Getting to the bottom of Exchanging Links

The original idea behind Link Exchange programs was that site owners would visit “broker” site and agree to swap links with another site and raise traffic for both. Over time several types evolved

How are the links set up?

In the early days , back links were done manually and some exchanges still work this way. A site owners set up the links as quickly as they should. Other Link Exchange systems use automated link exchange. This can provide many more links - often, the service automatically builds and maintains the link list - but they are not relevant and can lose the hosting site valuable traffic

Where the link is located on your website

Some exchanges require that you place a link to the target on your site. Others exchanges require that you put a small snippet of html code on your site that goes to the exchange and sources a banner. This is easier to set up but not so useful advantageousif you need back links as the only site linking back to you is the exchange

How the back links link to each other

Most manual links are one-to-one - you link to your partner and he links back. Links though a central server are many-to-many - your site may link to many others and they will link to you. As well as this, there are manual multi-way exchanges where you link to site A, Site A links to site B, B to C and C back to you. These look less obvious to the search engines’ back links assessment algorithms

To which site does the link on your site link to?

This is another major factor for you to take into consideration.
Does it complement your site and show a related concept in more detail? If so, that’s great
Does it link to a random site (as a number of automated systems do)? Not so good - you may lose traffic
Does it link to a competitor ? You really don’t want that

I suggest that you limit the use of Link Exchanges to those that really do complement your site - among the best is Value Exchange from SBI! (While you are on that site , check out the free ebook “Make your Links work about halfway down) Sure, it is more work, but you don’t throw away all that traffic that you’ve worked so hard to build up.

Other resources

Learn The Secrets of using other people's websites to Increase PageRank and Traffic - click here for part 1 of this article is here on the New Era Affiliate Marketing Information

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