Link Exchanges

Have you ever spent ages link exchanging for your site and wondered if you really are doing any good? Are those hours, days, weeks or whatever of sending requests, putting up links and removing non-responding sites really worth the effort? Everyone tells us it is, but how can we prove it?

If you are hoping for an answer to the above, then I'm afraid I don't think there is a straight forward answer. I know that sites I've put loads of effort into link exchanging generally get a better PR than those left there to do nothing, but I've also had sites ticking over just on requests received do far better than those I'm actually recruiting for. Then there's the sites that are very similar, but the lower PR site gets more traffic.

Trying to investigate why someone's blog just won't appear in the search engines (read this post for more details) I noticed that all of the links shared a common, apparently harmless, piece of code. It's so common that I bet 99% of the link exchanges about use it - all of my links out do. No-one seems to think that this would prevent Google recognising the link - or is that just denial because it's easier to think that way?

I had a look at links into my own site on Google and not one of them include this potential horror. Therfore, and the reason I'm not saying exactly what piece of code I'm looking at (so that you come back here soon), I've removed it from some links to Kevin's blog. If that now gets listed then I might be onto something.

And that will tell me that 99% of the hard worked for link exchanges weren't worth bothering with.