I receive link exchange requests often, and will share the most ridiculous ones I receive with you for two reasons. First, I want you to know when to decline these. Secondly, I don’t want you to actually hire a company that has people send out these awful, illogical, useless requests.

Now remember, I’m a web designer. And that what I’d be looking for was a link from a website that was about…oh, I dunno, website design. Remember that search engines evaluate links in context, meaning the content that surrounds the link to your site matters in how much this link will be counted towards getting your website ranked for your keywords. You want links from pages that have your keywords in them. This is link building 101. You want links from pages whose main topic matches your website’s keywords. Here’s the email I received:

Link Exchange Request for Discount-pet-superstore.com PR 1+

Dear Webmaster,

First of all let me introduce myself – I am,Rokshar Link Manager

I handle online marketing for my client http://www.discount-pet-superstore.com

To increase the link popularity of my client’s site , we are now looking for triangular Link swapping with some good quality sites. You are already aware that Triangular Link swapping is much more popular and beneficial than Reciprocal Link exchange . This way both the sites gets the benefited . I would request you to place my client’s link at your site.

Please add my links on minimum Page Rank 1+ (otherwise it will not acceptable by my client) and use the following code for linking to us

Here are details of my site :

Url : http://www.discount-pet-superstore.com
Title : Discount Pet SuperStore
Des : Buy PetSafe Wireless Dog Fence, Dog Doors, Dog Crates, PetSafe Electric Dog Fences, Pet Containment Fencing, and Discount Pet Supplies

Or you can simply use the following Linking code:
a href=”http://www.discount-pet-superstore.com” Discount Pet SuperStore /a Buy PetSafe Wireless Dog Fence, Dog Doors, Dog Crates, PetSafe Electric Dog Fences, Pet Containment Fencing, and Discount Pet Supplies

Your link will be added within 12 hours at
dogfence-shopping.com (PR3)
OR
horses-shiatsu.com Within 12 hours.

Please forward me your linking details along with confirmation where my link have been added by you .

Hoping an early and positive response from your side.

Have a nice day ahead

Bsest Regards
Rokshar
Rokshar.anjum@gmail.com

Let’s dissect this request:

1. Website Conflicts With My Values: First and foremost – I believe that electronic dog fences are completely inhumane.

2. It’s a form letter: Meaning to me that this person probably didn’t even visit my website, otherwise it would be “Dear Jill”. Call me crazy, but I just don’t respond to form letters. I think they’re spam and treat them as such.

3. Triangular Link Swapping Is “Black Hat”: This means that whenever you try something that tries to fool search engines, it’s bad news. This is just like reciprocal link swapping, which is better than nothing, but not good as one-way links. The best links are those that folks give you because your content is worthwhile, not because “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”. Google is smarter than you may think.

4. No value to my website or my visitors. As previously mentioned, having a link to my website from a dog fence website or a shiatsu for horses website is of absolutely no value to me or the people who might be on my website. You should add links to your website because your customers will find the information useful. Other people will add links to you because they find your website information useful.

Bottom line: If you are going to hire a company to perform link building for your new website, find out HOW they plan to do this. If they are going to send out terribly written cookie cutter emails to random website owners – take your money elsewhere. Real quality link building is much more than hiring someone to send out spam on your behalf.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 7:25 pm and is filed under the Getting Traffic, Rants category. Read other Aldebaran Website Design Blog articles by returning to main blog page. Need a blog added to your website? Click here to read about blog installation services or click here to contact Aldebaran Web Design.