Link Exchange - 7 Do's & Don'ts

Link Exchange - 7 Do's & Don'ts#

Your website's rank in the search engines will mainly depend on which websites are linking to you and how they are doing it. Here are 7 do's and don'ts about link exchange.

Do's:

1) Do include a link to your website in your forum posts, signature of your E-Mails, in your comments on blogs etc. but make sure your forum posts and comments are useful and relevant thus not considered as spam.

2) Do keep monitoring on a regular basis who's linking to your website. Make sure bad websites are not linking to you, otherwise it may drop your search engine ranking significantly. Some webmasters remove your links from their page after some time. Check your back links timely.

3) Do make sure you have a related links page where you can put links to related sites ( sites you're linking to). Also, link to most of your pages from your home page and make sure there is a sitemap of your website.

4) Do exchange links with sites which offer similar content as yours is. But make sure they are not your competitor.

5) Do add a link / submit your website to the largest general purpose directory on the internet : open directory project :DMOZ ( www.dmoz.org ), which feeds many other smaller directories.

6) Do link to the website first with whom you are asking for link exchange. Send your request in a brief, specific way. Tell them where you want them to put your link. Do not send follow up requests, one is enough.

7) Do make sure your link is published on a page whose PR (Page Rank) is 3 or higher, and the total number of links on that page must not exceed 40. Your best links will be from sites which have lots of incoming quality links and small number of outgoing links.

Don'ts:

1) Do not submit your website to Free-For-All directories (FFA directories). Such directories are easily ignored by search engines and are considered as spam.

2) Do not rely on / ever use automatic submissions. Submit your website manually, it is more efficient and more result oriented.

3) Do not use the term "Click Here" for your Links / Link Exchange. Use a text that describes the content of your webpage in as descriptive way as possible. One good example is using "SEO Services, Tutorials, Tips and Tricks" instead of using "Click Here" if your website's content is about SEO.

4) Do not exchange links with un-related websites. It can boost the number of links / clicks, but your customers will not come from these websites.

5) Do not put a link to your competitor on your website, it could cost you potential buyers buying from their site instead of yours if you're selling similar products.

6) Do not Join programs like Paid-to-surf-, Paid-to-click, or any traffic/link exchange programs to promote your website. Search Engines have very sophisticated detection system to detect these programs.

7) Do not be accidentally involved in back link spamming, by putting links to your website everywhere on the internet forums/newsgroups. It can ultimately lead to getting your website banned / deleted from the listings. 100 quality links are far better than 1000 links coming from non-quality pages.

Author: Amit Panishap, Web Designer / Developer

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amit_Panishap

lin: i like this article. He honastly give you his opinion about what to decide when put up Exchange link with other website. Regret that i did not have his website links so that i can learn more from this author.