Why Link Exchanges Are So Important To ALL Sites On The Net

One of the most important factors in search engine ranking placement is link building. That's right... it's crusial to the placement of your site in the search engines! It can also be one of the most time consuming tactics used in search engine optimization.

A banner/link exchange (also known as a banner exchange or link exchange) is where two businesses participate in an exchange of banners or links that are linked with their websites. Doing banner/link exchanges is VERY important to businesses because search engines actively look for link popularity & search engine optimization (SEO) when they are ranking online websites. That's right... banner/link exchanges are so very important to your website's success that without them... your site will not rank as well as it would with them in the search engines!!

If you do not know what a banner/link exchange is, here is an example of a banner/link exchange scenario: Sally and Dan both have websites which carry some of the same kinds of products and decide one day to do a banner/link exchange. The two websites swap their banner and linking information which will connect them with other businesses and they will be noticed in the link popularity cluster that the spiders are looking for.

Relevant Links...
When it comes to banner/link exchanges... you want to do link exchanges with people/businesses that are related to your products and site! Relevant linking is a site linked to another site that contains compatible & relevent content. If you are a wahm and you offer gift options to people... bath products, baby products, gift baskets, gifts in general then you would do link exchanges with people/businesses like yours such as wahm (work at home Mom), a business that offers gifts, bath products, baby products, gift baskets, gifts in general because that is what you offer, that's your niche! It's a barter system with businesses that offer what you offer but not exactly what you offer. You both basically swap advertising space to each other. It's easy and you will make wonderful friendships along the way.

Having relevant websites link to pages within your website can increase your page rank. In case you don't know what page rank is... it's the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In other words, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site's page rank. Relevant linking has become increasingly important because most major search engines stress that it is "the quantity, quality, & relevance of the links that count towards your business website's ranking in the search engines".

A Reciprocal Links...
It is important that you have a reciprocal link to those who do banner/link exchanges with you on your site at all times. A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two sites to ensure mutual traffic. Example: If Dan's website links to Sally's website, and Sally's website links to Dan's website, the websites are reciprocally linked. This is what it called a "good" banner/link exchange. But if Dan's website links to Sally's website, and Sally's website DOES NOT link to Dan's website... the websites are not reciprocally linked. This is NOT a good link exchange practice. The decision to participate in a banner/link exchange between the two will be a waste of time with the linking process being only one sided. If Sally does not provide Dan a place to advertise (complete the link exchange) then Dan will get angry and delete Sally's banner/link and Sally will go back to being by herself rather then being part of the clustered banner/link swapping community. It would be unfair for Sally to reap the benefits of having a one way link when Dan played by the rules and agreed to the banner/link exchange. Anyone caught scamming to gain one way links should automatically be removed from your website because they are stealing from you and they broke their side of the banner/link exchange agreement.

Both websites should offer easy to find places for website banner/link exchanges and those links should be kept the linking website at all times (unless one goes out of business or changes their products or services they offer).

Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process because Google uses link popularity algorithms (the number of links & anchor text that lead to a particular page) to rank websites for relevancy. Link exchanges catch the eye of the “search engine spiders" whose sole job is to crawl your website constantly looking for new material. Once the "search engine spiders" find large clusters of businesses linked together they allow those businesses to climb the search engine ladder faster (rank higher) then those who are relying only on their own rankings.

Banner/link exchanges will build your “link popularity” as you accumulate links back to your site! Search engines look at your website pages content and correctly performed SEO when ranking your website.... but they also look for banner/link exchanges on your website as well. Anytime an article is written, a blog post is posted, or an advertisement is placed it is another opportunity for the spiders to find your website, crawl it, and if the link exchange information is relevant to your website, it may be ranked accordingly. Banner/link exchanges are an essential part of “getting ranked in the search engines!”

Link exchanges have advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, they have the advantages of bringing in a highly targeted readership (all members have similar web sites), & increasing the "link popularity" of a site with the search engines. On the other hand, they have the disadvantages of potentially distracting visitors away to other sites before they have fully explored the site that the original link was on.

***Warning - The search engines' insistence on reciprocal links being relevant developed because many tried to unethically "fool" search-engines into awarding them undeserved high page ranks to sites who were engaged in search-engine spamming. Google warns those in business to avoid "free-for-all links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines because these useless exercises don't affect your ranking positively in the results of the major search engines. Google will also downrate or de-index (ban) sites using unethical schemes.

One Way Links...
One way links are "like GOLD in Google"! That's right... if you want some weight in the search engines... get some one way links going! This is something you want to strive for because Google looks at both link exchanges and one way links when ranking sites into the search engines. In case you don't know... a one-way link is a link that points to a website in a "one-way" direction without any reciprocal link. This type of link is considered to be just as valuable as banner/link exchanges in the eyes of search engines... so you need to have some of both. One way links are also called Incoming Links or Inbound Links.

There are MANY effective ways to build one way links! Try some of these... purchase advertising on a website, leave blog comments and add your clickable link under your signature, add your clickable link to your business email signature, distribute articles through your own blog, content sites and article directories... be sure your clickable link is below your signature on them too. These one way link avenues will contain a one way link back to your business website's URL. Read: Top 20 Ways To Promote Your Site >>>

Link Popularity...
Link popularity (having many banner/link exchanges and one way links on your website) plays an important role in the visibility of a website among the top of the search results. Some search engines require at least one or more links coming to a website, otherwise they will drop it from their index and the website will go unranked. The philosophy of link popularity is that important sites will attract many links. Poor content sites will have difficulty attracting any links. Link popularity assumes that not all incoming links are equal, as an inbound link carries more weight than an inbound link from an obscure personal home page. In other words, the quality of incoming links counts more than sheer numbers of them.

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Thanks so much for viewing this post... I wish you all great success!


Lisa ~ Owner of My Colorful Treasures Web Design & Development
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