The Social Web

Content-Link Exchange Request

I was emailed a proposal yesterday, whereby I would be given some unique content which contained a link to the company in question. Here is their message:

Hi I`m Brenda Pomaro from flowersguide.co.uk. We offer one of the largest selections of flowers, hampers and wines and champagne gifts online. .

Our management team has asked me to contact other site owners because we are looking for relevant partners and swinny.net seems ideal. We can either exchange links with you - or - we can offer you some free of charge unique content in return for a link back to us.

We have access to a very large group of UK-based editorial staff who could research and write a high quality, unique piece specifically for swinny.net. You will of course have full editorial control and it definitely won`t be a sales pitch for us!

All we would ask is that you allow us to include one simple text link back to flowersguide.co.uk towards the end of the content which will hopefully be found by the search engines in the longer term - which is how we would benefit.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks and Kind Regards - Brenda Pomaro

Director, www.fxxxxxxxuide.co.uk

My first thought was, "Awesome, free content, in return for one harmless little link!" But then I checked back into reality. What's the point of this sort of deal? Surely the quality of the content would be low, and wouldn't be of any value to the visitors of Swinny.net. I could have gone ahead and seen what the content was like, but it really doesn't ring true.