The Benefits And Risks Of Link Exchange When Marketing Accounting Websites

If you ever hear the expression Backlinks (the links pointing into a website) today, it is likely involving their importance to Search Engine Optimization. Backlinks are a central metric taken advantage of by search engines. These websites regard inbound links to be a measure of a website's relative importance and lean heavily on them when determining the position of accountant websites in search results.

Once you get a site posted you might notice a substantial increase in emails from other website owners, countless of whom you never heard of before, wanting to exchange links with your website.

Back in the old days we used to use a technique called "link swapping".

Suppose I was an accountant in Naples, Florida and you had a firm in key west. I would link to your website, you would link to mine, and we'd both get a boost in the search engines.

It didn't take Google long to figure out that people were using it to game their results so they changed the way their system to track down these "reciprocal" links. When they find one they don't give the links any value, but there's a way to use a blog to get around this using blogs. Most businesses have blogs that are hosted on unique URLs (web addresses that are different from their main website). Rather than linking to each others websites, we can link to each other's accountant websites from our blogs. If you don't have a blog, or if your blog is on your main website and doesn't have a unique URL you'll need another web property to exchange links.

It may seem like a win-win situation where you both receive SEO benefits, but there are several factors your must consider before accepting.

1) Who are these guys anyway?

Always look over the company's site and do some research on them before you agree to anything. You may think that there is no such thing as a bad link when it comes to SEO, but keep in mind that these links aren't going to just be in the background; they will be visible on your site and your visitors and clients will be clicking on them.

If you provide a link on your site to another company's website, people on your site will assume that you endorse them and vouch for their business. People will hold you responsible for this endorsement. If you're linking with spammers and scammers the damage to your reputation won't justify any SEO benefit your accountant websites might enjoy. Proceed with caution. Don't link to any partners you have doubts about.

2) Not all links are created equal.

There are lots of factors that the search engines look at when determining the value of your backlinks. Backlinks from sites that are relevant to your market will be given much more weight than sites that are loosely if at all related. Links from other types of firms still have value, especially if they're in your market, but they won't look very relevant to you.

Some companies have very specific instructions on where they want you to put the link and how it should be set-up. Often times they will request it be on your home page or another popular page (or every page). Obviously these would be very high value links. But where do your links show up?

Many of these sites are scammers. Try to find the page where they'll be putting your links. I'll wager they're offering a link page buried deep in the site. This isn't a reasonable trade. This is a completely lopsided trade. They're getting a high quality link from a respected accountant and you're getting an obscure link from a spam site that doesn't offer you any real SEO or traffic value. Make sure you are getting a fair deal before accepting.

3) Biting the hand that feeds you.

The system Google uses to keep track of link popularity is called "PageRank", and they're very proud of it. It was invented by Larry Paige, one of Google's founders, back in his Stanford days and it's been getting tweaked and improved many times a year ever since. They are sincerely trying to provide the best possible search results to their users, and they work very hard and spend a lot of money to achieve this goal. They DON'T like it when people try to game the system. When groups of websites get together and form what Google calls "link farms" they reserve the right to penalize websites, or even de-index them altogether. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does the results to a business can be catastrophic.

Just ask the folks at overstock.com about the penalties for trying to manipulate Google. They got caught trying to scam Google for higher rankings and Google slapped such a fat penalty on them that the online retailer decided to start their SEO efforts all over again from scratch with a new domain name: O.co

Many of the companies that try to contact you about link exchanges will be link farmers. Be very careful about accepting their offers, especially if you can't see a logical reason they would want to exchange links with accountant websites. Odds are you'll be linking into what search marketers call a "bad neighborhood". You do NOT want Google associating you with a bad neighborhood. Getting involved with a link farm can get you blacklisted, and once your domain is banned it's very difficult to get re-indexed. In my opinion questionable links just aren't worth the risk.

This isn't to say that every backlink opportunity is going to end up being trouble for you, but it certainly pays to look into the company and the offer thoroughly before making a decision. Accountant websites are hard to promote and you need to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, but you also have to cautiously balance the benefit versus the risks. The best route to keeping out of harm's way is to view outbound links as endorsements for excellent goods and services instead of search engine optimization shortcuts. If you ever find yourself exchanging links simply for the SEO value stop and take a good critical look at the business you're endorsing and ask, "Am I sincerely inclined to be responsible for my clients doing business with this website?"