Promoting a website is expensive. Getting a site to receive traffic takes time, money or both. So it is important that the time and money we spend is spent on worthwhile promotions. This means checking each possible link buy or trade to be sure that it will have the desired affect on your site. To a large degree the criteria for a good link is the same whether you are looking to increase your PR, raise your site in the SERPs or gain traffic from the link.

If this is an expensive link you are likely to spend a great deal of time manually checking out the link, if it is a low cost link you will likely be able to use a simple tool like the one at Insane Stats to get the information you need. Either way you should start the process already having a good idea what you are looking for in the deal.

Here are a few of the main things I look for in a link buy or trade and why: Read on …