Good point, perhaps saying “bad link partner” was written a little hastily as I pounded out my notes.

I think you’re right in that it’s not your fault if your client’s link partners don’t get it and I think you were perfectly clear in conveying your responsibility and that you fairly negotiate… even if I didn’t write all that out.

On a personal note – I would like to see NoFollow done away with.

Good to see you again too Marty.

I think using the work “bad” in describing our clients’ link trading activities is not quite accurate. I don’t want your readers thinking that you’re highlighting a scummy tactic.

To clarify, there are 2 different values to link exchanges: traffic/promotion and Google juice. They are very different. It’s true our clients’ link partners sometimes don’t understand the difference. It’s not our job to explain…still we go to lengths to be up and up by explaining well beyond the call of duty.

All conversation about naive trading partners aside, we negotiate straight up with our trading partners and specifically write them prior to encourage review of the written policy (posted on every page). THEN we write them again and encourage them to ask us with any questions regarding linking policies. There gets to be a point where it’s just not our fault if they don’t get it.

If our client agrees to a link exchange with sites that do no have near as much authority as our clients’(often), we have no qualms in equalizing the deal by negotiating both aspects of link value separately. Most of the time the traffic we send is worth way more than the link juice they give us.

No money changes hands. No links are bought and sold. No guidelines are violated. Google can’t have it both ways…either the value of a link is cut in half and we can share each half as we please, or let’s do a way with NoFollow.

Not understanding the multiple nodes of link value is why clients need to hire firms like yours.