Link exchanges are one way to help with link authority, especially if you have nothing else going for you. Promoting blogs and fresh quality content are preferrable, but some people don’t have time, and reasonable, content targeted link exchanges can at least get you on the map. But you need to be very careful.

1) Beware 3 way link exchanges with junk sites. Generally the person requesting the link will want you to link to their client’s site, but all you get is an incoming link from their throw-away wordpress site that looks like it was put up in 15 minutes. Don’t bother.

2) Ignore link exchange requests that require you to put your link up first. If you do, they won’t. Credible link partners will always place your link first (not necessarily before they contact you though).

3) Ignore link exchanges showing y0u some great PR sites that will link to you, but you have to put up your link first. Hint: those aren’t even their sites! A certain percentage of webmasters will see that high PR and put the link up.

4) Don’t exchange links with any website that is unrelated to yours, i.e. don’t put a viagra link on your golf club ecommerce site.

5) Don’t swap links with any low quality website. The search engines will never count the link anyway, and you will be wasting your time and credibility.

Let’s face it. Maybe Google started off as a egalitarian, nice, fair, “do no evil” type of company, but they have officially hit the big time. Big companies aren’t nice or fair. There is too much money involved. If you still buy into the nicey-nice Google culture, read the New York Times article on Google’s Marissa Mayer and the reaction/comments from Silicon Valley Web Guild and ValleyWag. That, along with comments from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, paints a pretty good picture of corporate executives drunk on their own elitist Koolaid (ok, crappy metaphor, but it’s early).  He calls the internet a cesspool. And the solution? Good ole Big Brands. Trusted by millions.

So what does that mean to you, trying to make information about your products and services available to the general public ? It’s going to be harder, at least in the short term. What does it mean to you, the searcher trying to find specific information that’s a little bit off the beaten path. It may be more difficult.

Here’s a possible side-effect of the brand bump in the Google SERPS, that I haven’t see much discussion about. In a couple of different verticals I work with, I’ve noticed page one being filled with directory results from large paid directories, rather than websites of individual businesses, when doing a local search for a specific product or service. Are these big directories considered a brand?  How does adding an extra step of displaying a directory results page in the search engine results page help anyone?

So Big Brand=Higher Quality, More Accurate Content=Better Search Results? No. Google has the ability, resonsibilty, or authority to determine what information is “TRUE” and what is not? NO. My personal opinion is that such an idea, forced into the algorithm by the almighty dollar rather than a concern for helping the searcher find what they are looking for, will result in people switching to another search engine to find what they are looking for. Then, when the traffic decrease results in a loss in revenue, Google will move the other way. I hope.

Does Google Adsense Make Sense?

I’ve been “messing around” with Google Adsense for a few months now. I’ve also been on the other end – running Adwords campaigns that included the “Content Network” or, in other words, Adsense ads.

I’m sure there are people getting more clicks and making more money from the program than I am. Somebody blogging on electronics, cell phones or other consumer products are obviously more likely to get those high ticket clicks. Probably the most successful at raking in the Adsense cash are those who’s sole purpose is to capture the searches and direct the visitors to the ads.

The most obvious way to increase clicks is to increase the number of visitors to the page. Another way is to embed the ad in the content, so that the user may accidentally click on it, thinking it is part of the article. Yet another way is to optimize the page for the long tail keywords, and provide no useful content, so that the visitor’s best bet to get at the information they seek is to click on the ads. I would consider this last technique spam, and would never use it. I would also see it as having the best chance at high click-through.

From the Adwords advertiser’s perspective, would you want a lot of clicks coming from spam? Do you want to pay for visitor’s who have accidentally clicked on your ad because it has been embedded in the content? I think there are two sets of answers to those questions, depending who you are:

1. If you are a small business with a limited budget, the first thing I would do would be to unclick the “Content Network” box in you ad campaign. Stop advertising through Adsense for a period, and see if your conversion doesn’t increase. In addition, I’ve found that not only the clicks per page view increase when excluding the Adsense network, but when you do get a click it is more likely to convert to a sale.

2. If you are a larger company with a diverse marketing strategy, internet marketing is probably giving you your highest ROI of all channels, so you probably don’t mind the lower conversion per dollar, if it means higher overall volume.

So, to answer my own question: does Google Adsense make sense? – I’d say, if you are internet marketer who’s raison d’etre is to get those clicks, then yes, or course. For a site like mine, however, that has the ads up incidentally, “because I can,” then no, it doesn’t really make sense. It’s a waste of effort. But it’s still kind of fun.