Why Link Exchanges are Bad for Your WebSites SEO Health
Once you get your website up and running, you are eager to tell everyone you know about it. They will respond with enthusiasm and next want to know if you will link your site to theirs while they link their site back to yours. Your first reaction will be that this is a terrific idea, since everyone is certain that more links to your site make your website more popular with Google.
When you are only discussing a couple of links between businesses that network, this is fine. In the grand scheme of things though, using reciprocal links between many sites is not a recommended means of attempting to make Google notice and like your website.
Link exchange schemes can even give you a bad virus.
Getting your site to the top of the results does not happen with reciprocal links at all. If this were all it took, then all web pages would be nothing but links, instead of information sources, which is their purpose. Because of this, Google puts little priority on one to one reciprocal links.
While there is nothing wrong with linking to a few friends' site, you should always have Google's priorities in mind if you want good results in their ranking system.
As an example, Google does like links that are only inbound to your website. This is like having an editorial vote for the content of your site.
Consider that Google really loves only inbound links from relevant sites that complement your site. This is particularly true if the linking site is ranked by Google. The moral of the story is to consider the relevance of your friend's website to your own when you agree to that reciprocal link. Dog Washing Services have nothing to do with Property Investment. Relevance is key.
What is the secret to obtaining valuable links?
You may be considering Link Exchanges. These are other sites that are relevant to yours that consent to providing a link to your site if you will offer other sites that are like your site a link. This can involve literally hundreds of links. Like reciprocal links, these Link Exchanges are a bad idea.
Consider what Google says with, "excessive link exchanges might negatively affect your site's ranking in search results."
Google also warns you against becoming involved with Link Exchanges whose goal is to boost your page ranking. Spammers sites that you link to can lower your ranking.
Google goes on to say that becoming involved in such Link Exchanges just for the purpose of cross linking is a violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Your own site ranking may be negatively affected.
Finally, Google tells you that content that is more useful and relevant will become popular and boost your odds of another person wishing to link their readers to your site.
Since Link Exchanges are also out, this begs the question of what you can practically do to obtain such well regarded links to your site.
A terrific place to start is with sites that are involved in social networking. This is where your site should be seen. You can use Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon to bring in huge numbers of visitors to your website if only your site contains informative and stand out information and content.
If your site's content proves to be more appealing, then your odds of another person wanting to bring their visitors over to you increase. Outbound links are always part of your site's content too.
The key is to look for high quality information for your site and next employ the social networking sites to bring you visitors. With good content on your site, other people's sites will begin linking up to yours.
Should you decide to remain involved with Link Exchanges, it is a good idea to go to your reciprocal links frequently to ensure that bad neighbors are not on your site, and to make sure that they keep the link back to your site.
Do not forget that the downsides of Link Exchanges are much greater than any advantages that they give you.
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