[Landlady]

I am repeatedly being sent emails requesting link exchanges. The only way I agree to this is if people use the automated link exchange setup on this website´s link exchange page.

I do not offer manually placed links.


Please excuse my making this a sticky post forum members, but I am hoping that by directing the people who email me to this post, they will either:

A. Take up the offer
B. Stop emailing me

[Carole]

I know that to some this may seem like a stupid question but.... WHAT IS A LINK EXCHANGE?

[Landlady]

Not a stupid question at all - I only learned it by experience of running a website. Hope you´re ready for a lengthy explanation though

Link exchanges are used between website owners to raise their website awareness in the search engines. For example, by putting a website link on this site, it can also help the other site. (the search engines have automated programs that scan websites which are designed well and updated often) The link will be picked up by the search engines and that website will show further up the list.

This site shows quite high in the search engine page list when you type in certain search words - such as "costa blanca forums" or "almoradi information forum" (try it in google search and you´ll see that this website shows on the first page) This site is scanned by the search engines all the time - and so if anyone is using the search engines to find information about a particular place or subject relating to the Costa Blanca, they will more than likely visit this site. When most people do a search, they usually only try the first 3 pages or so out of the 1000´s of pages shown - using "almoradi information forum" words for example brings up 19,000 results!

People who manage websites for a living often search out community forums like this and contact the owner or admin to ask for a link exchange - that is if I put a link on this site to their site, they will put a link to this site on theirs. This theoretically is to help both sites.

However, there are also a lot of scams going on. Better still than having an exchange of links is having a link on another site when you don´t have your link on their site in return. I get a LOT of emails requesting link exchanges to this site and my spanish language site. Most of them offer me an obscure link on a page that has nothing to do with the main website - they have just set up a separate website for links so they get the benefit of having the link on my sites without having mine on theirs. Others are sneaky and put a link on initially, only to remove it after a while.

I have set up an automated link exchange page so that I can now simply point them to this post when I reply to their email. It shows that I am not willing to manually add their link, and that I am aware of such scams. If they don´t want to use the automated link exchange system I have in place, where I am notified if they take off my link on their site and where I can approve the exchange link or not - then that´s up to them.


That is the main reason I don´t permit members to post links to commercial websites serving the Costa Blanca in these forums by the way. If businesses have helped me keep this site going by paying for an advert - then they can post as many links to their websites as they like, and that will help push their website further up the ladder in the search engines. But I won´t give it away for free any more - not after I have worked so hard to get this site where it is.