Unrequested recips

So how do you guys approach this one...

You get an email from someone saying "Hey we've put your link up on our link page. Really like your site. If you could put ours up on your links page that'd be great." or something to that effect. So you never talked to them or arranged a link trade but they put yours up anyways and ask that you do the same with theirs.

Now I know there are a lot of bogus emails like that goin' out from bullshit sites that don't really exist or are randomly, autogenerated.

But some are actually legit.

What I try and do is wait a couple days to see if I'm actually getting any traffic from the link they put up to my site. If they're sending a good amount, I'll get a recip from them and throw theirs up on my site. I'll also check to make sure that the link they put to my site can actually be found easily on their site. So I'll navigate through their site as surfer would to see how easy it is for me to see my link there and make sure it's not hidden.

I try and do this whenever I get an email notifying me of such a thing to be nice and fair, but oftentimes simply can't catch everyone and don't have the time for it.
Do you guys feel obliged to return the favor in situations like these or do you just sorta not pay much attention to em and figure "hey i never asked em to so don't really have to do anything in return"?

On the one hand I don't want to be mean and rude and appreciate their linking to me, on the other hand I can't afford to put up a recip for every single site I get one of these emails from because I don't want to dilute my links page, it'd take time to do it, and I can't vouch for the quality or legitimacy of every single site that does this.

What's your take?

i usually ignore them or forward them to John :D

Well, in theory I like that idea and appreciate it as it's good link etiquite and it theretically shows good-will...

Having said that, most of those types of requests get ignored by me as there's no good will at all.

- They tend to view it as a given that you will link back or that you must link back.

- The emails tend to be boilerplate.

- The links usually end up on page 300,000 jammed in somewhere between a thousand other links; with no real direct link from a page that gets crawled; or it was linked from a invisible link.

- The sites are often inapropriate.

Regardless of how the link request comes across or about I rarely say yes as most of the people who have asked me don't bother to reciprocate once they've gotten what they want.

I run a bear link list (Bear Universe) and I get a few of these. I don't jump to it when I get one of these. I usually try and explore it a bit. I've got this one webmaster who keeps submitting twink sites for inclusion in my list and I feel bad for him because he's putting my button on every one of his galleries, but what do skinny Russian young guys have to do with bears? I appreciate the link, but I need to maintain the integrity of my list for my real traffic. If bears are clicking on gallery links and getting twink pics, they're just going to think BU is P U and leave.


Cheers,
dzinerbear

Most of the emails I get like that are totally inappropriate and I simply write them back and tell them that while I understand why they're trying to build up their link list, it isn't an appropriate lateral for me to reciprocate.

For the most part they're hunting down high traffic websites and anything that looks at all like a potential trade, they're popping your link onto their link page and trying to push you into adding theirs. And I agree, most often the links page is buried, has no access from the main web page, and my site would be of no interest to their clientele to begin with ... and if it's a site selling a product ... I let them know I'm not about to exchange links and give them traffic if I'm not seeing a % for the referral.

It depends on WHO the link is being requested from as to whether or not we actually 'action' anything on our end.

99% of the time its just been sent from a list of sites that a webmaster has crawled from the ODP.

The rare 1% of the time this isnt the case, we usually find they have minimal amounts of traffic to send and, unless they can do us more good than we can do them, we tend not to link to them.

We always balance our links to weigh in faor of our sites more than the person requesting a link, if someone wants to link to us and they have a piddly 100 hits a month, chances are, you wont get linked. On the other hand, if someone has thousands / millions of hits a month and they want a link going up, as long as its something on topic of the site they enquired about, chances are, we'll link em :)

Regards,

Lee

Intereting answers here.

Personally I check out the site requesting the link, if it is easily accessible and is a relevent site then I check its PR to see if that is of any value.. as well as how many links are on the page mine is on.. as well as if hard coded.


If that all meets the standards, then yes I'll exchange.. otherwise i just reply with a 'sorry we aren't exchanging links at this time' email to just be polite..

If it is just a link farm or such I ignore it.

My view too is more aimed at the SE benefits rather than traffic, to me added traffic from a link exchange is bonus stuff.. i want the targeted SE traffic. Higher the PR, more G will crawl the site, means more pages get indexed, more changes for higher listings in the SERPS which means higher targeted free traffic.. least that is how I look at it.

but heck I am blonde and getting old.. so i shall shuffle off for another wee sniff of scotch... :thumbsup:

Ian

What I'm seeing is a LOT of companies hiring SEO people whose job it is to get links to raise Google Page Rank. So for one of the non-adult sites I run (which has a high page rank) I will get the most ridiculous recip link requests (Imagine, for example, someone emailing an online antique bookstore and trying to convince them that a link from a football fan site would be the *perfect* thing to drive traffic, and you get the idea.)

With the really bad ones that obviously are just mindless boilerplate, I generally send back an email that just says "You've got to be kidding" and nothing else.

With the ones that *might* be slightly plausible, I look to see if it's a reasonable, professional looking site.

And with some, I just ignore them because they're so poorly written or so obviously boilerplate.

I evaluate each request individually. My best PR is 3 and I want more good link exchanges for that site. I want the exchange to be relevant for the surfers for both sites in order for some direct traffic exchange and to help my PR. If I decide against a reciprocal link, I explain why in quick email.