When link trading is like telemarketing.

The phone rings and, whether you are expecting a call or not, you quickly answer it. A voice on the other end of the line begins to chat about how you can lower your credit card payments, or make a $20,000 in a month, or buy nuclear weapons at your local supermarket.

If you are like most people, you hang up almost instantly.

Solicited phone calls like this are not only annoying, the success rate of such calls is minuscule. Does that stop companies from investing in making solicited calls? Obviously not.

Now imagine that you are checking your email.

You open your inbox to find that you have several new emails, most of which are from your friends, family, or coworkers; however, one email is from someone you don't know and titled "Your website looks great!"

You open the email and begin to read - what appears to be - a third grade book report on how linking to a website can benefit your website's rankings in search engines. Without thinking twice, you close the email and file it away as spam.

When it comes down to it, regular link trading (requesting a link exchange between two or more websites) is a lot like telemarketing. The person receiving the contact will - in most cases - completely ignore it.

That is, of course, unless you change your link trading strategy.

Don't be the telemarketer of the internet, get to know people, really appreciate those that you request link exchanges with, and above all: don't be annoying.