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Link Swaps - - Yes or No?

Dear Colleague,

Do you get form letter emails from friendly young people like "Ashton", "Lily" and "Isabel" inviting you to swap links with their websites? Should you participate? What are the benefits? What are the risks? And are there good alternatives?

The benefit, according "Ashton" and "Lily", is that those links will induce Google to refer more traffic to your website without you having to go to the trouble and expense of creating original, relevant content. The risk is that Google isn't stupid and can recognize the lack of relevance of these links and may see them as an attempt to manipulate their search engine results. See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html, for an example of how Google feels about that.

Should you participate? Consider website links from Google's point of view and decide for yourself:

• Google will never "punish" you for any INCOMING links from other websites (good or bad) because these websites are beyond your control. Otherwise, an unscrupulous competitor could too easily link TO your website from an unsavory website and ruin your reputation with Google.
• Google will, however, hold you accountable for any OUTGOING links FROM your website for just the same reason - - such linking IS under your control. Ashton and Lily may be very nice people, but if the websites that they are promoting engage in deceptive or unsavory activities, now or in the future, Google will see your links as promotion of those activities, and will deal with you accordingly.

We recommend that you only link to those websites that you know and trust well enough to send your prospective Client to visit. You work too hard on your website reputation to put it in the hands of a complete stranger. The safest way to build traffic to your website is to create the original, relevant content that Google values. As it happens, this achieves TWO important goals - - (1.) Google will refer more traffic to your website and (2.) your prospective Client will find the information she or he needs in order to make a decision to pick up the phone and call.