Link Exchange Tips - Increasing Your Mortgage Web Site Popularity

Link Exchange can be like sifting through a haystack to find a needle at times. It’s a great way to increase your website’s presence and influence. You may get a ton of requests to link to your site, but how do you know if it’s worth linking to them?

Having done a lot of Link Exchange for a high ranking popular website, I can enlighten you on 5 link exchange requests you should never accept.

1. Never accept a link exchange request coming from a site whose content has nothing in common with the content on your site. If you have a mortgage website, linking to a site about planting orchids, or fun places to go kayaking will hurt your search engine ranking. It will also decrease the odds of getting relevant referral traffic to your site. Good sites to link to would be real estate companies, home appraisers, home inspectors or home insurance companies.
2. Never accept a link exchange from a page that is nothing but links. This type of link page is called a Link Farm. These pages exist solely to gather links and do not offer any content of relevance or value. These pages often have over 50 links and you wouldn’t be able to find your link on the page even if they claimed they had placed it. Make sure you examine the links or resources page the other party is offering to place your link on. Examine the links on the page to make sure they are quality and not quantity.
3. Never accept a link exchange from someone who sends you multiple requests in one day. This type of request means that you get three emails or more emails that are asking you for the exact same link exchange request, and they continue to arrive in your email box, even after you have politely declined. This is most likely a spam email sent by a program. Even when you send a reply, there’s no guarantee that a real person has read your response or placed your link. If you receive multiple identical requests from one sender, it’s best to ignore and delete these emails.
4. Never accept a link exchange from a site that wants to place your link on a completely unrelated site from their main site. Some sites are more than willing to link back to you – as long as they can place your link on a completely out of the way, non related page to their site. As I mentioned before, having your link on a page which has unrelated content can hurt your ranking in the search engines and your chances of getting good referral traffic. Make sure the page that your link is being placed in is relevant to both the content of your site, and the other site as well. If a website about home appraisals wants to put your link on a page that has links to various shopping outlets, politely decline.
5. Finally, never accept a link exchange from a sender who has already promised to place your link, and then deletes your link the next day. There are unfortunately some linkers out there, who are trying to get a link from your site without giving you anything back in return. These folks send a link request, place your link, and then delete it as soon as you have placed their link. Then, they often have the audacity to email you again months later, saying that you removed THEIR link. It’s a good idea to click through to your link partners’ sites every week or so, and see if your link is still there. If your link gets removed and your request to have it placed back is ignored, its best to just delete their link and make a note of their email address – if you see another link request from that sender, you’ll know to ignore it.

Link Exchange can be a tricky process to navigate, but it is one of the key elements in marketing your web site. Hopefully now you will know some of the pitfalls to look out for, and you’ll have a better idea of how to sort through all the link exchange requests you receive.