As you may already know, link exchanging is the process of exchanging text links between websites. Webmasters exchange links to improve traffic through numerous inbound links or link popularity. Exchanging links is normally a free process (unless you choose to a fee-based link exchange program), making link exchanges cost effective. Link exchange is the key to improve your ranking in organic search results and that's why it is one of the most cost effective method of generating relevant traffic.

So let's say you need inbound links. How do you get them? There are various ways to initiate a link exchange with other websites. The most popular and obviously ethical method of building a link exchange is to email the webmaster of a targeted site and ask to exchange links. Pay close attention to the phrase "targeted website". Remember, the ideal goal of any link exchange program is to generate traffic and that traffic better be relevant traffic. Search engine spiders are smart enough to figure out if inbound links to your site are coming from the websites who have similar contents or business to yours. You can build thousands of links with paid link web sites but if these links are not relevant, you're just wasting your time and money. So keep in mind that for any real benefit link exchange has to be between website with relevant contents. You can also find websites looking to exchange links by visiting discussion boards and other webmaster forums. you can also visit link exchange directories where you can request link exchanges from a specific category or select potential link partners based on other factors such as Google PR or content relevance.

As more and more visibility in to search engine algorithms develops, it is becoming clear that search engines like Google and Yahoo are no longer placing significance importance on reciprocal links alone. How much value a link offers is now now measured by the sites page rank, its contents andy depth of the link page. We will discuss depth later in this article. Remember, as we pointed out earlier,relevance is also a key factor. Webmasters are free to link with anyone but should link with websites that have industry relevance. Having a link from a website with no relevance could potentially negatively affect Search Engine Result Pages.

Types of Link Exchanges

There are essentially 3 types of link exchange; reciprocal, one-way, and 3-way links. Each has its merits, but one-way links are ideal.

Reciprocal Links: When you place a link on your website to another's website, and they provide a link back, it is referred to as reciprocal linking. This is a basic link exchange and a great way to get started with your link building efforts. This is easy to accomplish but you have to make sure that they are linking to you from a webpage that is not buried deep in your contents with no page views. You also need to make sure that they are not banned by search engines.

One Way Links: Receiving a link to your website from a another website without you having to link back is is referred to as a one-way link. This is the most beneficial link you can receive, especially if its from a site that has an adequate Google PR and is relevant to your website. This is also an area where lot of people get cheated by paying for one-way link and getting nothing in return. Remember, if someone is running a business by selling one way outgoing links, they are most likely to put these links on pages with no relevance to contents and deep in their own directories. Another important thing to remember is that these folks probably don't understand your business either, so paying for these link is not going to generate substantial ROI(Return on Investment).

3-Way Links: Providing a link exchange between multiple sites, but not directly to the two primary sites is referred to as a 3-way link exchange. To illustrate, imagine sites A, B, and C. In a three-way link exchange, site A would place a link to site C, and site C would place a link to B. Sites A and B are owned by the same webmaster. This is also an area where you might be tricked and pay for no value. Remember, buying a domain name and putting up a phony website takes only 10 to 15 minutes. People can sell you hundred of links from these web sites with no value to your website and business. So make sure you research the site, its contents and content relevance before committing to a link exchange agreement.

Now moving on to the depth issue. Remember, a search engine indexes your web site only to a certain depth and then moves on to the next site. The depth a search engine crawler will travel varies from engine to engine and even varies for the same engine from day to day and URL to URL. However, most crawlers go no deeper than two or three directory levels into any given site (yoursite.com/level1/level2/). You might find instances where a crawler has gone deeper, or shallower, but, that is an exceptional rather than a rule. The key point is this: If links to your site originate beyond the third directory level of the originating site, the crawlers will never know those links exist. The link is deeper than the crawler is able to crawl. As you can tell by now, it is important to know the depth where link to your sites are originating. Fewer links from top directories can generate more value than thousands of links from deep directories on any website.

If your goal is to improve link popularity for searchers, the links to your site need to originate as close to the top level on the originating site as possible. A link originating beyond the third or fourth level is still important if the originating site is topically relevant and useful. Yahoo is a good example. Most sites linked by Yahoo originate far beyond Yahoo's third directory level. Remember, Fewer relevant links are better than non relevant link lists or Free for All Links Pages (FFALP).

Regardless of which method you use, reciprocal linking provides value to your website. Websites that have completed many link exchanges will usually experience increased traffic through direct clicks and improved search engine rankings. We offer a backlink tracking tool to display all the websites who link to you.