Reciprocal Links

I have a sports site (http://www.sportznow.com) and I think its starting to finally get rolling with content. However, I can't get barely any traffic. Part of the problem is that I'm in only 2 search engines and in none of the main ones. If my site is found with a reciprocal link on a site being crawled, I know this adds popularity to my site and gets it a higher ranking, but can it get me in a search engine? Also, if you'd like to exchange links with me email me at davyduke17@yahoo.com because the email for my site is down or just post them in this topic.

Hi DavyDuke,

As long as someone is linking to you, and they are either already indexed in search engines or are in turn are linked to by someone who is indexed in a search engine, the search engine will eventually get around to including you. Of course, the amount of time for the SE to get around to you will depend on the link popularity of the sites linking to you, so a page with a low pagerank (1 or 2) might take a while.

If anyone would like to exchange links to there site, post them here and I'll email you. My site is http://www.sportznow.com. Thanks for your help Pompei.

If you want to get linked, a great suggestion is to go to Articlecity.com and submit a couple articles you have written. Then, in the "About the Author" box, put a link back to your site. Since Articlecity is pretty popular, this will boost your popularity, and your PR in Google.

Also, since Articlecity allows webmasters to publish the article you submitted on their sites, those other sites will start to link to you! This isn't a large-scale traffic system, but it's a start.

I'll be sure to do that, thanks so much. If anyone else wishes to link or has any other suggestions post please.

As you are not listed within Google or the other major search engines yet, it may be best to exchange links with a few good sites that has similar content to what your site has to offer.

Apparently, you are most likely to get your site crawled quicker by exchanging links tha what you would by actually adding your site directly to the major search engines them selfs.

Hi john,

I realize that it is the popular thought that one should link with "similar" or "related" sites, but in almost every case, that means competitors.

I run a dating site, (ok, it's a mail order bride site, heh), and one guy told me that I should only link to related sites. When I replied to him that I don't want to link with competitors, he said that a related site could be a florist site cuz men might send flowers to the girls.

Jeeeez... girls like flowers, yes, but there is no other correlation between flowers and mail order brides. Google's mathamatical algorythm is NOT going to see any connection between a florist site and a mail order brides site, in my opinion.

So, a florist site would be a fine link, but my point is that it is not "related" in the Google sense of the word. This friend meant well, but his advice was bad. He said 'link to related sites', but I think he meant complementary sites. By that I mean that a florist site complements a dating site like catchup complements a hamburger Itgoes with my site or it goes well with my site. Think of it this way, like setting a table, a fork goes with a spoon and a knife, even though they are totally different. They complement each other.

Linking to sites that offer similar or related content is like setting a table with three different type of forks, but no spoon or knife.

I think we should all have the attitude and the feeling that when a person comes to our site, he or she has found everything right here and therefore giving a link to similar content would be needless and a waste.

Truthfully, I have linked with lots of my competitors, but that's because I thought they would be the easiest links to get due to this incredibly wide spread rumor, (and mistruth), that it is better to link with "related" sites.

Why is it better?

I'll tell you why you think it's better, (and by 'you', I don't mean you john, I mean you in the plural form; everyone), it's because you've read that advice in several posts written by people that appeared to know what they're talking about and you've read that advice in some articles on sites with domain names that sound authoritative, like, searchengine-watch.com or searchengine-journal.com or whatever.

And after reading the exact same advice in several sources, you figure it's the right thing to say, so you repeat it.

In most aspects of our lives, the above process is okay, even good. In webmastering, it's nothing more than rumoring.

The bottom line is Google demands links.
PR is the measure of the importance of a page.
Relevance is measured by keywords on your page
or in links pointing to your page.

Linking with sites that you think are "related" offers no known advantage over linking with sites in general.


If I'm wrong about this, I'll admit it, but first someone will have to show me some proof. No wait...I won't ask for proof, just some evidence, some sort of research that is public and verifiable.


Again, John please don't be offended by this, I'm really speaking to everyone, not direttly to you.

Bompa

Oops, I just realized that this is not the Google forum, duh.

After reading that does anyone want to link? It takes so long to email companies and propose a link exchange and then get a response, so I'm also going to try to ask from here. Thanks to Ozzu I got listed in google and yahoo, but I have low popularity, but I am determined to fix that. Any links will be submitted on the homepage of sportznow and the links page: http://www.sportznow.com/links.htm . Thanks for all the responses.

Bompa,

I'm not offended by what you said in your last post, infact you mentioned a few good points!