Link exchanges
Link exchanges are a long standing, time tested method of not only getting more traffic to your website, but boosting your website ranking in internet search engines. When you know the right way to do link exchanges with other sites, the benefits not only bring you new visitors, but often are free as well. Our overview of link exchanges shows you what to do, and what to avoid, to get the best results in your link exchange program.
Link exchanges are a very simple concept; 2 websites provide a link to each other, which is called a reciprocal link. Many websites have "Links" or "Resources" pages, and these pages consist of reciprocal links to other websites. When these are done properly, these links will be to other websites that are somehow related to their own website. Although not required, setting up a "Links" area on your site can be beneficial to both you and your websites' visitors. Reciprocal links provide 2 valuable benefits.
1. New visitors. When a link to your site appears on other sites, and visitors on the other site see your link, simply clicking on it will being them to your website. When you have a popular, highly trafficked website link to you, the potential for new visitors to your site is even higher.
2. Search engine rankings. One of the elements that search engines consider when ranking sites is how many links you have back to your website. When you have related, popular websites linking to you, the search engines factor those into their ranking system, and can give you a boost in your rankings.
When implementing link exchanges for your website, there are a few things that you should be aware of so that your website reaps the benefits of getting quality visitors and better search rankings, and avoids search engine penalties. That's right; if you don't follow certain guidelines with your link exchanges, you may not get the visitors you want, and search engines can actually rank you lower based on poor choices for reciprocal links. Following is our overview of what to do, what not to do, and how to start your link exchange program.
Link only with relevant websites. By "relevant" we mean other sites that are somehow related to the topic of your website. Using our "www.thepaperclipdepot.com" example, if our website sells paper clips, we should only try to link with sites that are somehow related to paper clips, i.e. office supply websites, secretarial websites, business websites, etc. With relevant sites linking to us, we are using our link to advertise ourself to what is probably our target audience. If our site was linked to automotive repair websites, online gaming sites or sites about medicine, as examples, we aren't linking with sites that already appeal to the visitors we want, so getting traffic from them is not likely. The search engines will also notice when your link exchanges are with relevant websites or not, and their programming will take it into account when your site shows up in search results. Granted, you cannot control who links to you all the time, but if you make an effort to keep everything relevant, it is to your benefit. Also remember that the quantity of backlinks isn't as important as the quality of the backlinks you get.
Use keywords in your backlinks. When a link points back to our website ("backlink"), the text within the link should be descriptive with keywords related to your website. So while someone on another site sees our link that reads "www.thepaperclipdepot.com", and they can likely figure out what our website is about before visiting it, we can also consider a link that reads Low cost, high quality paper clips. The second version not only is more descriptive for the potential visitor, but the keywords within it are beneficial to search engines and their ranking of our website.
Quality link descriptions. Links often have "title" attributes, which is a description of the link. If this is present, usually placing your mouse over a link will pop up a small box with the link title. Often times, your link will have an area to actually display a description of your site as well. When providing information to other websites for your link, use a good description of your site so that the title and/or link description will benefit both visitors and search engines.
Avoid "Link farms" and general directories. Link farms are generally groups of websites that link to each other and have little content usable by viewers. Their sole purpose is to get inbound links for search rankings, which isn't practical if there is nothing that is valuable for people that do searches. Many search engines can detect if a site is a link farm, and they are often penalized and banned in search results. General directories are basically websites that contain different categories, and website owners can get their site listed within these categories. General directories will do very little to bring you any traffic or help your search rankings. While some directories like DMOZ may be helpful, for the most part they are not worth spending your time on.
Starting your own links or resources area on your website isn't difficult to do. The idea is that you are giving your site visitors access to other sites they may be interested in, helping to promote other relevant websites, and in return those other sites are linking back to you and doing the same for their visitors. Your links area can be broken down into categories, with appropriate links within those categories.
Setting up a reciprocal link with another website is often as easy as simply emailing or contacting a website you would like to trade links with, requesting a link exchange, and waiting for their response. Some webmasters may have strict guidelines about who they will link with, so don't be upset if they deny your request. If you are willing to place a link on your site to their site before contacting them, and notifying them that you have already done so when you make your link request, that may be helpful in getting them to return the favor.
Once your site is online for awhile, you may get requests from other sites asking for link exchanges. When this happens, and it is a site that is relevant, it is up to you whether you do or don't exchange links, however if the other site is legitimate and relevant it is probably a good idea to do so. Besides, getting requests from relevant sites means that the other webmaster has determined your site is a quality resource, and you can consider it as a compliment in a way. If you recieve requests from unrelevant sites, simply ignore them; as we mentioned, linking with unrelated sites is not beneficial to you.