Sometimes You Just Have To Say "NO"...

Yesterday I was contacted by a marketer/owner of a hotel web site. He wants to exchange links with my site because... well let me share his email so you can better understand:

Hi,

My name is Mark. I recently came across your website http://guerillamarketingconsultingtt.com / through search engine and found it is informative for our website's visitors. I would like to exchange link with our websites CheapestRoomsLondon.co.uk and CheapRoomsLondon.co.uk.

As you are probably aware, reciprocal linking benefits both of us by raising the search engine rankings and generating more traffic to both of our websites.

If you would like to do the link exchange with us, please place our link on your website with the following details.

Title: CheapestRoomsLondon
Description: Find cheapest rooms to rent in London
Link: http://www.cheapestroomslondon

Ok, believe me I know how important links are to any website. I know that the more links I have the more traffic I'll get. But is that what I want?

What I want is more targeted traffic. I am not selling anything on that site to attract paying clients. Why would I want to link to a hotel in London? Is Mark thinking that people looking to rent a hotel in London will be interested in a marketing site in the Caribbean?

But it does make sense when you know that Mark is using an automated system go generate links to his site. He never really looked at my site.

Maybe I'm wrong. Let me ask you?

Do you think that it's worth exchanging links with Mark?

Well like you probably guessed, I had to turn down the offer from good ole merry England. If you know what I know, you would too.

Linking is not done because you can, it must have relevance.

Use this tool to learn more about linking and link automation http://bit.ly/czwI2f

Thanks for reading.