Do Link Exchanges Still Work?
Author: Gary Ruplinger

I've read about link exchanges a lot recently. I've seen a lot
of people who say that their predictions that link exchanges
would stop working saying that they were right, and that they
don't work, and that they in fact hurt your website.

Let's stop right there.

I'm going to clear up a few things.  All link exchanges are not
dead. Link exchanges when implemented properly can still be very
beneficial to your search engine rankings and can even drive
traffic to your site.

Before I tell you how to do it right, let me tell you how to do
it wrong. Any link exchanges promising hundreds or links
immediately upon joining should be avoided unless the only
search engine you care about is MSN (and even that may be
ending soon). Exchanging links with every site under the sun is
also bad. Using a link exchange as the only way you get links
will also not be a path you want to wander down.

Okay, so now that I've taken all the fun out of it, let me tell
you how to do it so that you avoid any search engine penalties
and actually see your search engine rankings improve from link
exchanges.  First, find service or software that will allow you
to manually seek and choose your partners. Second, once you're
in, take your time. A few links here and a few there.  Third,
be consistent about it. Exchanging links should be done every
week, or at the very least every month. You want the number of
links to increase over time. Fourth, only trade links with
sites that are related to yours. Also, make sure you visit the
site you're linking to, you don't want to be linking to sites
that are junk unless you want to be thought of as a junky site
as well. Fifth, keep the number of links to under 10% of the
total number of links pointing to your site. That means you're
going to need other linking strategies, but that's okay, there
are several available and you should be using them all.

So now you're armed with the knowledge of how to do link
exchanges and stay in the good graces of the search engines.
So the next time somebody starts proclaiming from their high
horse about how link exchanges got them banned or hurt their
rankings, just keep in mind that they were likely trying to use
shortcuts to get artificially high search engines.

There are in fact a lot of good reasons for websites to be
linked to one another, and the search engines know that. The
thing the search engines don't want to see is a website that
will only link to a site that will link to it. Make sure you
have one way links pointing both into and out of your website
in addition to your link exchanges and you'll be in good shape.


About The Author: Gary Ruplinger is a search engine
optimization expert who has written a free report to helping
website owners get their sites to the top of search engines
with a detailed step by step plan called the Ultimate Traffic
Blueprint – available at
http://www.ultimatetrafficblueprint.com