Hi all,

I'm a long time reader, first time poster - I believe this is the best area for this question I’d like to throw up.. Right, I'm looking at setting up a link exchange program, and the plan is to have the incoming links to ww*w.mydomain.com and the outgoing links (back to them) via a sub domain (links.mydomain.com)

What we’re trying to do is minimize the # of outgoing links from the main domain, increasing the outgoing vs. incoming links ratio.

For a bit more perspective we're talking a few thousand links to sites related to our business.

Has anyone ever done this? Do you think we'd be penalized by the SE's?

Any and all advice welcome!

Being in this industry of SEO for past 3 years I can say that it  will benefit your main domain.

As you can check in GOOGLE search results that GOOGLE only shows two pages of the site for a particular Keyword if the site is properly optimized for the particular keyword. But if you create a SUB DOMAIN and also optimize it for a particular keyword, then it will shows more results including the SUB DOMAIN listing.

It all means that GOOGLE takes DOMAIN.COM and SUBDOMAIN.DOMAIN.COM as two different domains. So, if you take incoming links for your MAIN DOMAIN and give links back on SUBDOMAIN.DOMAIN.COM, it will surely benefit.

And regarding the GOOGLE penality it is nowhere documented that there is something wrong with this stratergy. But make sure to first link with related sites of your site theme, so that there should not be any loophole.

Hmmmm …interesting….

To start with, 1000 Recips is likely to do more harm that good, related or not. Of course if you have say, 3000 One Way Back Links, then the ratio of OWBL to Recips would be peachy… if not… you have been warned :0)

Now there IS a relation of a sub-domain to the core domain. While it is said they are seen as a separate site, recent activities (link selling) by an ‘Authority’ site on a sub-domain shows there IS a relationship between domains ( don’t know the company right now… the gang at ThreadWatch were on about it recently.

Regardless, it is in the sights of the SEs since spammers have gone nutz with sub-domain tactics…  certainly not somewhere I would want to be

My guess is that 1000 recips and a sub-domain full of links would be an easy catch….

Hi thegyspsy,

We did a similar type job a couple of years ago - we actually tried something where we would have incoming links to www.domain.com, and would link back from www.domain2.com - basically if you went to www.domain.com/links.htm we loaded a page via <iframe> tag from domain2.com, which appeared to blend perfectly into the domain.com site.

- so essentially links were incoming to domain.com, and outgoing from domain2.com

We got the site up to a PR7 but soon after it was dropped by Google after a month+ of talking with Google, we did manage to get the site listed again (after dropping all ties and links with domain2.com, and apologizing for what we thought could have been the reason it was dropped).  But to this day we never knew exactly what the issue was (ie, it could have been the rate of which we had sites link to us, or we may have linked/been linked from "bad" sites etc) - Google refused to mention exactly what happened.

So this is where we are now, sort of wanting to do the same deal but with different cards. I am concerned as I know that sub domains are seen as separate sites, and fear we'd just create the problem we originally had.

My other thought is to have links incoming and outgoing from a page deep within www.domain.com, ie- domain.com/section1/subsection2/category3/subcategory4/links.htm Like this i'd hope the outgoing links have a lower weighting the then incoming. (if you know what i mean) ? maybe this is just pointless tho, i'm not sure?

Otherwise what do you think the best tactic would be?

Well, like I was saying, and as you have noticed, such schemes are unlikely to do much but cause trouble. Even the sub-domain approach is not happening since the SEs (Google at least) have picked up on the scams used with sub-domains.

I suggest playing it the old fashion way… get some one way back links.

I would say that you’d like to have a One Way BL – Recips ratio of around 3:1

For the links, create a ‘resources’ section and put 20 links per page, (not the full 100) – make sure all of the recips are related to the site theme.
Also check on the sites you’re linking with to ensure it is not a network of sites created as link farms ( check the IP addresses of the sites)

This meets the criteria and there is nothing ‘sneaky’ about it.

In the end one way links are far more valuable and your going to need them to rank for any serious search terms

My first job in SEO was as a links manager for over 500 sites.

We pioneered triangular and multi-threaded linking and it got us somewhere.

I joined the SEO game just as recips were about to be deemed worthless.

SEs can, and do, see the bigger picture.

Link exchanges can work but it means rethinking strategies.

The links pages of 100s, if not 1000s, of recips are long gone.

The link-content exchange method is of much more interest to me now -
Theory goes - I write an article about something related to both our sites. I give you the content, you give me a one way link. As long as the link to me is online and inline within the content (400/500 words, for example) you can do what you like with it.

Next project is to develop this idea into subscription site where the content is professionally written for you and sites are grouped, categorised and approved - so you don't need to go searching yourself. Unfortunately, with everything else that's going on, it'll be at least a year before this is up and running- by which time methods will have changed again! (and they'll be no point doing it)

Advice for now, listen to the gyp - he knows what he's talking about!

Hey North, you have writers? I have a couple teams I use, let me know if you want the email for them :0)

thegyspsy wrote:

Hey North, you have writers? I have a couple teams I use, let me know if you want the email for them :0)

I'm okay for writers, thanks

Trying to create 3-way links, I made some changes which I hope I can explain clearly. I also hope they don't create problems.

I created a "spin-off" site because my first site was getting so big.
Now, I have a commercial site for elementary school educators and parents on one site
and a more personal site for writers of children's books at another site. (Earthlink and Geocities)

The educational site is my main site.
I give awards from my educational site. In the past, I just made back-links for the awards and for regular links which were related sites but not award winners.

Now a few back-links are on my educational links' page but most return links have been moved to my writers's site at Geocities. The Geocities' links' page blends with the Geocities site because I have sections  for writers, educators, and general links on my Geocities' links' page. These people still link to my commercial educational site.

My list of award winners for the educational site is on a "free" personal page at Earthlink which owns Gate.net.
The URL is gate.net. The educational site is on a commercial site at Earthlink which has my site's name (see signature). People who win the award link to my commercial educational site.

Is it OK to move my return links to other sites such as these?
The pages at Gate.net (Earthlink) are not part of a site like the page at Geocities.
Should I create a little site for award winners while the winners still link back to my educational site?