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When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, building incoming links is probably the most important aspect of the process. This is because backlinks act as votes for your website. This increases relevancy, and so your ranking in search engines like Google. Of course, being so important, you won't it expect it to be easy! Building the amount of incoming links is very time consuming, which is why many are lured into exchanging links with other webmasters. Is it wrong to exchange links?Exchanging links goes on with many websites without the motivation to benefit from better search engine rankings. People who do business with each other, or are simply friends, will often link to each others websites. Its the old fashioned referral that has been around long before search engines existed. The problems arise however when the exchange of links becomes excessive. To quote Google's FAQ on Link Schemes, they say "excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging" can negatively impact your website's ranking. This is because it is deemed as manipulation. How so? Ultimately, search engines are all about delivery relevant search results. Otherwise, nobody would use them. So when analysing websites search engines look for the quantity, quality and relevance of the backlinks towards your website. If you simply exchanging links with no value to a search engine user and the sole intent just to get another link, expect to get penalised if you do too many. QuantityMany links to your website shows you are well favoured and your content has value QualityThe links to your website are from established websites with a decent amount of backlinks of their own. RelevancyThe links to you are from websites of a similar topic, with the specific page with your link being related too. What's the right way to exchange links?As Google has said, it only has a problem when the number of links exchanged becomes 'excessive.' So, as someone trying to build links, you'll have to accept you will have to it the hard (and long) way. When exchanging links, don't simply aim to get on the website's links page with hundreds of other websites. Its very clear that this is a spam page and would only confuse a human. Therefore, it falls down on the relevancy front. Even if it takes a while, Google will find out about it. First of all, when looking for websites to exchange links with, find ones related to your website's content. Also, check they have at least some kind of PageRank so you can see they are somewhat trusted. When browsing the website, give it an honest review, does it exist with the sole purpose to exchange links? If it passes your judgement then, instead of asking to simply exchange links, suggest something more beneficial to a user, such as an article or some newsworthy content. I think Google has penalised me, what can I do?If your website's rankings are nothing special and you have exchanged many links without much thought, there is a chance you have been penalised by Google. If you haven't yet, there is an even higher chance you will! The first thing to do is to phase out the amount of websites you are linking to. The best thing to do is dump any of your 'Link's or 'Resources' pages if none of the links are particularly relevant to your website. While you're at it, best to familiarise yourself with all of Google's Quality Guidelines. Once all of this is done, you can then request reconsideration from Google, where the penalisation (similar to the sandbox effect) may be lifted. The process can take several weeks. Once this is done and you have been released from penalisation from Google, you should be concentrating on quality backlinks. As said, exchanging links isn't necessarily bad, but you have to do it the right way. This is just one aspect of 'White Hat' Search Engine Optimisation which we go into more detail on in the White Hat SEO article.
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