October 21, 2007 21:21
Category: Link Making
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The worst seems to be over. For a long time link exchange was looked at with skepticism. There have been loads and loads of articles and comments that virtually banished the concept of exchanging links because not only they add no value to a website, they in fact subtract value in the sense that search engines do not prefer them.
The skepticism was however not without reason. The main 'objection' from search engines was that there just could not be any connection between 2 unrelated sites, for example a link exchange between a site that offers prenatal consultancy and one that sells diamond jewelry.
Why did search engines 'object'? Since intra and inter linking among web pages was a main criteria for the engines to decide which pages were relatively more important for displaying at the top in response to search queries, they felt they were taken for a ride by such intentionally made link exchanges.
Poor nature of links and deliberate efforts of shoring up link-related value of web pages forced search engines like Google to suitably change their algorithms in the past. As a result pages that consistently ranked at the top suddenly found themselves untraced anywhere in the top results.
Such sudden reversals of fortune led to the belief that exchanging links was after all best avoided. I was one of them who believed so, and therefore more or less refrained from reciprocal linking even if the links were to come from fully relevant pages.
Exchange Links With Diligence
How do you think link exchange benefits you? Here are 3 important points:
1
The keyword for any reciprocal exchange links is 'value'. Evaluate if the link that comes to your page and the one that goes in exchange offer value to the average reader. Here the 'value' doesn't need to be something very unique or extraordinary. It's just that the link in each case may possibly be a part of a larger content that seeks to inform an average reader of something.
To give an example, let's say I do a review of your site and while doing it I put links that point to pages deep inside your website. In return you do the same for me. The advantage here is that we can mutually agree to make our respective chosen keywords as anchor texts for the reciprocal link exchange.
2
Notwithstanding the value in review-like link exchange between 2 sites, an important consideration is that the exchange has to be between relevant sites. Thus, as said above, a prenatal consultancy site and a diamond jewelry site are just not relevant to one another to exchange links.
3
How fast can you develop relationship with strangers in the real world? May be 3 in a week, or perhaps 10 in a month depending on what activity you're engaged in. If you're in sales you most likely come across a stranger every half an hour. Not so for a financial analyst who perhaps meets a stranger in an entire week.
Why I say this is because deep relations are not developed every now and then. It's true offline as much as it is online. Coming to the point, it may not be a good idea for 'excessive' link exchanging. That's just too unreal for the search engines to believe. A few weighty links matter more than hundreds of 'throwaway' links.
Link Exchange Does Help
I use SiteSell's Value Exchange, and I find it a helpful tool for exchanging links with quality sites. I also get to see my Link Popularity Index here that tells me at a glance how popular my site is in terms of incoming links. A value of 50 or more is said to be indicative of good standing so far link popularity is concerned.
This site's link popularity index as of this writing indicated in the image above has considerably come down from an 8-month old high of 49.6. I attribute this to my not having pursued link exchanging in right earnest.
In a recent Search Engine Guide article, Stoney deGeyter of Pole Position Marketing, a reputed website marketing company, explains how in a test he has found that link exchange is still very much in vogue and indeed offers some value.
Here is a brief excerpt of his article. Read the full article here.
We can conclude from that that, all things being equal, reciprocating links have no more or less value than one-way links. Yeah, I know, we all read Matt Cutt's post about how excessive reciprocal linking can hurt, and I'm sure Matt is right. But the key word there is "excessive". If all you do is look for low-quality reciprocal links that add no value to any user's experience then, yes, that can, and should do you some harm. But don't be afraid of reciprocation.
What follows therefore is that a sustained low-key link exchange program is not a bad proposition after all. It does help to shore up the PageRank, and in SiteSell's case, the link popularity index.
