How to Run a Good Link Exchange Program?

Author: Daniel Katz

A link can be understood as a recommendation from one web site to another, but you have to be recommended by pertinent web sites, to be sure you will get the expected results after implementing a wise linking program.

As a football player cannot give the best advice recommending an auto-parts provider in Singapore, a web site that sells discounted plasma TV's won't get any advantage by being linked from a lawyers' firm site.

The first question we need to ask ourselves when thinking about creating a links program is "why do we need to do it?" and the answer is simple as "the more relevant and quality links pointing to your web site, the faster it will be ranked on better positions".

Then there are several questions that pop up in our minds spontaneously like "to whom may I link to", "and who should link to me?", "how many links can I have?" and others. To solve those inquiries I've written the following linking basics:

1. We always have to search for themed links. As said at the introduction, there's no chance to succeed with links coming from non-related web sites or links farms, moreover, your site can be banned if it's related or work as a links farm.



2. Having more links than our competitors is not an indication of success. Search Engines qualify links by their quality and not by weight.



3. Reciprocal Links vs. One Way Links.
   A reciprocal link is easier to get as you exchange links with other (themed) sites to acquire better popularity, which is a good deal for both parties a good but weak deal. Each time Search Engines algorithms give lower importance to swapped links. Quality one way links (inbound links) are recognized as more valuable by Search Engines and give higher relevancy if you have links pointing to your site instead of exchanged links.



4. Themed and Authority Links
   Themed links are those from business related sites and are the most suitable to link to you or vice versa. A good example of a themed link is a vacation review site with a link to the web site of a resort in Aruba.
   Authority sites are those with a very high raking (Google Page Rank 8-10) and because of its importance can send a link to a web site even if there is no match helping the linked site, as for example a news site linking to an online MP3 players store.



5. Find the correct web sites
   We want to focus our efforts on relevant incoming links, so to do that while earning time, you can search for those web sites that are linking to your top positioned competitors for your main keywords, then study how relevant they really are to your web site, and depending on what kind of site they are (informative, directory, business review, newspaper, etc), you can either submit your information for free or pay a monthly/yearly fee to get a one way link to your web site into their pages, depending on their policies.



6. Being consequent with your optimization process, you should create a good copy for each link to be implemented, including the desired landing page and the linked text. Directories allow you to add descriptions but if you are buying a link from a themed web site you may not be able to describe your site and simply add the optimized linked text and destiny URL.



7. While selecting a site to place a link (more important if you are buying it) you have to take into consideration the quality of the web site, their ranking at the Search Engines (At Google look the Page Rank parameter) as well as their content, to be sure it is appropriate for your business.
   Other factor that you have to look at is their own inbound links quantity and quality, identically as previously researched on your competitors' sites.



8. When acquiring (exchanging or buying links) a deal known as a "links package", even if they are quality and themed ones, make sure their IP's are different to maximize the results.
   If they have the same IP, Search Engines can count them as a single source.



9. The less outbound links the site that links to you have, the most efficiently your site will get improved. When buying, you can ask how many links are being sold from that specific web site/page.