You know how important link popularity is, and just one of the ways to improve upon your link popularity is by exchanging links with other related sites. But how do you go about doing this? Link exchanges (also known as reciprocal links) are a great way to get back links to your own site, while helping other websites in return. Now learn how to make the best exchanges and increase your odds of a successful link exchange. Our tutorial is divided into several parts. We recommend beginning with Step One, however, you can read up on certain components that make up a successful link exchange below. Step One First and foremost, you want to exchange sites with other sites in the same industry, or that run along the same theme as you. Sure, your cousin Joey might offer you a link from his Paintball Warriors site, but if your site is on ballet or jewelry making, paintball definitely isn't a site in your target area. To find potential sites, search for keywords related to your site or industry. If your site is on construction, search for power tools, house building, renovations etc. If it is makeup, search for beauty, skincare, lipstick, etc. If you find a site that you feel is a potential link partner, there are a few things you should check for first. Step Two Check to make sure this is a site that is desirable to link to. You want to make sure it isn't a link farm. If it is a link farm, run away! And even if it isn't a link farm, see how many other link exchanges are on a page. If there are more than 100 on a page, you might want to look elsewhere. What is the page name of the link exchange page? Some webmasters believe that Google is not counting links in their Page Rank calculations on pages that are named link.html link.html exchanges.html linkexchanges.html (the extensions could end with other names, such as .htm, .shtml, .php for example). If it is, it probably won't hurt, but it might not help too much either. Then check to see how the webmaster makes the links. If they are JavaScript, you will not get credit in the search engines for them. Likewise if the page has been disallowed from search engine spiders by either robots.txt or Meta tags. For more detail on determining this, read our article determining the Validity of Your Link Exchanges Lastly, check the page rank of the site and of the link page. Ideally, you want to exchange links with PR4 pages and sites or higher. If it is lower, it is not necessarily bad. But if it is a PR0, you need to ask yourself why. Is it just a fairly new site that hasn't been assigned a PR value yet? Or has it been banned for some reason. If it is new, linking should not be a problem. But if you think it may have been banned, save it to your favorites under a "future link exchange" folder, where you can go back in a couple months time and recheck the site. Step Three Next, you want to find out if the webmaster already has link guidelines. Look for a page called something like "Partners" "Link to Us" "Resources" "Add a URL" or "Submit Your Site". Often, a site will have exact instructions of how they want to be linked to. And some will even have the code right there where you can copy it, then paste it right into your own website. M Some webmasters want specific link text used. (If you are not sure what link text means, please read the article what is Link Text) If the site asks for specific link text, you will increase your ads for a successful link exchange if you use the link text they request. However, you should be wary if the site wants you to link using keyword spam. Using Link Text for the Best Results has more information on what exactly keyword link spam is. Sometimes, webmasters will also supply appropriate graphics, such as a banner sized image or button. You can also use these to link to for a successful link exchange. If there is no suggested link, you can create your own, or ask the webmaster if they have a preference. Step Four Next, you need to create a page on your own site, which you will place all the links from your link exchanges on. First, what should you name it? Well, there are many theories on this, but you definitely should not name it anything like links, link, exchange etc. Why? There is evidence that Google is beginning to discount back links from pages with names such as these. And there is a definite trend that webmasters are starting to not link to sites when their link would appear on a page named like that. Since you want to maximize potential that others will instigate link exchanges with you, naming it something else is better move. Since the most obvious names are now out the window, what should you name it then? Why not something like best.html or business.html. If you plan on only linking to something within your market area, you can likely come up with a related word that would work just fine for the name of your link exchange page. You should also ensure that this file is reachable from the index page, or a maximum of two clicks away from your index page. If it is buried any deeper, your site has just Step Five Now it is time to decide how you want others to link to your own site. If you supply the code on your link exchange page, you have just made it that much easier for someone to start a link exchange with you. Again, you will want to choose your link text wisely. For a refresher, Using Link Text for the Best Results has more information on choosing your link text. Step Six Now it is time to create your link request email. You should personalize it as much as possible to increase the odds of a successful link exchange. Include the person’s name if known. Refer to the specific site, and the specific URL you link to. Then state you have placed the link on your own site (include both your site name and the URL the link appears on) and the link text used. Then include the specifics of how you would like your site linked to. For best results, and making it as easy as possible for your potential link exchange to add your link, you should also include the html code you created in step five. You can include a time deadline for adding the exchange. Be realistic, not many respond to a link request within 48 hours. Consider a two or three week deadline instead. Then all you have to do is send off your email to your potential link partner. Step Seven Confirming link requests is important. It doesn't do you much good if you are linking to someone's website, and they never bother giving you a reciprocal link. If you have given a two or three week deadline for adding a link to your site, check back and see if a link has been granted. If not, you can try sending one follow up reminder. If your link has not been added by then, consider it a lost cause and remove the link from your own site. If you get a "Sorry I was on holidays, can we still exchange links" after you have removed it, it is quite simple to add it back again. Once you have confirmed a completed link exchange, you may want to keep the exact URL of where your link appears in a separate file. This will make it easier to confirm your link still exists at a later date, especially when you are linking to the index page, not the link exchange page. When someone asks you for a link exchange, respond to the request in a timely manner. The longer you wait, the less likely you will be to have a successful link exchange. Step Eight Sometimes you will get requests for a link exchange for a site you have no desire to link to. It could be against your beliefs, it could be for a site you feel is inappropriate, or you consider the site to be lacking in what makes a quality link exchange. What should you do? Some feel it is necessary to send a "Thank you but no thank you" email declining the exchange. Others just hit the delete button, particularly for off-topic link exchanges. It is up to you to decide which method is best for you. Declining does take time. And if you are a popular website, you can easily spend quite a bit of time sending declines, when your time would be put to better use working on the site or finding more appropriate link exchanges. Step Nine It is always smart to go back and check your link exchanges each month. Don't always assume that just because your link was there six months ago that it will still be there today. If you saved the exact URL of where each link appears on the exchanged site, you can suse that file. Otherwise, just start at the top link on your page, and check the site for links. You will want to confirm your link is there, that it is still a page that can be surfed to from the index page (maximum two clicks away). You will also want to check for the validness of the link for search engine reasons. Just because the webmaster didn't have any tricks up his sleeve when your link was created, doesn't mean that is still the case. To learn how to check for this, you can learn more in checking the Validity of Link Exchanges. What should you do if your link no longer exists? Some automatically remove the link to the site in question. Others will send an email of "I noticed my link was no longer on your site..." to see if the link would be added back. What you decide to do is up to you.
These are really some useful tips for exchanging links and I think relevancy of topic of both sites is more important in link exchange.
Thanks for the indepth explanation of the link exchange process. I have some questions: 1. Are footer links still useful? 2. Is there a tool to identify bad neighborhoods? 3. I have seen multiple links indexed by Google for sites that also offer links to pharmacy, casino and adult sites. Moreover, there were more than 100 sidebar links from that site and still many of its were indexed as Google links for its link partners/buyers. How does that work?