After link directories, link exchanges is probably one of the most recommended methods to link building and receive backlinks.
A few years back everyone traded links with everyone to get more backlinks. This resulted in a lot of sites where linking to spam or rubbish just to get a extra link. Because of this search engines decided to lower the amount of linkpower when two sites were linking to each other in the sidebar.
To get around this people started to do three- and fourways link exchanges, meaning:
- Site A and B (friend) linked to site C (your)
- Site D and E (yours) linked to site F (friend)
What’s bad with link exchanges?
Since wannabe-gurus started to promote this method a lot of new bloggers thought this was a simple and easy method to receive a lot of high quality backlinks. They started to mail everyone with high PR within their own niche, asking them to do a link exchange. This resulted in spam, more or less.
Depending on how you decide to do this, it may be a great method to receive backlinks. If you just convince other bloggers to put your link in their sidebar you’ll not get very high linkpower from it. If you on the other hand convince them to link one of their keywords in the middle of their text this may be a great method to build links.
How to write a link exchange request
Dear Mr. or Ms… Just stop it! Today a lot of bloggers search through their niche after similar blogs or sites and then collect a bunch of addresses. Then they write a standard mail and sends it to everyone on their list.
This method will not work with any serious blogger and I’m sure most of them will just delete your mail. Instead you should get on this persons radar by leaving comments on their posts. After a few times you should analyze his or her site and then write him or her a personal mail.
Tell them what you like about his/hers site, what they can do better, who you are, etc. Basically everything you can think of.
My thoughts on link exchange
I think this is a great method if you know people within you niche. Convince them to link within their text instead of adding your site to their sidebar.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
As we know, exchange link in the sidebar doesn’t help in search engine ranking anymore, I believe that three or four way link exchange might help, but it’s time consuming. I do prefer to do article marketing to get quality one-way backlink instead of doing link exchange. Anyway, it’s no harm to exchange link too.
Regards,
Lee
I think it’s a great method if you do it correctly. Convince the other person to link within his text instead of just putting a link in the sidebar.
Link exchange is a great way to get ranked better, but it’s very time consuming. I use to have a sidebar widget, but removed it as my blogroll was becoming to big. I have a links page now and display my blogroll links there.
I suggest doing guest blogging as it’s more effective and it has longer long term effects.
The thing about link exchange is that most people do it the old fashioned way which doesn’t help as much any more. Google recently made a video explaining how links in sidebars and footers get less linkpower. This is why you should try to get your links within the pagetext and not in the sidebar.
As far as I know, link xchanging is not good in eyes of Google. Moreover, its not counted as a backlink by Google. But I love link xchanging bcz it helps to increase visitrs thru referring sites.
As I answered George right now; if you do it correctly there’s no difference between a link exchange and a regular link. You should link a specific keyword within your text from a related page instead of adding it into your sidebar.
This is really smart way of link exchanges. I always thought that Link Exchange will be bad for my google rankings so I never did it. But I think it is Ok to do it in a smart way!