If you’ve been researching Search Engine Optimisation for any length of time you will know that one of the biggest factors that determines the ranking of your website in Google is back-links.

So what about the “link exchange proposals” you get by email every week or every day?

Should you take them up on their kind offer?

Are these messages from real people or from clever SPAM-bots?

I would seriously consider a Link Exchange Proposal if it met the following 8 criteria.

8 Criteria For Accepting a Link Exchange Proposal

1. Did they follow up their a proposal with a phonecall? (This would indicate they are humans rather than just clever spambots, and heck, it would be flattering)
2. Is their website related enough to yours to be useful to your visitors?
3. Is their website dissimilar enough to yours so your not giving any potential business away?
4. Is their content related enough to yours to make sense that your link is on their page?
5. Is it a NZ website? (do you really need a low value link back from a random offshore website? Probably not)
6. Has the webpage on which your link is to be featured got PageRank? (don’t even bother checking unless all the other criteria are met)
7. Did they assure you at the bottom of their email that their message is not spam? (If so, it is spam)
8. Did they mention at the bottom of their email that if you don’t want link exchange proposals like this in the future, all you have to do is fill in a form, or email them back? (If so, it is spam)

If you can answer “YES!” to the first 6, and “NO!” to the last 2, then sure, go ahead and exchange links.  Otherwise, mark the email as SPAM and get on with your day.

Need more help to improve the SEO of your website?

1. Either buy the Search Engine Optimisation ebook which has more information about linking strategy and 14 more SEO techniques
2. Hire me to generate a detailed report specific to your website that tells you exactly what changes to make (and the order in which you should make them)
3. Generate more traffic to your website with Search Engine Advertising with Google Adwords