Swapping links with other websites, and/or having a links page will do nothing but push your website further down the listings.
It was the done thing 5 or 10 years ago, and ‘newbies’ still get sucked into it now with all the old link request emails bouncing around, but Google got savvy to the trick of swapping links years ago.
You can submit your link to a few niche directories, i.e. directories related to your trade or genre, but don’t fall for any of those unsolicited emails about getting your links in 1000s of directories, they’re all crap. Oh, and it’s better not to choose reciprocal link when submitting to your niche directories as that’s just the same as link swapping.
If there’s an option to pay, just pay if it’s not too expensive. The paid niche directories are usually better quality than the general directories that allow any genre to submit, which become full of junk links usually and are no use to anyone.
Of course this does not apply to the big directories like DMOZ, everyone with a decent website should submit their link to DMOZ – just make sure you choose the right category, drilling right down, and don’t add any hype to your submission text.
There’s a whole load of ways to get more traffic, paid and free, but swapping links definitely isn’t one of them!
One of the usual ways to get higher up is to have more text on your site, to keep adding stuff all the time. The only obstacle to that is a lot of people just can’t be arsed, or don’t understand why, and think people like me are telling them to make their site bigger so I get more money… but anyway, if you had a blog installed and added the pages yourself you wouldn’t need people like me after that – again this assumes you have the time to add anything to it.
If you do have your own blog, it is good way to let people know what your company is doing and that you’re still trading etc. On the other hand if you let it slide and don’t update the blog at least once a month say, it looks like you’ve gone out of business.
If you wanted to take it further you could have a Facebook page and have your blog posts automatically added to it.
The best way at the moment to get one-way links pointing to your site is posting comments in other people’s blogs via Google News that are in a niche related to yours. Again, this means spending some time – but not very much once you get the hang of it, like perhaps 15 to 20 minutes during the evening or whenever you have spare time on your laptop on the train etc.
Basically the more you put into it the more visitors you get back in return, it’s all about time and enthusiasm these days rather than quick fixes and swapping links etc.
It sounds odd, like personifying Google, but Google wants to know that the results it gives people are as genuine as possible and the only real way for them to know this is by calculating how much effort the website owner seems to be putting into building their website and its reputation etc.
Google wants you to present yourself as an expert in your field. If they think you’re doing this it will put you closer to the top. After all, they must provide their users with the most relevant search results to stay at the top themselves.
So forget about swapping links, we recommend having a blog of your own and posting comments in other people’s blogs that allow you to add a website address – by this we don’t mean adding meaningless drivel like ‘great blog’ and ‘I agree!’, but thought out responses that show you actually read the owner’s post so you’re making a real contribution to their website in exchange for your link.
If you’re in the York area and this topic interests you and/or your company, hourly lessons can be arranged where you will be shown how to safely promote your site yourself so you can carry on doing it for free in your own time afterwards.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by York Interweb. York Interweb said: Does it pay to swap links with other websites? http://www.websitedesignyork.com/online-business/swapping-links-with-other-websites/ [...]