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Link
FIRST: Does your
website qualify for a link exchange?
Link exchange, as I'm sure you realize if you have
exchanged links even once, is a labor-intensive proposition. Please help
us reduce our labor costs--and yours--by reviewing how we evaluate websites for link exchange BEFORE you ask for an exchange. This document will probably benefit your business as well.
Your Business/Website Type
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Evaluation Question: |
Why This
Is Important |
Decline
the Exchange? |
More
Information |
| Are you a competitor? |
We would rather meet all our
jewelry customers' needs, or try to, rather than send them to a competitor. |
If you sell sterling silver
jewelry or watches, cubic zirconia jewelry, semi-precious stones jewelry,
birthstones jewelry or gemstones jewelry, or pearl jewelry, we would decline the exchange. |
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| Are you a G-rated site like
ours? |
We try to put only things,
including links, on our website that anyone could see. |
If you are an adult site, a
gambling site, a hate site, or a gaming site, we would decline the exchange. |
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| Do you sell a product that can
be given as a gift? |
Our Link Directory is themed
for gift ideas. We only exchange links with sites that sell a product
that can be given as a gift. |
If you offer a service, or
your product is not usually given as a gift, we would decline the exchange.
All prescription drug sites, diet pills and exercise sites will be declined. |
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| Is your website a website
directory only or link exchange directory only? |
Your website must offer a gift
or jewelry product for sale. It must have content that is valuable for
our silvermessages.com customers, not just a list of links. |
If you do not offer a gift or
jewelry product for sale at the site you want to use for the reciprocal link
exchange, we would decline the exchange. |
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| Is your home page so littered
with information, pictures, music backgrounds, loud graphic backgrounds,
memorials, pictures of your pets and kids, etc. that have nothing to do with
your product that we can't actually determine what you sell? |
Why subject our customers to
this? |
If we see no information about
the product you sell, no pictures of product, or no customer email contact
addresses or email forms, we will assume your website is just your hobby and
not your place of business and decline the exchange. |
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Courtesy
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Evaluation Question: |
Why This
Is Important |
Decline
the Exchange? |
More
Information |
| Have you taken the time and
made the effort to place a link to us from your site? We will check
all links and we regularly audit reciprocal link exchanges. |
We would rather not send our
customers anywhere where they would be treated discourteously or dishonestly. It's
proper Internet etiquette to place a link on your site to us FIRST before
you ask for a link from our site to yours. If you will not take the
time to do this, why should we? If
you said you placed a link and we can't find it, we will assume you are
dishonest and lazy. |
If you don't already have a
link on your site pointing to us, we would decline the exchange. |
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Themed Link Pages Organized by Subject
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Evaluation Question: |
Why This
Is Important |
Decline
the Exchange? |
More
Information |
| Did you put the link to us on
a page that could be called a "Link Farm" page? |
A link farm is a page of links
with no organization at all, or a page that is organized by the first letter
of the first keyword or business name. If your link exchange pages are
numbered, rather than organized by theme/subject, then a customer looking
for a sterling silver jewelry site in your link pages will never find us
unless they visit each and every link page on your site. There is very
little benefit to us, since almost no traffic will come from this
arrangement, and the search engines usually rate these kinds of pages low. |
If our link appears on a link
farm page, we will decline the exchange. |
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| Is our link so far down the
page that Google didn't cache it? |
You can see what Google cached by clicking on the i next to
PageRank on the Google ToolBar |
If Google can't cache the
link, it's of no benefit to us. We would decline the exchange. |
Learn more about Google Caching and
the Google Toolbar here. |
Navigation from Your Home Page, Within Link
Directories
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Evaluation Question: |
Why This
Is Important |
Decline
the Exchange? |
More
Information |
| Can a customer start at your
home page and navigate by clicking to the page where our link is found? |
If a customer cannot navigate
to the page with our link, neither can a search engine, generally speaking.
If a search engine can't find the link, we get no credit for it. |
If our link appears on a page
that we cannot navigate to from the home page, we will decline the exchange. |
We give special treatment on
our site to websites that give us links on highly-rated pages "click-close"
to their home page. |
| Is our link on a page that is
2 or less clicks away from your home page? |
If the link is more than 2 clicks from your
home page, Google assigns a PageRank 0. |
If our link appears on a page
that is more than 2 clicks from your home page, we will decline the
exchange. |
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| Is the page where our link is
found linked to other themed link pages in the same set of pages? |
We had a situation for over a year where our
pages one click off our home page and having subtending pages
were rated PageRank 3, but the subtending pages were all PageRank 0.
We added a link to every other link page at the bottom of the subtending
pages and they got PageRank 1 and 2 within 3 days! So it would appear
that pages that are the last "link" in a "chain" of linked pages get
PageRank 0, but if each link page links to every other link page, they are
no longer the last link and immediately get PageRank. |
We will make you aware of the
situation and if you can change the pages, we will do the exchange. |
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Benefits to Link Exchange - Search Engine
Scores
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Evaluation Question: |
Why This
Is Important |
Decline
the Exchange? |
More
Information |
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