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Many webmasters who run popular, high-ranking websites get requests every day to link to someone’s site, usually in the form of a ‘reciprocal link.’ Most of them trash 99.9% of those requests. Why? Take your pick:

• The requests are annoying form letters.
• The sites wanting link trades are worthless.
• Sites should be linked to on merit, not on whether you get a freaking return link.

What is Link Exchange?
Link Exchange is the practice of exchanging links with other websites. There are many different ways to arrange a link exchange with Link masters. The simplest way of doing it is to email another website owner and ask to do a link exchange. Also visiting Link masters discussion boards, which offer a dedicated link exchange forum where webmasters can request a link exchange be it of a certain category or open to anybody.

Link exchange has been a long time practice by website owners since the beginning of the web. In the last few years, this practice has gained more popularity as search engines such as Google started favoring sites that had more links in the rankings. This system was very accurate at gauging the importance of a website when it first started, leading to the popularity of Google.

What’s OUT:

Exchanging links

What’s IN:

(1) Building a site worth linking to.

(2) Linking to quality, relevant sites, whether they link back or not.
If you want to increase your success at getting backlinks, here’s what you need to do:

1. Build a good site. Make sure your site is worth linking to. This means it should be attractive, easy to use, and most importantly, have good content. If you don’t have a decent site then stop right here because the only sites you could get to link to you are other crappy sites which won’t help your rankings much.
2. If you’re a business, be the best business in your field. If you’re the best option for what you offer, you’ll get links. If you’re not, you don’t deserve them.
3. Link to the other site first. Don’t play games like “I’ll link to you if you link to me.” If you want to increase your chances of success, link to the other site first.
4. Don’t threaten to delete your link if they don’t link back. Nobody likes to be threatened. Never take down someone’s link just because they didn’t link back. If the only reason you put their link up was in hopes of getting a return link, then you shouldn’t have linked to them in the first place.
5. Don’t use phrases link “reciprocal link”, “link trade”, or “link exchange”. These phrases are the quickest way to my Delete button (and these days, my spam filter). Instead, tell the other webmaster that you linked to their site, what your site is about, and that you hope they’ll link back if they think it will be of interest to their own visitors.

Some readers might be thinking, “So what if I don’t get every link trade I ask for? I get enough. Why should I change the way I do things?” The answer is that when you do things properly you’ll have more success. You’ll not only get more links, but you’ll get higher quality links. The kinds of webmasters who are eager to agree to link trades usually have low-quality sites which won’t help your rankings much. A link from one of my sites is worth a lot more than one from theirs. By soliciting links properly you can get more links and higher quality links at the same time.

But actually, if you build a quality site you probably won’t have to worry about requesting links, because your site will be a natural link magnet.

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