I have read that Google frowns upon paid links but what about the free link exchanging services out there? What exactly is the benefit to having your links posted on other sites? Is there a limit to how many you should do a day?
I do not believe all those links exchanges. The base of internet is linking to each other. If Google wants to say something like that, then we can close the door of WWW. Go ahead and do what you want. I am doing it and it is no problem. You can get traffic through links exchanging.
If they did I wouldn't have been able to rank top 3 for Mitsubishi Eclipse in Google using ONLY link exchanges. Google says they hate them if they are used to game the search engines...but in reality they love them. Only thing thats better is one way link exchanges or the similar 3-way link exchange. The benefit to having your links posted on other sites is that google counts them as a "vote" for your website. The more votes you get from different websites the higher you rank because your considered to be "important". Some SEO's believe a limit of 3-5 link exchanges per day should be used...but this can get complicated. For instance, if the sites aren't crawled often by Google (usually lower pagerank pages) you could potentially get away with doing 100 link exchanges in one day. However, I would suggest doing 3-way link exchanges or one way links and make sure you get links to your sub-pages. This will look more natural and you will be able to do a large amount of links per day without getting penalized or setting off any red flags with Google. Remember, the more Google thinks your attempting to game their search engines the more likely you will set off a red flag or get hit by one of there algorithm filters. Keep it natural, but don't be afraid to build a large number of one way links to your website. After all, if you could get penalized for too many one way links most people would just get a bunch of links to there competitors website so they could rank #1. This is exactly why too many one way links will likely have no negative effect. Regular 2-way link exchanges are a different story though because your linking from your own website as well.
Want the answer from the horses mouth? Why go with others "opinions" when Google has made their official stance already? http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356
Why go with others opinions instead of Google's stance? Because Google doesn't want people to game their search engines. Therefor they discourage webmasters from doing anything that isn't "natural". If I followed there guidelines to a tee I wouldn't be able to make a living online.
You approve of people gaming search engines and manipulating results? People like you are the reason why Google has kept adding all these silly rules and guidelines, because people can't do this the "natural" way. If you can't rank well in search engines while following the guidelines maybe you should re-exam your methods.
I approve of link exchanges and other methods because following Google's guidelines would make it nearly impossible for sites in certain niches to get ranked. For instance, take the case of an e-commerce site selling teacher school supplies. Who would be likely to link to this just for the heck of it? Not very many people. And, how in the world, do you do link baiting in this niche...very, very difficult to say the least. Even submitting articles with your link in them is a challenge in a niche like this. The only way some niche sites can create value and receive sales is by doing link exchanges or link building methods to increase their rankings. Now, if you own a site that has funny videos or pictures chances are people will link on there own from myspace pages and other websites...so it will build links naturally. So, all in all, yes I approve of some methods of "gaming" the engines. However, I do not approve of black hat methods or unethical SEO. By the way your signature link to Civic SEO is a method to game the search engines...
Really? It seems to use the direct site name as anchor text, not the specific keyword that I'm trying to rank it for. Also, the site gets 1000+ organic visitors from long tail keywords, it's a waste of time and energy to work 1 major keyword. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 (hmmm where does it say no signature forums? I must be getting old at 24) Again, if you provide quality rich content and useful information and resources on your site your backlinks will come naturally, this is how it works. Time plus your own effort to provide the most quailty information possible is how you will succeed.