How much time do you spend on Link Exchanges per day?

zero, zero, zero on links of any sort

Link exchanges or getting backlinks to your site? I spend 0 hours a day asking for link exchanges, but a substantial portion of my time is spent on acquiring links.

@Simmo! 162892 wrote:

The final straw for me was when I found out recently a long-time CAP member here had nofollowed all his/her link exchanges with other CAP members, mine included, for God knows how long. What’s the point when you have to deal with this and keep checking up on people?

yea, i found the same. was shocked to see that all links are in nofollow considering that the site is quite well known…

Why am I receiving requests to buy links if links are not considered as important as they were a while back?

@Buddy 163046 wrote:

Why am I receiving requests to buy links if links are not considered as important as they were a while back?

They are still important IMO. Just less so than they were, plus every time Google tweaks its algos I think they probably lose a little bit more.

@Dendrite 162919 wrote:

My guess is that they may start using the data they get from their stats, perhaps adding weight to number returning visitors to sites as a mark of quality, or even for number of pages viewed and time spent on the site too.

It’s interesting stuff…

Sure is. And I agree this has to be the ultimate aim of the SE’s – to track and monitor searches and serve based on reaction. If visitors search for casinos and a particular result acts as a regular exit page from G, with the visitor not returning or not refining search terms, then one would imagine that is a good sign it has what the visitors want and the content targets that keyword well. Over time, one would expect them to aim for this type of behavioural tracking. Surprised if they aren’t to some degree already. It’s just so obviously common sense.

However I wonder whether the SE’s have dug a bit of hole for themselves with PPC. They have a catch22 in that they need visitors to get excellent results to maintain the user base, on the other hand the longer a user spends on their search engine, the greater the chance of profitability from PPC.

Google came from pretty much nowhere overnight to take over from Yahoo, largely because of its simplicity and it’s quality SERPs. But nothing lasts forever, and the bigger Google gets, the more chance someone somewhere will challenge them under exactly the same scenario that rocketed them to fame.

Maintaining quality results and balancing out profits requires a delicate balancing act, but they simply can’t afford to serve up bad results. And basing those on inbound links is not the answer as a really crap site could rise to the top. Often does in fact.

And finally, add into the mix that Yahoo has publically stated that it intends on using semantic design as an important ranking criteria to get away from the reliance on factors, like linking, that can be gamed, and you have a changing landscape on the horizon already.

Linking has had lots of benefit until now, will probably continue to do so for a while, but ultimately it’s a short-term solution. But then again, the short term could be years and that may be fine for many folk. The old “content is King” mantra has worn thin with most and it’s wrong to apply it to getting search engine traffic IMO. Its great – sticky content that people need to go back to is what we would all like – but for getting search engine traffic it should read “content should be King” or maybe “content will be King, one day when the search engines work out how“.

I think linkexchange is still important because it is a vote for your site. I Do no think it is a waste of time. If sites have a similar theme the number of these votes are important for SE ranking (if they are relevant to your theme ofcourse).

But like Simmo said content is king and it will be for a long time.
We all would like to have super unique and sticky SE content.

But let’s face it with so much competition, your site must be an authority if you can say i do not need linkexhanges.

Rick

It’a an interesting debate, but I think you should differentiate between links given freely and those obtained in link exchanges.

Content may well be king now and/or in the future but Google needs an additional way to establish authority, else it would just serve up newly-created content-filled sites.

Inbound links are the easiest way to measure popularity and therefore authority but as we’ve discussed these are easily ‘gamed’ by indulging in link exchanges. In my opinion, Google will just find more sophisticated ways of determining if links are ‘free votes’ or have been manufactured via 2 and 3-way exchanges (it can’t be that hard for them to trace these – either manually or automatically) and start to lower their effectiveness.

Content is king because it’s what users want. And genuine, freely-given links to that content are a simple and effective way of separating the good from the bad. Links will always be important in my opinion, but exchanged links will become less so.

zip, zero, none