Photography Website Link Exchange

ImagenEstilo

Hey all,

I have seen an old old thread (2007 ish) on this particular subject, so as opposed to resurrecting the old thread I said I would start a new one (I hope this is the appropriate forum).

As all webmasters will know, Google loves links links and more links. They like image links, text links with alternate anchor text blah blah blah.

I'm looking to get in touch with photographers with their own sites that would be interested in a link exchange. I'll set you up with an image and text link on our resources page (link at bottom right of homepage - see sig).

Again though, it is only photographers websites that I am interested in linking with.

We are based in Malaga so there are no geographical competition issues to deal with!

If you are interested then drop me a PM with your website URL. I'll then mail you with my own details and you can send on your logo and I'll get the link set up on our site.

Apologies in advance to moderators if this is in the wrong forum. I checked the old thread and it was originally in this forum so I thought I would do the same.

Thanks all
Dave

tricky D

ImagenEstilo wrote: »

As all webmasters will know, Google loves links links and more links. They like image links, text links with alternate anchor text blah blah blah.

Not these days. Google will give no credit at best, penalise at worst, to reciprocal linking. They want relevant, genuine and organic linking.

Google something like 'google seo link exchange' for further confirmation of this.

ImagenEstilo

tricky D wrote: »

Not these days. Google will give no credit at best, penalise at worst, to reciprocal linking. They want relevant, genuine and organic linking.

Google something like 'google seo link exchange' for further confirmation of this.

It seems a bit of a debated topic this. I would go along with the guidance of the likes of Evan Bailyn. He openly promotes exchanges. Given he is number 1 on Google rankings for his site "firstpagesage" I would personally take note.

tricky D

The fact that he ranks first for his own domain name, which is pretty unique, is meaningless.

The fact is Google have recently decided to ignore or penalise link exchanges in their recent updates. There are many recent references in Google's resources which back this up. What you refer to in a 2007 thread has little or no bearing on the current SEO landscape.

OP you may still persevere with link exchanging, but I strongly advise anybody else reading this thread to avoid such schemes.

ImagenEstilo

Tricky, I would be hesitant to say it is "meaningless". The search term firstpagesage, yes, the fact he has blue chip companies knocking on his door paying him big bucks for his white-hat techniques, no.

Obviously excessive link exchanging would raise red flags as would excessive signature links in forums such as this but to say outright that link exchanging is penalised is incorrect.

dirtyghettokid

i wouldn't be too familiar with how google works with getting listed.. but i do know that i don't have my website linked hardly anywhere, yet if you go to google and just type in my name. .. out of all the people in the world with the same name, my website comes up first, and you don't even have to type photography after my name. weird!
i used to get emails for link exchanges off random people, and i always deleted them. never thought they'd be of use!

Deliverance XXV

ImagenEstilo wrote: »

Tricky, I would be hesitant to say it is "meaningless". The search term firstpagesage, yes, the fact he has blue chip companies knocking on his door paying him big bucks for his white-hat techniques, no.

Obviously excessive link exchanging would raise red flags as would excessive signature links in forums such as this but to say outright that link exchanging is penalised is incorrect.

You can put as many links as you want in your sig but it won't do anything for your rankings on this forum! If you have a few links (albeit in an almost hidden link in the footer on your website) it isn't going to do you much harm. The problem lies when people abuse this purely for ranking purposes. Google 'can and will' see through any grand reciprocal link schemes and penalise accordingly. If you want to rank - Google loves content!

dirtyghettokid wrote: »

i wouldn't be too familiar with how google works with getting listed.. but i do know that i don't have my website linked hardly anywhere, yet if you go to google and just type in my name. .. out of all the people in the world with the same name, my website comes up first, and you don't even have to type photography after my name. weird!
i used to get emails for link exchanges off random people, and i always deleted them. never thought they'd be of use!

It could be that your site ranks that high or just that Google conveniently 'remembers' your visited sites and places it higher for your supposed convenience! Edit: Other factors such as previous search terms and geographical relevance also weighs as such.

tricky D

You are both not quite getting how search works. If I search for 'imagen estilo', the site comes up first, which for a proper SEO professional is unsurprising. However that's only useful for people who already know your name. If I search for 'malaga photography' the site is nowhere to be found. Likewise if I search for 'photography dublin' or 'photographer dublin', dirtyghettokid's site is way, way down the rankings. They are the kinds of keywords you need to target. If I search using dirtyghettokid's real name, I get the .net at the top partly because of my location and other profiling matters which affect my results in relation to all the other dirtyghettokids elsewhere in the world. With search you are not targetting the people who already know your name, you are after those who don't. It's a case of generics vs specifics and generics are the ones you want in the main. Specifics are pretty much covered by existing brand equity.

dirtyghettokid wrote: »

i used to get emails for link exchanges off random people, and i always deleted them. never thought they'd be of use!

They are no use. Trust me. The Rule of Thumb for action on unsolicited email (spam) is delete/block/filter.

The only situation to do reciprocal linking is for partner marketing and the likes of connected communities and only in a natural, organic and relevant way. The OP's proposal (based partly on a 2007 thread which is way out-of-date given the way Google's ranking criteria have changed since) is has perhaps a small bit of relevance but is not organic and natural. Google will pick up on this easily.

Having looked at both your sites, the SEO issues you need to put at the top of your list are on-page SEO ones. Read Google's own SEO guidelines (which nowhere mention link exchanges/reciprocal links). http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

dirtyghettokid

good to know, tricky. i must look into that stuff a bit more. i've only meta tags in my html at the minute.

ImagenEstilo

Tricky, I've not optimised my English pages at all yet so there are a heap of things I need to target there alright.

The Spanish site however is reasonably well optimised from an on-page SEO perspective (headers, meta data, Alt Text, URL names etc). This stuff has been a learning experience for me this last two months. The site sure isn't even a year old. There is not a hope of me ranking for "Malaga photography" or the like for a fair while yet, sure I'm still at PR 0 (not that that means much!).

This SEO business is a black art. The amount of conflicting opinions all over the place is incredible. I have opted for the "quality-content" approach so plan to let it build organically but obviously where links can be built (where I believe a linking site is suitable) I will chase them. The issue with this is, unless you have say 2 or 3 years for your domain to age naturally, you are snookered. I am sure most photographer sites are in the same boat. You can't speed up the process. I wonder how those companies manage when they need to rank more or less immediately if for example they are selling stuff online. Another thing that is most odd, I am ranking say around the mid fifties for certain keyword combinations on Google, yet on Bing and Yahoo I am right at the top spot. It mystifies me.

Anyway, your second last point on link exchanging not being organic, I only half agree. I would wholeheartedly agree if I was loading up with these exchanged links but in my case it is building say a link or two a month. This to me and certainly to other "so called" experts is perfectly normal in the evolution of a site. That said, who am I to say. These days I am spending more time faffing around fine tuning my site when I should be out taking pictures.

Interesting feedback though, and thanks for the input Tricky, it sounds like you work in the industry or are at the very least quite familiar with it?

Dave