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The Link Swapping Trap
By Stephen Bucaro
If you want to make money on the web, you must get traffic to
your website. If you want to get traffic to your website, you
must have a high rank in google's search results. Google ranks
websites based upon the number of links that point to the site.
Many novice webmasters believe they can trick Google into giving
their website a high rank by swapping links with other
webmasters. One reason they believe this, is because "wanna-be"
web marketing "experts" keep spouting that trash.
It's only partially true that Google ranks websites based upon
the number of links that point to the site. Google uses a highly
sophisticated page ranking formula that keeps changing and
evolving all the time. Google caught onto the link swapping
trick years ago.
Novice webmasters put all their link swaps on one gigantically
long page referred to as a "link farm". When Google's robot
finds a link farm, their ranking formula penalizes the websites
listed in the link farm. If Google finds the same site listed in
many link farms, they remove that site from their search engine.
Just about every week I get an email message saying "I placed a
link to your website on my website. Please put a link to my
website on your website. Here's where you can find your link on
my website" ... followed by a link to a single webpage
containing hundreds of links ... a link farm.
I usually reply to such a message with a request to remove the
link to my website from their webpage. The novice webmaster
often responds with a message of pure astonishment. Link swap
requests have become so common lately that I have been
responding by clicking on the "Delete" button.
Every webmaster that wants to swap links has a website with zero
traffic. Even if Google didn't penalize websites for being
listed in a link farm, why would I want to send traffic away
from my website to a website that can't return any traffic?
Not only are these novice webmasters not experienced in the way
of the web, they seem inexperienced in the way of the world. The
first rule of the universe is "you never get a free lunch". If
you want your website to rank high in Google, you have to pay
them. If you can't afford to pay them, you have to do the work.
It's hard work to get traffic to your website. There is only one
method I know that works: put valuable, original content on your
website. Other websites, blogs, and forums will post links to
the valuable content on your website, not with a link swap, but
as a resource to their audience.
When someone places a legitimate link to valuable content on
their webpage, the webpage has low link density. Google's page
ranking formula gives the page a high score. If a link to your
webpage is found on a high scoring webpage, that raises the rank
of your webpage.
On the other hand, a page with a high link density, with
hundreds of links and little other content, gets a negative
score from Google. If a link to your webpage is found on a
webpage with a negative score, that lowers the rank of your
webpage.
Don't try to scam Google by swapping links, and don't cooperate
with foolish webmasters who think there is a "free lunch". If
you want to get a higher ranking in Google, resulting in more
traffic to your website, there is only one way - good old
fashion hard work.
About the author:
Copyright(C)2004 Bucaro TecHelp. To learn how to maintain your
computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and
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