Exchange link with my website ?

[tybihan]

I am french and renting a little gite for holiday or short stay in Brittany. As you probably know it is important to do maximum of link exchanges to be well seen in search engines.
If you are interested just let me know ! Thank you

[A little bit of England]

Hi

What a wonderful area you live in! I used to live in South Devon and quite often used to go across to Roscoff from Plymouth, either for the day or a long weekend, although I am ashamed to say I never ventured further afield than Morlaix. Wonderful scenery, lovely people, delicious food. I would be more than happy to exchange links with you, although my establishment is geared more to passing through than long stay guests.

I have looked at your site and glanced through the source code. It appears to be nicely put together, easy to navigate with some nice photographic work (although I confess that is not my area of expertise). The photo page did seem to have a little too much "white space" to my eye, but all in all a nice site.

On the more technical side, your title tags are a little long for optimum SEO (11 words/70 characters max) and you haven't enabled Google analytics for the English part of the site, so you may be missing some traffic statistics. You still score 88% and 89% with the SEO tool I use, so nothing to really worry about.

www.alittlebitofengland.es

[tybihan]

Thank you very much for your message. I just have a look also to your website which is very nice. For your guidance our gite is 20 min from Morlaix, on the way to Huelgoat (you probably heard about the legendary forest very popular there). I know that I have to develop my english page and this is part of the reason I am looking for exchange links from owners who are out of France.

[GoDot]

As you probably know it is important to do maximum of link exchanges to be well seen in search engines.

That's not really true.

Google can penalize sites that engage in link farming in attempts to manipulate rankings.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/L/link_farming.html

http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... opic=&type

[january]

I really can't see that Tybihan's request can equate to, or be misconstrued as link farming.
It is fair request from a travel and accommodation related website with PR3 homepage and PR2 ( ok a little jumbled ) accommodation related links page.
I for one am quite happpy to exchange links with genuine holiday accommodation websites.

[GoDot]

http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... swer=35769

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank

http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... opic=&type

This is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")

Do it at your own risk. A few links will probably be fine. A large number of reciprocal links is a bad idea.

[january]

From the same google advice page that you have quoted from: -

Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity.

It is all about quality related links.

[GoDot]

That's fine, if you ignore everything else they say about link schemes and reciprocal links

[january]

Ok Touche ! - lets leave it at that

[davedeighan]

Hello Tybihan

Happy to post a link from our French site www.rentvillalanguedoc.com to you in return for a link to our Irish cottage www.holidaywicklow.com

Kind Regards

Dave

[GoDot]

I wouldn't really worry about it if it's only a couple of links, especially if they're from friends sites.

You probably shouldn't go down the road of stuffing your footer with dozens of links.

A lot of the free directory sites run reciprocal link schemes, those should avoided in particular.

Quite often you will find that they nofollow the link back to your site. Essentially, they get thousands of quality inbound links, but don't pass any of that link juice to the links going out from their site.

It creates a site with lots of links and high PR, which they then monetize with ads, or sell on to someone else for a hefty price.

[january]

Yes GoDot we all know this stuff, but its not what Tybihan is offering, take a look at the site it has only a related links - hardly a link farm.

[GoDot]

Fair enough.

From Google:

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank....

This is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")

Getting links from link exchange sites like linkmarket.net, or participating in other link schemes, is probably closer to the ""Link to me and I'll link to you" schemes that they're talking about

http://www.croatianlocations.com/related-links.html

[paolo]

Please don't post links to dodgy link sites.

[Nerja]

What are the panel's thoughts on a webring? So rather than just straight link exchanges, a ring of everyone who is interested.