Competitors: to swap or not to swap links

Pros and cons

[silverbytes]

First of all, yes, searched about the topic and the purpouse of this thread is to analyze pros and cons of a link exchange with close related sites even when they are competitors.
The theme is about tourism in a city so you have many competitors offering same or similar services.

Cons

I think exchanging links with those sites would affect in a negative way my own, since they offer same services as me. So my own users (my users perhaps don't know their site still) would buy them and not me.

Pro
More Credibility?
Any advantage of outbound links anchor text?
Perhaps getting some traffic from them?

What do you say?

[sarika mosaic]

Hi silverbyte

What you can do is, go for one way link, i.e. go for incoming links. Place your link on their website rather placing their link on yours.
This will help you to get traffic, coz users who know your competitors site will find your link on their website and may visit yours website.

[silverbytes]

Sure, but the problem is they will not link to you unless you link to them. Good sites and competitor sites will not link to you that easy.

[georgiecasey]

What you can do is, go for one way link, i.e. go for incoming links. Place your link on their website rather placing their link on yours.

If only it was that easy :-)

[cellularnews]

If your web site is good enough, then when people visit the site you linked to, they will quickly return back to you.

It is all down to how much faith you have in the quality of your web site.

[silverbytes]

I disagree with last comment. No matter if your site is good or not, if your users find other products or services you don't sell (but they can substitute buying the product you sell with the one your competitor is offering) in your competitor's they won't get back to you and you will be sending free costumers to them. Has nothing to do with quality and is not very serious to belive you are so good that you can give others your own users because they "have" to come back to you.

[sammia]

I exchange links with several competitors on one of my sites. I've even done a homepage recipricol. The anchor text out couldn't be more relevant, the theme of the page pointing back and anchor text, couldn't be more relevant plus they have a higher homepage PR than me so... why not.

They offer more products and services than I do. My site's revenue comes mainly from advertising and AS so the link to competitors gives my visitors a place to go to buy things that I don't offer anyway.

[Kevin_Smith]

According to last comment, you are advertising for your competitors which is not good according to me but it depends upon your business policies and your experience in this kind of link exchange

[silverbytes]

My site's revenue comes mainly from advertising

That makes sense. I'd do the same in your situation.

But I'm talking about websites that sells or offers same products as your competitors mainly what is the most common scenario I think.

[Gargen]

If they are doing better than you already do it youll get some of their traffic if vice versa dont do it

[sugarrae]

I had one site a while back where I did a comparison chart. The only way I'd link to a competing site was from the comparison chart. It would stack their services next to mine and compare them. The only way a competitor could get on the chart was to link to me as well. Worked well for this site - but it offered a service and we did have a good product that beat out competitors honestly.

[Swebbie]

Seriously, how many of you ever go to a site's links page and visit a site from there? The ONLY time I've ever done that is when I'm looking for link partners! LOL I think it's folly to overanalyze the whole competitor issue. You need links, so get them where you can from relevant sites. All the rest is mental masturbation, imho.