Pros and Cons of Linking to the Competition

banner links offered

[LostOne]

I have a guy whom I've been in contact with over the years that's interested in a link exchange. It's is on target industry related, but I don't wanna give him any juicy text links. Otherwise he'd fly by me in the SERPS. We compete between #2 and #4 for four major phrase terms.

I'm after longer tail. He is too, but concentrates more on products than content pages. He sells product I do not.

Q- I'm willing to offer a site wide banner to his online store on each page in exchange for text links from about a dozen of his satellite sites. All but a few have some PR. All different and seperate IP's

ohh...rambling...

Would giving him a banner have any effect on the big SERP positions? I doubt he'd go for a no follow so it's gonna be free and clear. The site name has no major keyword phrases in it that we compete on.

Thanks in advance. MB?

[wheel]

swapping links with your competitor, when the entire point seems to be to gain an advantage over each other, is going to leave one party unhappy. Expect this to be short term.

[StoutFiles]

We compete between #2 and #4 for four major phrase terms.

Unless you feel this would help you both move up from #2-#4 to #1-#3, this will be more trouble than its worth. Someone will likely assume they're getting the raw end of the exchange and call it off.

[LostOne]

I'm really asking if a banner link would have an effect on their movement. There would be no alt tag and no link text that reinforces the links. It's just the banner and my url.

Does the name in my domain have an effect on passing link text juice? I have one word in there we compete with.

Thanks for the replies.

[LostOne]

Incidenatlly they would get more traffic. Probably on the order of ten fold.

[StoutFiles]

Ignoring the unpredictable search rankings, it sounds like he is getting the better deal by far with a 10 to 1 visitor ratio...especially since he sells a product. He should be paying you on top of those links.

[martinibuster]

I think it's within the realm of possibilities that a banner ad may help their ranking. But it's only one sitewide link and depending on the niche, it takes more than one sitwide link to affect the rankings. On the other hand, a link like that can help give them an indented listing if it links to a relevant lower level page that has a few inbounds from elsewhere.

Another consideration is that your niches don't overlap except within those four major keywords. The traffic pie is pretty big and it's easy to forget that there is enough traffic to keep a number of competitors happy without much overlap. Yes you may compete for a number of phrases but there is often many more phrases that they're winning to make up for that, and vice-versa.

[LostOne]

Thanks Guys.

I think I'm only going to offer a home page banner. And MB he does have a sub page that is sneaking up. No linking to that one.

PS- He's an el cheapo dude.

[ewriter]

I think you should enjoy sharing the markets. Its the customer choice who will visit and as long as the customer service is good they will come back.

[LostOne]

My proposal didn't go far...no reply. I could have been asking for too much. It went something like this.

Home Page Banner Link

in exchange for..

(2) links from two larger sites
(3) links from four other sites

None of the links I requested were planned to be above the fold. More like text links within content near the bottom of content pages.

I thought it was a good starting proposal. Afterall I still feel he would gain in traffic referrals much more than I.

[johnnie]

Why not sell ad space to him?

[maximillianos]

Bartering links for the sake of search engine manipulation is really something I would recommend staying away from.

Sharing links to add value to your visitors experience is fine, but don't do it to try and game your way up SERPs.

In the long run it can get you pushed out of SERPs completely.

[Webwork]

Watch "Miracle on 34th Street [en.wikipedia.org]" and look for the scene where "Macy's Santa" starts sending parents to competitor Gimbels's store, at times when Santa knows that Gimbel's has the better/desired product.

Macy's director of marketing was a bit concerned . . until Macy's customers started to report that the gesture/referral caused them trust Macy's a bit more . . and that they would likely do more business with Macy's . . which in turn lead competitor Gimbel's to adopt a similar "If we don't have the (right) product send the customer . . to Macy's (or where ever)"

Grasp the import of that sequence of the movie and ask yourself how such thinking might apply in your case, i.e., what benefits might flow from serving your visitors.

And don't let (your concerns about) Google kill the spirit of Christmas . . or natural visitor-centric linking. :P

[edited by: Webwork at 5:01 pm (utc) on Nov. 3, 2009]

[Gomvents]

It's actually not a bad idea if you both are truly that closely matched/ It increases the authority of both your sites and you'll have a much greater chance of gaining traffic as you now have visibility in 2 spots VS one. Only you can make the final call but I'd keep an open mind if you are doing link exchanges - this is what they were designed for as far as Google is concerned as both sites are related and relevant to the search at hand.

