---------------------------------------------------------- Permission is granted for
below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and byline, copyright, and resource box below is included. ----------------------------------------------------------The Link Swapping Trap
By Stephen Bucaro
If you want to make money on web, you must get traffic to your website. If you want to get traffic to your website, you must have a high rank in google's search results. Google ranks websites based upon number of links that point to site.
Many novice webmasters believe they can trick Google into giving their website a high rank by swapping links with other webmasters. One reason they believe this, is because "wanna-be" web marketing "experts" keep spouting that trash.
It's only partially true that Google ranks websites based upon number of links that point to site. Google uses a highly sophisticated page ranking formula that keeps changing and evolving all time. Google caught onto link swapping trick years ago.
Novice webmasters put all their link swaps on one gigantically long page referred to as a "link farm". When Google's robot finds a link farm, their ranking formula penalizes websites listed in link farm. If Google finds same site listed in many link farms, they remove that site from their search engine.
Just about every week I get an email message saying "I placed a link to your website on my website. Please put a link to my website on your website. Here's where you can find your link on my website" ... followed by a link to a single webpage containing hundreds of links ... a link farm.
I usually reply to such a message with a request to remove link to my website from their webpage. The novice webmaster often responds with a message of pure astonishment. Link swap requests have become so common lately that I have been responding by clicking on "Delete" button.
