Could trading hardlinks with linkspun kill my SE rankings?
 

I've had first page spots for these keywords for probably almost 2 years, been doing some tweaking to the site like adding image titles/alts and placing new banners here and there while at the same time I signed up to linkspun and have been trading hardlinks within the niche, I've put up 13 links out and gotten 14 links in so far.

Suddenly I am dropping down in the SE rankings and off first page listings. Could the linkspun trading have caused this or is it more likely some bad change I did to the site?

LinkSpin is a link trading resource, nothing more. It by itself does nothing for your rankings. It is simply a tool to help you do your job.

You gain inbound links from other sites with the same type of content. How does that not effect rankings?

Edit: oh shit, just noticed every gallery I've ever posted has my target keyword in the title and some new galleries I've started adding from a new sponsor don't have that keyword in all of the titles. I think I've found my fuck up. How do I reverse this? Take the new gals down? This is feeling very delicate now :1orglaugh

Most of the requests I get on linkspun are from shitty blogs with 100s of outgoing links and infrequent updates. I was forced to hide the majority of my sites because idiots kept sending the same request over and over again. Having said that, I do like the service, and it is free, so can't really complain. Remember to be thorough when checking potential trades.

Yeah it is annoying the fact that 90% of the pages on there are some direct sponsor promotion blog crap with no galleries/content or anything.. going to fix my gallery titles problem and see if I regain my listings, if not then linkspun is the culprit or I'm just fucked.

I don't think that 13 links could make a large difference even if you chose really poor links. Remember, linkspun doesn't make trades, chose links, pick anchors for your sites and trades, and then add those deals to your websites, you do all that. All linkspun does is give you a tool to find and track them with. It's a user based system, and has no footprint so very hard to say its 'linkspuns fault'. It just tracks the trades that you find, and you agree to.

If you just made a bunch of recent changes to the site, I would be willing to bet that was the reason. Combined with the fact that the serps have been very active last 2 weeks, lots of movement.

But still, I think 13 links is nowhere near enough to 'cost' you rankings.


I police the site pretty well, but have no way of knowing who's spamming you trades, or being 'shitheads' unless you use the Report User button, and beside it, Block User. That should have instantly stopped you from getting requests from the few you didn't want them from.

People who hide or only add a bunch of low level, shitty blogs as you put it, are not going to see any rewards or gain anything from the tool. They aren't going to suddenly spin 50 shitty sites into enough links to get search results for 'porn' so they aren't hurting anyone but themselves.

Block the 10-15% of people who don't 'get it' and trade with the 85-90% who do. It seems to be working wonders for most users.

I see it like walking through a field of $100 bills and not picking them up, because there was dirt on every 4th one you picked up. Screw that, especially if you have a way to blow away the dirty ones (Block them, Report them etc).

Do any of these tweaks involve an i-frame near the top of page?

did you add 14 new outgoing links to get those 13 incoming links? Or was it a-b-c one way link trading?

i moved up a couple pages on a competitive term party from trades from there.

True, I just thought maybe Google noticed the 13 new links that I put up all of a sudden and also noticed I have 14 new sites hardlinking me all at once with the same anchor text. And thought maybe they didn't like that or something. You know a lot about this stuff though so that's good to hear.

Nope. Not even a geo iframe banner or anything..

Half are just straight up 2 sites linking each other trades, other half are "you link this site of mine with this site of yours and ill link another site of yours with another site of mine" trades. lol I don't have a very good grasp on what the a-b-c trade stuff means yet.

That's what I'm expecting in the long run, that's what it's for afterall? I'm pretty sure my SE listings dropped because of me screwing up my keyword density (which is VERY high, but it works apparently) with these new gals I posted... but it's fixed now so hopefully I regain my shit.

You are generally better off to get the incoming links to the site you want to rank, and give out the links on your other sites. Try not to do many recip (2 sites linking to each other) unless they are solid sites in the niche you are in, or an authority site of another niche.

A good strategy is to set the site you are trying to rank to hidden in Linkspun, and then it wont show up in trades/search for other users to request links on, but you can still request links to it, and monitor its trades. It's a solid way to make sure you are only adding links to it, and not on it. You want to strengthen up the link juice on that site not fill it with holes for the juice to spill out.

ABCD is pretty much the standard trade done at LS (but all others are possible as well), and that is when I request a link on your domain A to my domain B and then you get the request and look through my domains and request a link on domain C, pointing to your domain D (the site you want ranked and are getting links for.).

It's that simple, and very hard to set any linking flags up, all links added and gained will be one way in look and feel, and none of the sites end up tying into each other for a footprint to follow.

If you're linking out to sites that have spam related content viagra, adult content (if your site is not adult themed), phishing sites, etc. then your site could get hit hard.