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James
13th Dec 2007, 07:41 am
I have just been contacted by an SEO company in the US who proposed a link exchange with my site.

They had already added a link to my site and sent me the URL to prove it. HOWEVER, whilst their link page looked legit, further scrutiny showed that it wasn't actually linked from the rest of the site and so was therefore invisible to search engines!

Had I not spotted this and given them a reciprocal link, then it would be double value for them and zero value for me, as in effect it would be a one way link from me to them. There are scores of other sites on the link page - I wonder if they will fall for this trick?

Another similar trick is for them to put "robots no follow" in the meta. Always check that too.

David
13th Dec 2007, 11:47 pm
James - very good point. I have noticed this before but I hadn't quite put 2&2 together. This is quite a common technique and I make it a rule only to exchange links with sites that have content related to my own i.e. they are genuinely useful for users.