What do I mean by “Reciprocal Link Ultimatums”?
I receive reciprocal link requests all the time. The pitch usually follows this line of reasoning: “If we link to each other, both of us will benefit.”
In many cases, this is true. We will both benefit. So why do people like me almost always delete these offers? How come this tactic almost never works?
Obviously, you don’t want to participate in massive link exchange schemes, but that’s not what I’m talking about in this post.
I’m talking about how I routinely delete seemingly legitimate offers.
For example: I will trade a link from my PR-1 website for a link on your PR-5 website and both of us will benefit.
In this situation, both parties will benefit somewhat, but one party will benefit much more than the other. (Inequitable outcome) So what? If both parties will benefit, then why not accept the offer and receive the benefit? Who cares? Something is better than nothing. Right? (Well… Not really)
Human nature dictates that even in seemingly self destructive situations, people tend to resist what is perceived as inequitable, yet positive outcomes. It sounds crazy but market-oriented societies tend to have a very high inequity aversion.
This is proved in experimental economics experiments like the Ultimatum Game.
This is how you play the ultimatum game:
The first player (Sender of the link request) proposes how to divide a sum of money (Link Juice) with the second party. If the second player rejects this division, neither gets anything. If the second accepts, the first gets hid demand and the second gets the rest.
For example:
If I have $10.00 and I offer you $5.00 and you accept, we both get $5.00.
If I have $10.00 and I offer you only $2.00 and you accept, you keep the $2.00 and I keep the other $8.00.
Most people will reject the second offer even though it’s $2.00 free money. They will reject the offer sometimes just to punish the person making the offer.
I’ve read in the book The Wisdom of Crowds where even people in third world countries will reject an inequitable offer even if it means not keeping real money in an impoverished environment.
So what can be learned about linking from these experiments?
Usually… People will reject reciprocal link requests unless the trade is equally beneficial.
Sometimes a website like a niche directory will want to link to you anyway but doesn’t know you exist. However… More often than not, you should do your homework and appraise the value of both your website and the target website and then evaluate the trade before you do anything.
Ask yourself if it’s a fair trade? If not, what can you do to make the offer more equitable? What kind of incentive can you offer? Cash usually works. If you don’t have cash, you can try some of these methods.
Don’t waste your time sending inequitable reciprocal link ultimatums. Do something that has a better chance of working.
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September 8, 2006 at 8:15 pm
Oh yea Dave! you told me in Yosemite… I like that theory - and it’s so absolutely true… I always think to myself “Hm - give you a PR6 link for a PR2 link? screw you…. DELETE - next mail….” hehe… cheers,christoph
September 8, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Thanks Christoph!
I know you send out all kinds of link offers to both prospective clients as well as target websites to act as the host for the links. I also know that you have a lot of success obtaining both the clients and the links.
I would assume that some of it has to do with the fact that you are a great communicator but I would also assume that much of your success is due to the offers being perceived as more than fair.
August 15, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Well I’m kinda new in SEO. So I want to know more about the equality of link exchange. I want to say my little insight about it.
If a PR2 site would like to exchange with PR4 site, we can say the that its not fair because the offer is only PR2. But let say PR4 site accepted the offer and as the time comes PR2 became PR3. Because they are reciprocal with the PR4 then the benefit will soon be equal as the time comes and when both of them reach PR4 then the quality of the link is now equal. Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
what I’m trying to say is:
-There is still a large benefit from accepting low PR sites. for example, i received 10 PR1 offers with my PR4 sites and I accepted all of them. As time comes they became PR2, because the crawl rate of those sites increases then the crawl rate of my site increases too. right? or am I just making a very bad theory about it? T_T
August 15, 2007 at 10:31 pm
That’s a great point. However… It’s based on speculation of future value. (Not current value)
The other website could go up in value or the webmaster might abandon the website and park the domain.
If some of my trusted friends were to start a new website, I would be the one to propose a link exchange between my PR4 website and their new PR0 site because I have reason to believe they will pump that sucker up to a PR5 in no time. I’ll also earn future brownie points for giving the new website a boost.
If a stranger were to tell me that the PR2 website is sure to be a PR5 website someday, so I should link to him today… I don’t think I would go for it.
Creating the perception of an equatable offer is the burden of the person sending the link request. Accepting or rejecting the offer is up to the target webmaster.
The more connections you make with other webmasters, the more willing they will be to enter an inequitable link exchange offer with you based on reputation and trust.
If you’re in the beginning stage of planning a website, try to get the jump on the situation and make friends with a few people in that niche. By the time you’re ready to solicit links, they might think of you as a trusted friend and give you a break.
Or… Break out the credit card. Just don’t waste your time sending people offers that won’t be acted upon. Life is too short.
August 16, 2007 at 1:11 am
Thanks for you reply. I agree with your point, we don’t need to go far for the strangers because it has a great chance that we might end up to the negative possibility. Anyway, I just started learning SEO and I’ve been surfing the internet just to know more about SEO and I was able to jump in your blog and I find it very helpful. Thanks again.
P.S. - What is a “niche”? I’ve been hearing it lately from bloggers and I have no idea what is it all about.
August 16, 2007 at 1:44 am
A “Niche” is just a smaller piece of a much larger market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niche_market
You don’t want to go for something too big like “Real Estate” You’ll never get there. Focus on something smaller like your neighborhood.
You don’t want to go too big or you’ll never get there. You don’t want to go too small or you’ll be earning pennies. You want something in between.
Hopefully you can find and dominate an under developed but quickly growing niche and grow with it.
If you started blogging, exclusively about a new technology like “Ringtones” when they first became available, you could have totally dominated that tiny market. If you worked hard, you could have stayed on top and your traffic would have grown in direct proportion of the market until it’s not such a small niche anymore but a multi-million dollar industry.
August 16, 2007 at 2:53 am
I see now. I thank you for your explanation and a little tip about it. You were very helpful.
September 5, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Instead of pagerank, people should consider traffic much more when deciding for a link exchange. Pagerank can be manipulated easily if a person with web site A buys 10x PR5-7 link pointing to his site A. Now, a person with web site B has 200 incoming links but usually with PR0-3. Now…
Basically, consider that the web site B has better traffic (let’s say 500 uniques a day) than the site A (let’s say 50 uniques a day). What is worth it? If I had a web site C deciding between link exchange with sites A and B, I would definitely choose the site B. Why?
Because it has more traffic. More traffic means more visits and what’s more, it also means potentially more new links to your web site just because of the fact that it has better traffic.
September 6, 2007 at 7:49 am
Excellent point!
If your Page Rank sucks, you should have something else to highlight as the offer. I was focusing on cash but a link on a page that gets a lot of relevant traffic works even better. You just need to have some sort of proof to back up the claim.
Offering to place the link on the “Links Page” (With little or no traffic) probably won’t be seen as equitable, even if the website in general gets a lot of traffic.