Building links is very important to a successful online business. I recently discussed linkbait in my newsletter. Now it’s time to take a look at link exchange emails.

Personally, I very, very rarely reply to link exchange emails. Most get an automatic delete. This is because the sites on which I do link exchanges I use a software, so if I get an email it means the person didn’t really look at my site.

Most link exchange emails also make it obvious that the person didn’t look at the site. They’re irrelevant or spam sites. But a few are worthwhile.

On very rare occasion I’ll see a request that is worth considering. It doesn’t happen often. But sometimes a webmaster with a good quality, relevant site will be out looking for links.

When you get a link exchange email start out by looking at the email itself. Do they show that they even looked at your site? How’s the grammar? Yes, I do delete simply for bad grammar and spelling. That speaks to me of a low quality site.

If by some chance the email convinces you to look at the site, look at both the main pages, the page you would be linking to and the page your link would appear on. That last should be easily navigated to from other pages. It should also be highly relevant to your site. If not, move on.

Relevant links are a challenge these days. There’s a lot of discussion about whether there’s any value to them at all anymore. If you do reciprocal link exchanges, make the effort to ensure that it is worth linking to.

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