02.27.06
Automated Link Exchanges - Friend or Foe?
It’s very tempting, isn’t it? A skillfully written (or not) piece of php or asp code added to a blank page on your site and a large number of categorised links start pouring in. What’s more, all the sites participating in this automated scheme start displaying a link to your site as if by magic.
Do these systems work in increasing your link popularity and therefore your Google rank or are you seen as participating in a link farm?
We have tried a couple of them, one very slow and cumbersome, the other sleek and well-written. We have yet to see any tangible results but in theory it should work provided you can limit the number of categories you exchange links with to just those that are relevant to your business.
Florists, funeral directors or realtors might be seen as a bit irrelevant to an SEO site if we are to give Google back-end processes some credit for semantic intelligence.
Please comment to this post with your particular experiences of automated systems. You can name names, praise or criticise -all in the name of research!