Picking the Best Link Exchange Service

By Aquo Interactive

You may be familiar with automatic link exchange services, however, being a member of several of them I can assure you there are many services that provide the basic linking functionality, but miss the critical tools needed to ensure success with your linking campaign.

Manual link exchanges take too much time to build and maintain, especially if you don't have an automated link checker to review link partner sites on a regular basis. Dead links on your site or exchanging links with webmasters who are not reciprocating properly is of no value to you.

A quality reciprocal link exchange service is of great value and these Link Partners are critical to long-term search engine ranking results! If you are going to exchange links... Make it count!

When you are looking to exchange links with someone, there are several important items to look for.

• Ensure the site you are exchanging links with has a reciprocal link directory/pages located on their domain.
• Third party link exchange services are a great source for a large pool of link partners. However, you should only use these services if you have complete control of who you are linking with. Many link exchange services force you to link with every one of their members, regardless of whether those sites are relevant to your site.
• Ensure your link partner clearly shows their directory from their main page.
• Ensure their link exchange software is Search Engine Friendly.
• You can validate outgoing links as a spider sees it by using a Search Engine Simulator. Looking into it you'll be amazed at how many scripts available do not provide you with proper back link credit.

I have experienced quite a lot of request for manual link exchanges with websites who asked me to email them the location of my link, only to see that the email bounced back to me 2 seconds later. Again, time is money, use your time wisely.

Keep within your niche market. Keywords that you would use to promote your site is a good indicator of similar sites you should exchange links with.

Automatically exchanging links will require far less time than manual efforts. But be sure to use a service that provides the functionality that you need.


Aquo Interactive provides web design, software development and Internet marketing services to help businesses grow and profit.

SEO: Marketing and Technology

By Michael Taus
Managing Director, Aquo Interactive

This is a tale of two cities -- no make that universes. In one universe, you have traditional marketers, whose purpose in life it is to create content shaped to a customer's needs and behaviors. In the other universe, you have programmers, whose existence is dedicated to building efficient, flexible and reliable platforms for delivering that very content.

This is not a new tale. Anyone who has worked in a technology environment has probably observed the clash of marketing and product development. But today, the setting has changed. Today, the "rise of search" has compelled these two groups to cooperate at an ever-increasing depth and frequency. Search engine optimization or search marketing has become central to the success of both groups and, therefore, has become the a new fertile ground for breeding success (and waging war).

The world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be quite a mystery to your average marketer. More often than not, search marketing consultants are vague about the techniques they employ. Often, this is for a good reason. After all, how many traditional marketers are equipped to understand the SEO implications of a simple website decision like using Flash or graphics.

And, while programmers have a deep understanding of the technology distinctions -- say, client-side versus server side scripting -- they are rarely concerned with the nature and quality of the content displayed.

Fortunately for both groups, the SEM community has a new bible of sorts at its disposal. Search Engine Optimization with PHP (and the soon to be released ASP version) is designed to be a bridge between these two communities. The book is a collaboration between Jaimie Sirovich, a search marketing consultant, and Christian Darie, a software engineer.

It seems unlikely that an experienced marketer will learn much about marketing. Nor will a good programmer learn much about programming. But with this book, each group has the opportunity to learn about the other's area of expertise.

So, who should read this book? Well, if you are a search marketing consultant, you probably (hopefully) are quite familiar with the concepts covered. You may benefit from the fairly comprehensive coverage of systems or foreign language SEO. But in general, if you've been at this for a while, you will most of this book to be light reading.

Overachieving programmers, will certainly have more to benefit here. This is especially true in areas such as site planning, content relocation and inadvertent black hat mishaps.

Marketers will benefit the most from this reading. This is true even if they avoid all the sample code and acronyms. Ultimately, marketers are responsible for the search-engine rankings of their sites. And therefore, having a solid, yet high-level, understanding of SEO is critical to their success. It also helps to ensure that there is less feuding and more collaboration.