Everyone who opens a new eCommerce site wants to drive as much traffic to it as possible, so when you see plugs for link schemes offering you 100s if not 1000s of inbound links it can be tempting to jump on it, but be careful. Some of these schemes require you to turn part of your site into a link farm. When Google and many other search engines discover your link pages you will likely be penalised with a lower ranking for it. While the site's operating these schemes make revenue from paid for ads on their own site, your site will drop down the SERPs therefore negating any benefit you think you are gaining from the links, which in general are low quality, low traffic sites all desperate the increase their own traffic.

Google doesn't tend to penalise you for incoming links otherwise unscrupulous webmasters could take out their competition my submitting their URLs to undesirable sites, but if you link to an undesirable site then Google will punish you for it. So be careful where you link to.

Reciprocated links aren't rated as highly as they once were because of the number sites who will swap links with anyone regardless of the content of the other site. To get around this, some schemes have popped up offering three way linking i.e. you link to a site, that site links to another site and that site links back to you. The idea being that no two sites reciprocate each others links. A good idea you may think, but the folks at Google aren't dumb, they have algorithms that can spot this behaviour and may punish you for taking part.

By all means swap links with other sites, and use some of the reputable link referral schemes, but don't over do it.

I have a couple of old domains that are no longer used that I experiment with, I signed up to to the TelaLinks directory (don't do it!) then started getting spammed with stuff like this


Greetings,
We found your web site in the TelaLinks directory, and think that it would be a perfect addition to our new Automated 3-Way Link Network.
Our system is completely different than any other link exchange you have seen before:
1) Your site's link will be automatically inserted into 1,000's of targeted content related web sites
2) We will NOT link any site to you that is directly linked to your site (3-Way Exchange)
3) We do NOT use link pages - They are no longer effective
4) We will place your link on high-traffic/ranked web pages
5) We will NOT link you to any site's that have been blacklisted from the major search engines
6) Any links that are inserted into your web pages will NOT be visible to your visitors
7) We will boost your natural search listings significantly
The best part is that it is 100% FREE! There are no costs whatsoever. If you think that you might be interested in joining us please follow the link below for more information:
<Link removed>

We look forward to partnering up with you!
The AutoLinkJet Team

As with most things in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

__________________
Lawrence

Well worth knowing, thank you.

yes Lawrence
If it looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck. . .

It's probably a . . . . . . . . duck
haha

Gareth

__________________
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Has anyone tried FreeViral? They claim they can get you 1,000,000 visitors a month for free. It looks like a pyramid marketing operation but some reviews I've read say their claims are true but its very undirected traffic so its not worth it unless you have a site with broad appeal or carry lots of advertising.

Schemes like FreeViral can indeed significantly increase your traffic, but all the traffic is from other website owners signing up to the scheme looking to increase their own traffic so unless you're providing a service or carrying ads that are likely to appeal to other webmasters all you will achieve is to increase the load on your server.

If your site is a link directory carrying ads that are relevant to webmasters then go for it as it will probably show results, but if you are a store selling DIY equipment to the UK market then stay well away from it.

It's a pyramid marketing scheme that can work for you in certain situations but like all pyramid systems it has a limited shelf life.

__________________
Lawrence