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What is Link Exchange

Link Exchange or Reciprocal Link Exchange can be defined as the practice of exchanging hyperlinks from one website to another that has similar themes. To put it more simply, it is the process of links with other sites. This is attained by sending emails to the owners of other websites and requesting them to establish a link exchange. This can also be done by putting your link on your

website, and other web sites will place a link back to you.  The practice of using link exchange by website owners is not a new concept – it started since the beginning of the web. However, it gained popularity only in the last few years due to the big search engines (like Google for example), which started supporting or preferring sites that had more links in the ranking. This method was very accurate at determining the significance of a website when it first started, leading to the popularity of Google.

Nevertheless, experts argue that unlike the earlier times, the search engines do not attach much importance to reciprocal links; rather the reliability of a website is now measured by one way incoming links to that site. Moreover, it is also important that the subject of the incoming link corresponds to the page being linked to. If there is a link exchange between two sites that do not have similar subject matter, the website’s ranking in the Search Engine Result Page or SERP gets affected.

Good Link Exchange and Bad or Poor Link Exchange:

Good link exchange increases the PageRank of a website which in turn increases website traffic leading to increased sales. Bad link exchange on the other hand can prove to be detrimental. There are lots of companies who promise to link your website to lots of others at a very affordable price. However, in most of the cases they only link your site to link farms i.e. those websites that only contain links but no matter or content. An authentic and proper link exchange must follow the ‘search engine link exchange policy’. This essentially means that it must stick to the following rules and regulations:

• It is necessary for the Link page to have a good ‘PageRank’.

• The link page must be acknowledged by other search engines.

• Typically, all the links displayed on the page must be accessible within two clicks of the main page.

• The maximum number of outgoing links should not exceed 30.

• The content of the websites must be similar to that of the exchanged sites.

How does Link Exchange work?

Link Exchange between two sites work in the following manner-

• Both the websites are enthusiastic to exchange links with one another.

• One website places a link to the other from any page within their website.

• The second website returns this favor by putting a link to the first one from their website.

This method is usually referred to as a mutual or two-way or reciprocal Link Exchange. This method will only be beneficial for both the parties only if they are both recognized by search engines. 

What is Link popularity?

Link popularity can be simply defined as the measurement of the site’s reputation or popularity in terms of external links. The higher is the number of in-bounding links, greater is its popularity according to the search engine. Remember, this is the only way that the search engine can determine or evaluate the website’s popularity. The website, LinkExchangeDirectory.net (url – http/www.LinkExchangeDirectory.net ) is a great source of information to guide you on the sites that can help to take advantage of the ‘link popularity’ to attain a higher ranking on the search engines.