Link Exchange Ethical Dilemma

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Not sure if I am posting this in the right place but I'm sure a Mod will sort that out soon enough!

Anyway, just want to put an ethical dilemma to you guys.

As we all know, exchanging links with other related sites is good from a Google PR point of view.

Even better is to get "one-way" links whereby sites link to you but you don't link back (or don't appear to link back as far as Google can establish).

So, what do you think of putting links into a MySQL database which is accessed via PHP using such a convoluted URL string that Google gives up on it and gives that link page a PR0 because, as far as it can see, it contains nothing?

However, the links page is easily accessible to visitors from your main page?

This method is being used by a site right now and the latest Google update saw them go from PR5 to PR6.

On the one hand, I think they've been really clever because if people don't know enough to suss it out, that's their problem (at the end of the day, they ARE getting a link exchange, as agreed).

But part of me thinks maybe it's deceitful and it possibly puts a stink-bomb into the whole "Link exchange" idea which, once Google work it out, could see links disregarded totally (maybe not such a bad idea actually!!!)

Comments anyone?

[Mogga]

I check link pages where my link will be and an established page with zero pr would ring bells with me - I have often queried things like this

Wouldn't a pr 0 hurt your site?

I don't see what is wrong with having an honest link swap.

[OLBG]

Sounds a bit crafty to me.

I only put time into swapping links for traffic these days. I try to get one-way links by building good content so people want to link to me

I have a submit your site page but that queries the links page to find the url within the page to make sure its reciprocated and not via a redirect. Then it checks every month or so that the link is still there.

[matbennett]

I have a submit your site page but that queries the links page to find the url within the page to make sure its reciprocated and not via a redirect

I've just started writing something similar to this - as I am getting annoyed with people removing links after a few weeks thinking it won't be noticed. My plan was to run it as a cron job that automatically emailed anyone who removed the link.

However, I've spotted a few sites now adding the new "no follow" tag to the links, which strikes me as just as sneaky. Haven't managed to get my script to identify the difference yet - without flagging up link page that contains it anywhere (which is probably why I do marketing rather than programming!). Anyone cracked this?

[ChrisM]

Wouldn't a pr 0 hurt your site?

I've wondered about this - I concluded probably wouldnt hurt. My reasoning is that otherwise I could build a load of low PR pages and cripple the competition with them by linking to them. I may be wrong but I'm sure Google will have considered this type of sabotage in their algorithm.

[OLBG]

Yes I agree - the argument goes that if something is out of your control you shouldnt be penalised for it, otherwise the opportunities for abuse would be enourmous. Hence at worst I think these have no impact.

However I think what YOU link to can have an impact + & -

[accelerator]

Wouldn't the value of this technique be limited, because Google takes account of the PR of the page the link is coming from when determining the Google "juice" that will be applied to the page you are trying to boost.

Isn't it the case that one link from a high PR site is much more valuable than thousands from PR0 sites?

My advice would be to concentrate your energies on legitimate SEO. After all, there are legitimate SEO techniques that work, so why not do them instead? I reckon the guys at Google are pretty smart and they'll catch up with you sooner or later.

Rgds

accelerator

[mobillica]

I've noticed that alot of websites top 3 in google for certain phrases do not have any outbound links on their homepages - is this an advantage for SEO to have zero outbounds on your index page??

Is PR 'leakage' still a factor re SEO?

Or are these websites simply gaining 'natural' one way links because people want to link to them because of their unique content (as mentioned by OLBG)

[NetNeo]

I am just producing a php script (to run from CRON) that checks returning reicprocal links...and checks that :
1. they are link to correct internal page (i produce thier code dynamically and email it to them via a script)
2. They are using the right ancor txt
3. there is no no indexno follow in the robots meta tag
4. there robots.txt does have an exclusion for the page/folder the link page exists in.

Not far of working...think i could probably forget aff marketing and sell the php script instead

As for the reason to the thread...google state
"Theres almost nothing someone else can do to damage your PR"
(the main word there is almost!)
Its just an ethical thing, without seeing the page i wobt be able to identify wether the link is poorly formed for google to follow (in the end it comes down to the code output onto the page...not whats in a MySQL table/pHp script)

[Mogga]

That script sounds really useful.

[smn2]

Yeah script does sound good. Why not sell it as
a service that runs from your website (then us
'no-nowts' that struggle to run programs from
the Cron would be able to use it too )

Steve

[cmarket]

I check all sites that request an exchange manually and if google doesn't know their links pages exist, I don't do it. Besides, if google knows your links pages exist and the sites listed are related, it's all content relative to your sites core subject matter. There are pro's and cons!

[Brendon]

If you disguise all of your outbound links, it will be very, very obvious to G (and the other SE's) that you are doing it. When they spot site sdoing it, its a massive Spam Flag (a lot of the time, when people moan about their site bombing in G, it's becuase they have done something like this, with NO concept of the potential penalties). If you don't have a very good grip on how PR and TR work, don't attempt to play games with them. You will make an amateur mistake, and get slapped for it.

More to the point, did you know that it is possible to build a ranking based almost exclusively on outbound links?

Do some research into hub-like and authroity-like scoring for websites for details