Are You Familiar with Reciprocal Link Scams?

Posted by kimbo on August 3, 2010 under News | Be the First to Comment

Reciprocal link building programs are popular these days. But are these programs for real or just one of the many scams that are swarming the internet? A sound link building strategy is one of the keys to increasing your page rank.

There are proven ways to use link building to improve your ranking, but from time to time you might get an email that looks something like this:

Hello,

As I was surfing the internet,  and I found your website: http://www.blabla.com/.   I am trying to add as many valuable websites as I can to my site.  This will benefit my users and give you relevant traffic to your site.  My website attracts about 4,000  visitors per day, who fit the same demographic as your site.

If you follow this link, http://www.bucketofcash.com/?pg=2eC4L you will see that I have put your link on my homepage.

Some website owners are not happy when other sites link to them, so I thought I would ask for your review.

After you have finished get back to me, and let me know if the link I have placed suits your needs. Also if you would like a custom Title for it,  send me an email and I will get it updated.

All the best.

The above letter is typical of those being emailed to people all over the world.  If you click on their link it will look like a good offer.  But u need to dig a little deeper to make sure the offer is legitimate.

Check the letter very carefully and make sure that the link is working and make sure that it will link back to your site.

Of course, you check out their website first.

Then check for back links.  You might see plenty of back links, only a few outgoing links, and decent decent PR 3-5.  So it looks like a good reciprocal link building candidate.

But wait………..

Look at the URL in the email and you’ll see a referral code as a forward slash extension to the url (usually looks like ?pg= or ?ref=).

This either sets a cookie when you click on it or logs your IP (or both), which makes your site “appear in the sidebar”.

The problem is that the info is a fabrication.  To prove it clear your cache, or log in from a different IP.  If you can’t see your link, you are being scammed.  Simple as that.