How do you choose your link exchange partners?

[alessandro]

I know the general requirments ( from a SEO point of view ), but I wonder what other specific requirments do you as linklist owners have, such as: # of listed free sites, # of submissions received daily, age of the linklist you're going to exchange links with, minimum # of other trades. Although my LL has a good amount of quality related 1-way backlinks, I found some webmasters looking for the things I enumerated above. Please post your thoughts, they're highly appreciated

[Surfn]

Very carefully

[Greenguy]

Are you talking about partners as far as link trades or partners as far as submitters?

[Useless]

My system of accepting link trades mostly involves sitting here to see if anyone asks me for a link trade. My lack of link trades has nothing to do with me being picky. I'm simply not proactive in that arena. Ask Preacher, I'm horribly slow and unorganized. Slothlike, really.

[alessandro]

Surfn, me too or at least I try to be as careful as possible when exchanging links ( but this mostly from a SEO point of view ).

Greenguy, I'm talking about link partners as far as link trades

Useless, what's your LL ? I'm gonna as you to setup a link trade

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by alessandro

...Greenguy, I'm talking about link partners as far as link trades ...

I usually base it off if I know them - either personally or from their rep on the board(s) - so I guess mine criteria is reputation and/or trust

[alessandro]

Good point, I tried it in the past but I found it being a little hard to find the amount of link partners needed, so I decided to use this method for my main sites, while for secondary sites I exchange links with pretty much anyone who has a clean legit site and I check my links once in a while.

Thank you Greenguy and everyone else for your replies, you're always quick and helpful, kudos

[Surfn]

I don't use trade scripts so I don't get many trades. Which is fine with me

Like GG I need to have some degree of familiarity or trust for a trade.

[alessandro]

Surfn, neither I use trade scripts, I was talking about old fashion hardlink trades ( this if I didn't make myself understood from the begining, I'm not a native english speaker, but I thought I made some progress in the past few years ).

Now, I have to get more familiar with all of you guys and maybe we'll be able to work out some hardlink trade deals, meantime I'll continue building 1-way backlinks for my LL so you can benefit from the links you're going to get from me

[tigermom]

I always prefer to trade links with people I know from boards. Don't have an LL, but it's the same with any other site.

For my niche sites, it's also a matter of linking to sites in the same niche. That's about it really.

[MrYum]

Yea, I'm another that has found it keeps things much simpler and more stable to only do trades with folks you know either via previous business or reputation

[alessandro]

I know very well how you do it tigermom, we have good link exchanges going on, thank you

MrYum, thank you for your post too

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

...Ask Preacher, I'm horribly slow and unorganized. Slothlike, really.

His sytem is rather brilliant actually. He tells you he can't find his trades page and then waits for you to manually grab all his links and make up anchor text to link to them.

As far as LL hardlink trades I'm very similiar to the others. For the most part I normally trade with people from the board, and normally from people I've actually had interaction with. I've turned down several requests from the boards PM system, mostly from people who I'd never heard of that had rather questionable sites.

A couple of times I emailed some LL's that had a "your link here" in their trades list because they were well established lists who I had submitted to in the past and I had good luck with those.

[alessandro]

I found some LLs today with that "add your link here" message and I'm going to email some of them, but only if I have seen posts about/regarding them around here. We'll see how much success will I have

[Mateusz]

I check existing trades (backlinks if possible) & what kind of free sites are listed (number of submissions says nothing - I recently bought one LL that was getting 120+ submissions per day but mostly russian multisubmitters who dont care about any rules, so when I applied my blacklist it gets ~ 20 )

Of course the fact I do or don't know the person I'm goind to trade with is very important factor

This thread reminded me that since a while I was about to PM few of you

[ronnie]

Content

ronnie

[Ms Naughty]

I don't like to trade with people I don't know, or with non-relevant links.

Time for me to send a few PMs as well

[Linkster]

Interestingly I use a little different system than most - although its really GGs system with an added twist.

I have to know the person and their reputation as well as watching their posting on this and a few other boards.
I approach the links as traffic links, not as SEO linking - it seems to have a much better bottom line Although I will say that trading is definitely what helped me achieve the SE positioning I have - but I never did it from a SEO standpoint so you will find sites that have no "Google PR" listed as well as sites that do quite well in the "perceived PR" department.

I also do a lot of linking to sites where I never ask for a trade - in about 90% of the cases it was due to relativity of their site for my surfers and the others were just sites I liked. It paid off in that I now have links returned from about 50% of them just based on them seeing my surfers coming in and being very "productive???"

[Surfn]

Originally Posted by Linkster

Interestingly I use a little different system than most - although its really GGs system with an added twist.

I have to know the person and their reputation as well as watching their posting on this and a few other boards.
I approach the links as traffic links, not as SEO linking - it seems to have a much better bottom line Although I will say that trading is definitely what helped me achieve the SE positioning I have - but I never did it from a SEO standpoint so you will find sites that have no "Google PR" listed as well as sites that do quite well in the "perceived PR" department.

I also do a lot of linking to sites where I never ask for a trade - in about 90% of the cases it was due to relativity of their site for my surfers and the others were just sites I liked. It paid off in that I now have links returned from about 50% of them just based on them seeing my surfers coming in and being very "productive???"

I've been known to employ this technique a time or two myself

[alessandro]

I like the last posts, especially Linkster's point regarding relevancy of the links, mostly for outgoing links from your site.

grandma, if you finf my LL nice and fitting your needs at this moment then... I'm waiting for your PM

[Ms Naughty]

Alessandro thanks for your offer but my linklist is for women and you don't have a 4women category.

If you ever think of adding one can I interest you in some spam of the Purple Dollars variety? LOL

[alessandro]

Grandman, I signed up for your program and I'll add a "for women" category to my LL later tonight

[sue-fl]

Interesting thread! All I wanted to add is a lot of you know me now, and know I don't cheat and I'm a trustworthy person......

Last time I checked both my sites where a pr3 don't think that means a lot to most of you though. So my question is should I be expecting any PM's........

Another question does it really work to e-mail or pm the big guys and ask for a link trade, or just wait and hope you get asked?

[alessandro]

Originally Posted by sue-fl

Another question does it really work to e-mail or pm the big guys and ask for a link trade, or just wait and hope you get asked?

Good question sue, I'd also like to know the answer for this question

[Halfdeck]

I agree with Linkster, especially about the importance of traffic when you're trading and the value of linking out to sites you like. If everybody linked to a relevant, quality site instead of running trades for PR gains, you'd see your sites rise quicker in the SERPs.

One thing alot of people obsess over is PR bleed on your page with too many outgoing links, so they try to limit trades per page to 20 or whatever. PR bleed is nothing compared to relevance you gain by linking out and backlinks you gain if its part of a linktrade.