3 for 5 link exchange

but some of the sites are duplicates

[textex]

I am new and want to start out by saying thanks for all the great info.

I found a site with very good page rank that I was considering swapping links with. The webmaster of this site will only do a 3 for 5 link exchange. Meaning that I need to put up links to 3 of his sites and in return I get 5 links back. Sounds like a good deal to me, but 2 out of the 3 sites I am supposed to link to are mirror sites. Should I participate in this type of link exchange. Do I need to worry about getting banned if he gets banned for his mirror sites b/c of that "bad neighborhoud" theory?

[John_Caius]

IMHO, don't touch it with a bargepole...

If you suspect that he is linking to bad neighbourhoods (i.e. major and obvious spam) then he may be penalised by association and you may be penalised by linking to him.

Have a look at his PageRank using the Google toolbar, specifically the PR of the page that would link to you. If it's low or non-existent then he's either not very good at SEO or he's already penalised. Also look at the other domains that you're concerned about.

Far better, I think, to get links from reputable sites in a similar field to your own, plus major directories like dmoz.org.

[soapystar]

not only look at the pr in the google toolbar, but check that the page with your link on is cached by google. I am finding more and more sites that are using techniques that mean the link page isnt indexed and so google guesses the pr. At first glance the page appears to have good pr but in fact google doesnt even know it exsists.

[textex]

2 out of the 5 pages are not even indexed by Google. One ranked links page has a page rank of 5 the other have 3 and 2 respectfully.

My site has a strong 5 for my links page.

His sites are all duplicate content.

Trade? Yes or no?

[buckworks]

No.

[John_Caius]

What do you mean by a 'strong' 5?

No, don't trade. Even if this was a legit site, what would be the impact on your PR? Negligible.

[takagi]

Hello textex, welcome to WebmasterWorld. It looks suspicious. You could check some of the sites already linked on the page your link will be added to. If
- these links are also visible in the Google's cache AND
- both the page with the link and the page being linked have a PR4+
then these links have to show up when searching for 'Backward links'.

<added>When I started the reply, msg. 4 was not yet added. If there is no cache, you cannot know if a Backward link is not showing up because the link is recently added.</added>

[textex]

I am gonna pass. Thanks guys.

The only reason I was going to link up was b/c my competition did. Sometimes I get desperate and nervous and feel like I need to link to who they link to in order to "stay in the game".

[John_Caius]

Good plan. You may find that you have got one up on your competitor simply because you *didn't* link to this site!

[textex]

I hope so.
My competitors do some strange things.
I recently read here that people have gotten the boot from google for linking together two sites from their index page that are offering similar stuff.
My competitor does this and hastop ranking for most terms.

[John_Caius]

Have a look into:

1) getting a dmoz listing if you haven't already
2) getting incoming links with your keyword as the anchor text
3) from high PR pages (hardly worth it if the page is 2 less than your own homepage PR)
4) putting your keyword in the title of your page, with as few other words as possible
5) putting your keyword in a heading in H1 text near the top of your page
6) using CSS to prevent the H1 text from looking too overpowering on the page
7) creating subpages with lots of useful and relevant content, each linking back to your homepage

Mini-questionnaire:

Are you in a really competitive keyword environment like travel or gambling Y/N

How many pages come up for your top target keyword?

How many pages come up in G for link:www.yourdomain.com?

How many pages come up in G for link:www.yourcompetitorsdomain.com?

How many pages come up in G for allinurl:www.yourdomain.com?

How many pages come up in G for allinurl:www.yourcompetitorsdomain.com?

Remember not to post specifics in your reply, i.e. your URL or keywords.

[textex]

Are you in a really competitive keyword environment like travel or gambling Y/N

Yes.

How many pages come up for your top target keyword?

2,350,000

How many pages come up in G for link:www.yourdomain.com?

152

How many pages come up in G for link:www.yourcompetitorsdomain.com?

162

How many pages come up in G for allinurl:www.yourdomain.com?

30 but only 5 are listed due "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 5 already displayed."

How many pages come up in G for allinurl:www.yourcompetitorsdomain.com?

29 but only 3 are listed due "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 5 already displayed."

P.S. I do well but I feel like the dog is on the trail.

[John_Caius]

With this brief analysis, it looks as though you and your competitor are pretty close in terms of links and site content. How are you getting on with 1) to 7)? Is your site optimised at all/a bit/as much as you can possibly manage? If you are new to optimisation and your competitor is too then you may well be able to overcome them in the SERPs.

[textex]

I think I pretty much got the optimization.

Lately, 1/2 my time goes to new development and the other 1/2 towards building new links.

[textex]

One more thing, when I do a link search for my competitors site at ATW they have a couple of thousand links. Most are white pagerank at Google or grey pagerank.

They do much better than me at Ink, I guess b/c Ink is more tolerable of the spam links.