stever - 7:44 pm on Aug 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

martinibuster, you are talking to and about two different audiences here.

There are those (many) who are average and many of that group who are additionally lazy. And if you are average and lazy you use reciprocal link directories, or you say that reciprocal links are dead, or you use text link brokers, or you use link management software, or you repeat the religious mantra that the user experience will lead to success in the search engines (unless you are Matt Cutts, in which case you are hardworking and clever and you are only saying those things to appeal to your lazy and average audience).

The second audience would be looking at how to make a reciprocal link greater than the sum of its parts, or how to attract a link from the authority two levels up from your site, or searching for "advertising" opportunities on sites that have never heard of search engines.

But, because that often involves some hard thinking or hard work, a lot of people would rather settle for the easy recip along with 100 others from the Elbonia Hotel Directory or $25-a-month paid link from the not-very-well-disguised country resource filled with stolen gifs and copied wikipedia content and then go down the pub.

The reason why your 100 mails are 99% filled with equine manure is that too many of the senders have spent their time listening to third-hand information from second-rate SEOs.

IMO