[ken_b]

You could always put the banner on a noindex, nofollow, noarchive page and display it in an i-frame on a site wide basis.

That way they get the benefit of a ROS ad, but no PR value from the link. Even if you skip the nofollow, noindex, noarchive bit, they still only get the PR link value of a single link.

[dan404]

He sells product I do not.

Okay so far..

Otherwise he'd fly by me in the SERPS.

I think not..

Q- I'm willing to offer a site wide banner to his online store on each page in exchange for text links from about a dozen of his satellite sites. All but a few have some PR. All different and seperate IP's

Sitewide? no IMO. Why drive customers away from your site, a few relevant pages maybe.

A few links will not make or break you in the serps but a sitewide banner for some links?
Sounds like this guy wants an ad on your site, it is up to you to dictate the terms.
Personally, I'd like to keep customers/browsers on my site and not entice them to go elsewhere, but if you think it's worth a few links(most likely worthless)go ahead.

[LostOne]

Oh my..I hit the home page with a q!

Yea, the site wide banner is definitely out!

"Why not sell ad space to him?" He offered about a year ago...too cheap (5 cents click) Besides I'm not into trying to collect money. I prefer hands off. I'm just a guy who works with front page and doesn't know how to do all that other fancy stuff.

"but if you think it's worth a few links(most likely worthless)go ahead."

I've been fairly successful at getting some good three word (and more) queries over the past year and it has everything to do with these kind of links. Paying attention to Google suggest has contributed as well. Traffic increase about 15% year over last while dropping a few slots for the big key phrases.

Not in any hurry. I'll wait for some communication down the road.

[D_Blackwell]

Besides I'm not into trying to collect money. I prefer hands off. I'm just a guy who works with front page and doesn't know how to do all that other fancy stuff.

Sounds disingenuous at best. Seems more like you are only interested in this if it is a win-lose that goes your way and you're figuring all the angles.

[jayq]

the pros of linking the competition (even as a recip) is if you were #1 and #2, you would be closing the door to #2, #3, up to #1000 that are all gunning for #1 and #2...it's a good, relevant, targeted, and even high ranking link...you should take it

[LostOne]

All of the sites and more specific, domain names and pages are targeted. It's not like getting links pointing to a beauty related site from "hotels in Europe", for example.

I've heard back from him. Now I'm unsure. I have also thought I would not want links from the domain the banner would link to. Footprints frighten me.

But then...it's done all the time. Recip. linking. within related industries. It's not like I'll be raking in 5,000 links. More like 20 or 30 and my back link profile is fairly diverse. Something like 1100 from 600 domains over a period of six year.

Link text would all be different pointing to deeper pages within my site except for a few to the root.

[wheel]

Otherwise he'd fly by me in the SERPS.

Extreme counter example. I've got a 10-12 year old site that I'd say is authoritative. Client sets up a new blog that I agree to link to. I link to him with the words "niche industry location".

3 weeks later (first time I checked), my site is ranking on that term far higher than his is. The text on my homepage is worth more than an authoritative link to a site that wouldn't rank otherwise.

[LostOne]

I too have seen that wheel, but the links were not on the home page. If I'm not mistaken it used to work for content terms as well, or maybe the boom in article sites, along with their linking, has drowned out some of the easier positions I used to get.

In other words...let's go back to Brett's 26 steps. He did mention a few years ago that linking out would be important in the future. I think it's a bit outdated now, but it seemed to work well then. I still add a text link (to similar content) on some newer content pages. Not sure how they've been working. I'll have to investigate.

[alika]

Learn from my lesson: don't do it

We were #1 for a highly competitive keyword (508 million results). The #2 in the SERPs offered to pay us to put a link on our homepage to his site. He offered us an amount my husband couldn't refuse and we linked to his site for 3 months

Guess what? His site overtook us and became #1.

Bad thing for this competitor, though, his #1 spot did not last and he's nowhere to be found even in the first 50 pages for the keyword. Unfortunately for us, as well, we never regained our #1 spot and we're now in the #3-5 spot.

I've been hammering my husband on this issue, and he has learned his lesson. Don't do it