Ineffective and Unethical Promotion
Methods
(cont'd)
A pop-up exchange is a program that allows members to show pop-up
windows linking to one another's site. As a member of the exchange,
your site would display a pop-up linking to another member's site
every time someone visits your site. There is usually an exchange
ratio involved. A 2:1 exchange ratio means that for every two
pop-ups you show on your site, your pop-up would be displayed once
on someone else's site.
Pop-up exchanges aren't especially effective for the reasons
mentioned above. Furthermore, they are vulnerable to cheaters who
use automated methods to fraudulently inflate their credits.
Surfing Exchanges
Surfing exchanges are programs where you surf other people's web
sites to get others to surf yours.
In start-page exchanges you to set your home page to a special URL
on which another member's site will be displayed every time you
start your browser. Alternatively, you may simply bookmark the URL
and receive credit every time you visit it.
Click exchanges allow you to earn credits by clicking on other
people's links. There is usually a 20- or 30-second timer that
counts down the required amount of time you must spend on the site.
In return your link will be exposed to other members to click on.
Like pop-up exchanges, these schemes will get you traffic just for
the sake of getting traffic-- little of it will be of any use. Most
people who join these programs are more interested in accumulating
credits rather than looking through your site. Many run several
traffic exchange programs simultaneously (in different windows) to
gain credits on multiple programs rather than exploring a site that
they're supposed to explore.
Link Farming
A link farm is a website that has little or no original content and
is created for the sole purpose of exchanging links with other
websites. Like free-for-all (FFA) pages, link farms have nothing but
links to other websites. Link farming has flourished in response to
the growing emphasis on link popularity for search placement by many
search engines.
Never exchange links with a link farm. Many search engines will
penalize or even ban your site for linking to them. Obviously, you
have no control over who links to you, so you cannot be penalized
when link farms link to you. But linking back to them is another
story.
Free-for-all (FFA) sites allow anyone to post links on their pages.
FFA's generally don't require you to link back to them, so listing
your site on FFAs will not hurt your rankings. However, link
popularity is not so much as about the sheer number of links to your
site as it is about the number of quality links to your site. Search
engines are smart enough to tell which links are relevant and which
aren't. Securing a handful of inbound links from qualified sites
will do you more good than having your site listed on a thousand
FFAs.
