Hi all,

Where do others of you draw the line and not exchange links with another site?

Until now we have been too small to attract many link requests but I got one recently for a site that offers relevant services that would be of interest to our visitors. Unfortunately the site itself is terrible (mainly way too big at 500KB to 600KB per page). Offering unsolicited advice on how to improve a website is rarely welcomed, but is it better than turning down the link exchange request outright?

We have always maintained a links page on the premise that it's there for the benefit of our visitors, not those who we link to. This means that we include links to some sites that don't link back to us (often for their own very good business reasons).

All advice appreciated.

Cheers and beers,

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Chris Heddles
Exclusive Acrobats
www.exclusive-acrobats.com.au

My answer, as much as most people will disagree with me in all likelihood, is "ever".

There are millions of places for a site to get quality one-way links out there, and reciprocal link exchanges are becoming increasingly devalued. As idealistic as "a well-built site with good content will always get one-way links" is, it's true. You build something of use, you'll get the IBLs.

My suggestion to you would be to take a look at the sites in the Human Edited Directory (I'm a mod there). Most of the sites in the dir had to go through a pretty tough review process, and those that have made it have generally done pretty well in terms of success for themselves and their owners (I know, because I've got two in there myself).

Assuming it's the acrobats site I see there, you're not all that far off. With a few adjustments here and there (mostly coding errors, but the light text on dark background is a usability issue too), you've got something truly ready for prime time.

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Toronto Web Design | Search Engine Friendly, Standards-Compliant Layouts | Walk on my Path (my blog)

First, make sure it is a legit link they are giving you. Many, many, many times it is not a legit link. The link they are giving you is not accessible from the home page, or it is buried 3 or 4 pages deep.

About the human edited directory. I also think it's a great site, but they are overly picky on things. My site has a lot of great content, much of it original.

They tended to overlook that, or mention it in passing while they had a bit of a frenzy over some html errors, missing doc type headers and such. It is almost a bit of a contest as to who can nitpick a site apart the most.

Nevermind it's a great site, let's just impress everyone with our knowledge on how many minor errors we can find on a site.

Having said that, I do like the directory, and I did honestly get some great feedback. However, the nitpicking without question goes over the top as many others have observed.

As for reciprocal links they are no longer valued by Google we got this info from a Google employee (Matt Cutts) at a confrence in Boston. Google has also started ignoring all pages with linksin its name even some pages with resources in its name.

It is recommended you now put links with your content to a site of relevance to that page.

Whether google ignores them or not, I still do link exchanges with relevant sites. First of all, I receive lots of targeted traffic from these links so to me they are still very useful. Secondly, msn and yahoo still value these links and they are helping me get nice rankings in these se's while I wait to get better rankings in google. Lastly, I am providing a valuable resource for my site visitors which is who I created this site for in the first place.

To say that google ignores pages with the words 'links' or 'resources' in it, I find that very hard to believe. Do you know how many times the word links appears on the Internet when the page has nothing to do with reciprocal linking? How can google just ignore all these pages under an assumption? Do you have a link to any type of article that states this fact? I would be interested in reading it. Thanks!

However, I do agree that content links are better so I always try to get them if I can.