Just thought I'd advertise an article I wrote regarding how worthless link exchanges are. Check it out because Link Exchanges Are Worthless.
Google are able to track 3rd way exchanges if you use the same server for the domain with the ingoing link and the outgoing link. Buying links are on the other hand dangerous since many webmasters either delete them or put a nofollow tag on them.
Yeah as latehorn mentioned, Google can detect 3 way-link exchanges as well. Not exactly a difficult task really.
Its difficult to find a good link exchange. And thanks for the article it cleared up the 3 way exchange for me.
Link exchanges are worthless because the real good authorative sites don't do them. Most sites relying on link exchanges have no real authority. Basically, most link swaps involve sharing zero authority (you link to unauthorative site, and that unauthorative site links to you => worthless). There are some very valuable natural reciprocals. An example would be blogs interlinking good content in a market. Take the SEO industry for example. The top SEO blogs frequently link to content on other top SEO blogs that link to content on them (and let's not forget the natural blogroll reciprocals). Reciprocals are not bad. The way webmasters are using them makes them worthless.
EGS, in your article you have this: "If you're doing a PageRank site link exchange, make sure that A, B, and C has the same PageRanks or basically it is to your benefit. Don't have a PR5 site linking to a PR3 site that in turn the guy is linking back to you on his PR1 site. Know what I mean?" I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean Care to explain the PageRank part? Thanks, Warkot
Link exchanges are not worthless per se. Bloggers do that all the time. The whole concept of Web is interlinking. The most important thing -- as you rightly mentioned -- is staying natural. Therefore, linking to unrelated sites is worthless. Unnatural (i.e. identical) anchors and descriptions are worthless. But if we forget about link exchange, how will you get a brand new site up to speed without it? How will it become an authority if it's not a info-sharing but a commercial site? Link exchanges are still important, but you should do them the smart way. 3-way is an option, too. And best of all, I say go for a mixture of things, including link exchange, directories, articles, buying links, etc. This will be the most natural scenario. Warkot.
It means if you're trying to have a three way link exchange going on, and your site has a PR5 and you will link to the guy's PR4 website, while his (C) site which has no PR will link to your site...there's no benefit in that. Link exchanges are not effective, though...they're good if the site you're getting a link from is high traffic and in turn your link on their site is getting you traffic. But these days webmasters like to try to "hide" the links they exchange with..
3,4,5 .. 100 way link exchanges are also worthless because 99% of the time they are links between unauthorative sites. imo, Google does not target specific schemes, but uses more general way of judging the value of links. It won't matter if they are one, two, 3, N way links - what matters is who links to whom.
Any link that generates traffic is worth it, and that should be the basis for all linking decisions. If you get traffic from the link or think your user will follow the link, then its therfore natural. If you're trying to sell green bowling balls on your site and have 150 links to sites like A+++11-mortgagesapprovedfastdirectory. Well your visitor isn't going to follow it, and in turn your link there is going to send anyone to you either. However if you were listed in Bowling-Ball-Directory you may send some traffic their way, and they may send some your way. So no matter how google views it, it would be a worthwile exchange of links.
Here's food for thought: The Internet - what did its public purpose become? To share information. Period. It evolved into people putting their businesses on them, sending out emails with links in them, etc. Linking is important, go for a logical linking choice and you'll be fine. Rank wise and traffic wise... how do any firms that charge their assloads of money do it? They do the same damn thing people. Wake up. It's not difficult, use your brains and you can make a website that works. Others did it, and many people are morons, I'm sure we've all met quite a few. I'm coming off strong toned in this, and I am not calling "everyone" morons, etc. Just stating my point.
The question is how your site become authorative? If other authorative sites links to you for a certain period of time, they pass you TrustRank? Hm, interesting point. imo Google uses broad range of different algorithms. We could just guess what they do.. but it is probably really a pleanty of algorithms.
Link Exchanges aren't worthless, as long as you are smart about them. Aside from links in my sig + a few directory submissions, they are all I have (unless somebody linked and I don't know ). That alone pushed me to Pr4. Do you think it was the link in the sig? The directory links? I don't think so. Use some common sense: Don't exchange links with everyone you meet, make sure the other site is a 'quality' site, and most of all, DON'T pay attention to the PR of that site.
Can someone explain to me why I bothered taking my site to a PR 6 by doing link exchanging and increased my income by 300% when that happened. Thank you for clearing this up. I am going to write to all of the people I have link exchanged with through over the years and ask them to take my links down. THat way I will go down to a PR 4 and then have to go out and get a job instead of sitting here watching people buy stuff on my sites all day long.
PR is worthless. It doesn't really mean anything other than whether or not you have links. Stop chasing PR. Instead, chase links that will bring you real traffic. That will help a lot more than a singe PR 7 link that brings you 0 traffic.
at least 1/3 of my incoming links come from link exchanges. I admit that only one in ten link exhchanges becomes a link after three monts, but it's worth the effort