A Guide to Link Exchange

Link exchanges are very useful. They can bring in traffic, help you get a good PR, etc. But they can also be a SEO killer. They can get you penalized by search engines. So, let me help you with this little guide to link exchange.

How it works

You basically link to another site and that site links back to you. And that’s a link exchange. But its not as simple as it looks like. You need to do more than that.

And I don’t recommend you doing this two-way link exchange. Its not going to benefit you. This is dead!’

A better way of exchanging links

Reciprocal links (its where site A links to site B and site B links to site A) suck. Search engines don’t really like that. But you can try this method. Find someone who has a few good sites. Exchange links with them. Lets say you own site A. So, site A links to site C and site B links to site A. Plus make sure that the sites are related to yours.

Well now it doesn’t look like a link exchange and search engines will value those links more. Its just my way of a three-way link exchange.

Where to exchange links

Don’t exchange links with each and every site. Be picky! Only exchange links with sites that are related to yours. Also make sure that the other site has a PR or even a better PR than you and it has more traffic than yours.

And also check how many links the other site has. If it has a lot of links (like more than 5) then don’t exchange with that site. That site is considered a link farm. Too many links will get you penalized by search engines (especially Google).

How many links to exchange

Now we don’t know the exact number of links you can exchange before you get penalized. And I wouldn’t even recommend that you try to find out. But be reasonable. Like 2-5 links seem reasonable. More than that will probably be bad for you.

Where/when to stop

Like I said before don’t build a link farm. That will really hurt your SEO and PR. And also link exchange isn’t exact science. It might work for you. Or it might not. But if you want then you can give it a shot. Just make sure that you don’t go past a reasonable amount.

And if you see that you’re not getting any visitors from the sites you exchanged links with and your PR just went down. Then take off their links and you ask them to take yours off too. That means link exchange didn’t work for you because you probably did something wrong.

Well good luck! And if you have any questions then feel free to ask.