Link Popularity Link Offers versus Link Exchange
Links Offers

Links Offers system

Link Exchange - The beginning

In it's infancy link exchange became a very practical system for promoting  websites. Websites could have instant visibility and Search Engines rated websites according to how many links pointed to them, period. But as the need to keep visitors in longer, and keeping visitors from going to other sites became more important than keeping the links where they were supposed to, problems began to arise with link exchange programs. Since changes in search technology became inevitable, exchanging links with websites with relevant content became imperative and keeping the links as promised became even a bigger problem.
 

Linking for Good Content - A better alternative

Offering to link to a site or sites with good to excellent content or "demanding" links from sites interested in this type of content is a better alternative than exchanging links. Websites linking to other sites for their content will keep their link "visible" since they will want to provide their visitors valuable information that they are not providing. If they delete or even change these links to a less visible place in their website they will be doing a disservice to their visitors and also to themselves.

It would be unlikely that they would do so - but even in the worst of cases, if they delete a link that connects to a website with excellent content they will be loosing on that valuable content. The website with the valuable content will loose a link pointing to them (backward link) but they know that the other site have also lost a link to valuable page content.

However, if you don't want to sent your visitors away to other sites I suggest to create your own valuable content. You will have to invest a lot of time in it but it will pay off in the long run. If you don't have the time to produce your own content but don't want to send your hard earned visitors to other sites (at least right away) you can:

▪ Search the Net for good content. When you find it, politely ask the owner of that site permission to reprint the information you are interested in for your site giving him or her credit for it plus a link to that article.

 OR

▪ Search for free content in sites specialized in articles like FreeSticky or Ezine @rticles or even HighWire Press (for free full-text science articles). Naturally you will still have to give the authors credit for their work.

Whether you are simply linking to good content or have good content in your site, created by you or that of others, if your visitors consider them to be valuable they will come back for more.
 

Exchanging Links

In a link exchange scenario, deleting or changing the links to a less visible part of the website would only mean that the other corresponding website could also delete or change the link to some obscure place (only if) they found out about it. For this reason a website exchanging links with other sites will need to keep an eye on them all the time in order to keep from being cheated. If they don't, they could be giving away visitors in exchange for nothing.

However, all websites are not created equal. There are websites that will keep their end of the bargain. Some will build one or several pages in order to place the exchanged links there. The more link pages a website has, the more it can be trusted that it will keep your link there. Exchanging links with trustworthy websites is a good idea for a quick fix but you will need to spend an extraordinary amount of time searching for good candidates that might be willing to exchange links with you. There are also programs can help you to find other sites to exchange links with an also keep tabs on the sites that are exchanging links with you. On top of that there are sites that for a fee will help you to exchange links with other websites.

But if you spend some time researching and creating good to excellent content in your site and let others know about it you won't have to be spend so much time exchanging and maintaining links. In fact it will be an automatic process where you can relax while other websites are linking to your website. You add the content and the Link Popularity Directory will provide the means to let others know about your site at no cost to you.