite.com and www.yoursite.com. I believe that the content in both websites would be of great interest to visitors and this could result in increased web traffic and improvement in search engine listing positions for both businesses…
Unless you know it’s a legitimate site, we wouldn’t recommend participating in these exchanges…9 times out of 10 it could potentially harm your website’s reputation (especially with Google).
Plus, you’ll notice that the majority of these link spammers only offer links on one page, often called Links or Resources…if it’s not a site-wide exchange with a reputable site it’s definitely not worth the effort.
BTW, the person who emailed this message was using one of the many link-spamming tools available on the market – anything with an email template like the one in the example above is mainly junk unless it’s a personal email to your company with the specific reasoning behind the link request. 1,000+ other sites probably received this same email, and who knows what other link-exchange relationships that site might get into in the upcoming weeks.
Always practice safe link building.
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