What Is Link Exchange and why is it Popular?

Link Exchange Defined

Link Exchange is the simple practice of sharing links amongst several individuals (groups, or companies).

Website owners, and bloggers frequently exchange links to their articles. In a typical exchange Blogger "A"  will agree to post links of "Blogger B's" blog in exchange fo Blogger "B" linking back to blogger A.

Some exchanges are a manual process. A webmaster, or blogger may contact you stating that they have just visited your website and are interesting in exchanging articles with you.

Other link exchange are automated.  You sign up for an account the "link exchange website". They give you some code to post on your site.  Then automatically your site exchages links with other sites of similar interest.

Why are Link Exchanges popular?

Some search engines (ie: Google) determine the popularity of a website by analyzing the number of people that link to that website. In theory, the more incoming links to your site, the more popular your site is assumed to be and the more search engine traffic that would be directed.

Once people orginally understood how this search engine worked.  It made a sub-niche business, for companies "selling" links. Now "Blogger A" will agree to link to you (Blogger B) for a price, so that your site will look popular and thus recieve lots of search engine traffic.  Many people jumped on this bandwagon, hoping to get lots of search engine traffic, and there was literally an 'explosion' of sites linking to other sites to try to gain a %age of the massive traffic driven by search engines.

Should I join a Link Exchange?

The truth is there really is no 'harm' exchanging links with another site.  However, if you believe the 'hype' that joining a link exchange will boost your site rank, BEWARE, all that glitters is NOT gold! There is a big difference between linking via an automatied exchange and "natural" links to articles you find of interest.

The algorithims used by search engines are very sophisticated and are pretty good at telling weather or not your are linking "naturally" or via a "link exchange".  If a search engine beleives you are trying to "game" the system and gain unfair popularity, it can 'blacklist' you and prevent any of your results from appearing in the top serach results.

If however, you are truely linking to articles of interest, and other are linking to your interesting articles, then you may in fact find link exchange a valuable tool in your SEO toolbox.

Whatever your choice / Good Luck out there!