Been on the internet for a number of years, ran a site/forum for over the past 10 years, just now really starting to care about SEO and learn about it. My question is, back in the day (late 90s, early 2000s) it was customary to email webmasters of similar sites (niche's, I guess is the term used now) and request an informal link exchange, on a page you each had that listed websites with similar content that visitors might find useful. My question is, other than the fact of this being a slow task, is this still feasible? It seems much better than making random posts on blogs and signature links on forum posts that probably have nothing to do with your site at all. And likely more permanent. I still had my original "links" page from 2001 on my site until just a few months ago. I'd like to rebuild it and update a lot of the stuff with newer pages, and was wondering if asking for the reciprocation from those I link was really worth the time and effort, or not? Also, web rings, use to be real popular among niche sites. But I haven't seen one of those in years. What happened to them?
web rings, ffa sites, guest book comments are old school link building methods that dont exist anymore (or work anymore so to speak). regarding link exchanges, it used to be one of the best link building methods while back but not anymore. its ok to do a few trades with similar sites but google discounts links gained from link exchanges so i would suggest you not to do it heavily. there are plenty of ways go build quality one way backlinks so why bother with link exchanges?
I concur Sultan. The days are gone of link exchanges. I'm amazed at how many web masters are still relying on it as a main method of link building - I get a lot of requests per day.
Link exchanges are "reciprocal links". They are ok in moderation from highly relevant sites, but otherwise Google just sees two unrelated sites agreeing to link to each other and discounts those links to virtually zero. Dump the link page, its utterly worthless. Go for one way backlinks, ie, inbound links to your site. You could try ibl builder as an easy way to grab a few, or perhaps socialadr for some quick bookmarking links.
I am not sure if link exchanges still work or not. Most people on SEO forums claim they are not effective anymore, but I´m not so sure. I have seen some sites that rank well in the SERPS that have lots of reciprocal links. Still, personally I don´t exchange links anymore, I mainly focus on article marketing.
I wouldn't recommend spamming - oops! I mean "emailing" webmasters asking them to exchange links. It's not a good use of time. About 99.9% of them will not even read your email. The ones that do, will likely receive a link from you, but never get around to actually giving you a link. It would be easy for you to end up spending lots of time with this and get only a few links. There are much, much better ways to spend your time building links.
You all have it all wrong....Emailing the person that owns a site relative to the one you own and asking them for a backlink is definitely a good way to go. Especially if they have a high PR. It's never a waste of time to ask. Especially if they typically don't allow do follow links. You may be able to make a deal with them. I say great idea!
The best way to get links is to write articles which include your links. This has worked with various websites of mine - so much so that I've started to develop a new site most months. The site I launched last month is on page 1 (#9) of Google SERP and there are three articles which link to it on page 2.