Link Trading vs. Link Building One of our forum members asked a question recently about link building. Well, it started out as a link building question, but it became clear that what he was interested in was link trading. He used, as an example, someone with a watch site, and said that he might trade links with jewelers as being related, but not used car sites. There's nothing wrong with trading links. Indeed, it can be a very good idea if you're doing it because visitors to one site would naturally be interested in the content offered by the other site. But if you're doing it to rank more highly on Google's search engine result pages, you'd best think twice. A link is always a vote, of course, but not all votes are equal in the eyes of Google. Reciprocal links seem to get devalued by the search engine, so they probably won't do much to boost your position in the SERPs. In that case, you should probably take the time you spend chasing after reciprocal links and invest it in something that will deliver more of a return. EGOL and SEO_AM, both very well-respected members of our forum, bluntly say they spend zero time trading links. The latter elaborated that “We do spend some time identifying links that our visitors/readers may have an interest in and link to those sites, BUT we do not request a recip from those sites...†So where do all of their inbound links come from? EGOL offered a clue, playing with the same example of someone building a site selling watches: “If you are really into watches you should have TONS of knowledge that potential customers and other watch sellers would like to know. You should know how to do lots of things that they would like to do. You should know how to find lots of things that they would like to find. You should know all of the trivia about watches that would impress the Hell out of every one. You would know what kind of watch Obama uses, know if the Pope owns a watch... know what types of watch are owned by wall street bankers what kind are used by construction workers... you should know how to recommend a watch to anybody.†And if you're not so sure about these topics, you're not going to succeed, because you're not enthusiastic enough about watches. Your website's content might be quite good, but that kind of enthusiasm attracts its own crowd and its own links. Others on our forum have described the approach as finding the best content in the field, and then making your content even better than that. Granted, even with that kind of content, you'll still have to promote it, but once people find it, that kind of knowledge, enthusiasm, and passion builds its own momentum...and the links all but build themselves. Good luck!
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