Relevancy and Niches

I got an email last night from a lady who runs the ABC School of Polish. She seemed VERY polite and offered to put a link to my site on her site if I put link to her site on mine.

On the face of it, this seems like a good idea, you can never have too many links right? Also, I did attend the Polish National Alliance College in Cambridge Springs, PA for a couple of years so I like the whole Polish concept (subsequently the college was shut down and turned into a women’s prison, guess I got out of there just in time!)

BUT, here’s the kicker. What is in for me OR them to have a link to each other’s sites. I do not think that people who are looking for great Polish holidays are going to come from my marketing website. I also do not think that people who are thinking about taking Polish classes or going on holiday are going to suddenly have a yearning to learn more about niche marketing.

This practice is called link building and is designed to trick the search engines into thinking that you are VERY popular world wide, with links from all over the globe. The search engines can figure this trick out easily, but more important, people visiting my site can figure out that I have a huge links page with nothing relevant to marketing and leave (I hate when people leave!)

If you are going to exchange links with people, make sure they are a complimentary site. I could link to mail houses, printing companies, articles about advertising, niche marketing tips and tricks, realtor websites, internet marketing sites, etc. which would INCREASE my relevancy in the search engines…rather than just adding another anonymous link.

So Anna, thank you for your kind offer but count me out. I would rather have one good link than 100 mediocre links diluting my brand!