Link Exchange Basic

One of the trickiest aspects of search engine optimization is the process of building high quality incoming links. And, as you've undoubtedly heard, it's also the single most important thing you can do to improve your rankings. The more inbound links a page has, the more popular it is – and search engines like popular pages.

For more information contact Seo Consultant India

The challenge for most sites is to accumulate enough incoming links to appear relevant to the engines without tripping any one of the many spam filters and penalties that are applied to sites that cheat. So, the secret to getting it right is to...
"take the search engine's point of view
when building your incoming link structure."
The key point to remember is that search engines like natural link structure—they hate artificial link structure. That's why it's our first strategy...

1. Natural vs. Artificial Links
Natural links vary in anchor text while artificial links tend to be identical. Natural links increase gradually as referral sites add links one by one over time; artificial links can sprout in great numbers all of a sudden.

Sites designed around natural links don't usually swap links, so their outgoing links tend to point to pages that are known by the engine to be in good standing. Oftentimes these pages have been indexed for many years and may even be white listed – a term that identifies trusted sites not to be penalized. Sites designed around artificial links will often participate in link swapping and have outgoing links that point to pages that resemble link farms, web rings, or isolated nodes (i.e. page groups linking to each other but lacking inbound links from outside trusted sites).

Natural links tend not to be reciprocal. Artificial links, however, rely heavily on link exchange tactics, suggesting that the sole purpose of the link is reciprocity – having little or nothing to do with adding value for the site visitor by way of providing worthwhile content.

Keeping these facts in mind, one should strive to build the most natural-looking incoming-link structure possible. From a search engine's point of view (SEPOV), the best kind of links are unrequested links. The engines are looking to bestow high rankings on only those pages that people voluntarily link to due to great content – not because some webmaster has spent a lot of time swapping links. Read on for tips and tricks on how to build the best incoming-link structure and boost your PageRank dramatically.

2. Get Links from Pages that Match Your Topic
Your next best option is to acquire links from pages that are trusted. Trusted pages are sites that have been indexed for a while and have already been assigned a Google PageRank – usually PR=2 or better. It helps even more if these pages are on-topic – i.e. they match the topic of your page. Links from on-topic trusted pages can give you a significant boost in rankings. If you do gather links from less than PR=2, then the on-topic factor becomes even more important.

4. The Number Of Links On The Referring Page Matters
Another point to remember is the fewer the number of links on the referring page, the better. Ideally, the referring page would have only one link and it would be to your page. Of course, that's rarely practical. But, having your link on a page with 100 other links is almost pointless because the value of your link will be divided by the number of links on the page – a condition we call link dilution.

While easier said than done, the ideal would be to get your incoming links from popular, on-topic pages that have few outgoing links within trusted sites scoring PR=4 or better. Now, short of the ideal, bear in mind that every link you can get is likely to help you somewhat – and if you can control how those links appear (in terms of incoming URL-format and anchor text), you'll be in even better shape.

5. Don't Get Involved with Run-of-the-Site Links
Avoid run-of-the-site links. These are links where every page of a site links to your homepage. When you have, say, 1000 incoming links all originating from subpages within the same site, it appears to Google that your link count is artificially inflated.

6. Maintain Consistency In The Format Of Your Incoming Link URL's
Question: Are you aware that...

http://your-site.com
http://your-site.com/
http://your-site.com/index.html
http://www.your-site.com
http://www.your-site.com/
http://www.your-site.com/index.html
...are all technically SIX different URLs even though each will land the site visitor on the same webpage?

That's right. And, if those who link to you use six different URL formats to point visitors to your "home" page then your PageRank is being diluted by a factor of six – not good!
You simply must do everything in your power to standardize your incoming URL-format in order to consolidate your PageRank. Doing so will produce the maximum relevancy-boost possible from your incoming links.

7. Get Your Keywords Into Your Anchor Text
It's very important that you get your keywords into the text of the link (anchor text) that other sites are using to point visitors your way. True, this may be difficult with directories unless the name of your company includes your keywords. Regardless, the boost in keyword relevancy is significant enough that it's worthwhile to contact everyone who is linking to you with a specific request regarding the text being used in your link.

If you happen to be selling model airplanes, then anchor text such as airplane models or model airplanes will be infinitely more valuable to your relevance efforts than anchor text simply saying click here. From an SEPOV, the former states the theme of your page while the later gives the engine no clue whatsoever what your page is about.

A word of caution: it will look more natural from an SEPOV if the text links that are pointing at your site are not identical. Strive to maintain slight variations as would occur if the anchor text were being generated independently by the sites that are maintaining them. Of course, the nature of your business and the name of your company might dictate the range of options available to you. However, do everything in your power to insure that the text being used to point visitors and engines to your site looks natural from an SEPOV.
This strategy can make a HUGE difference. Generally speaking, from an SEPOV, it's the anchor text that determines the theme (topic) of your webpage.

8. Go for Deep Links
Make sure that some of your links are deep links — i.e., links to sub-pages within your site and other than your homepage

9. Beware the nofollow Tag
See to it that your incoming links from off-site pages do not include the rel="nofollow" attribute within the source code of the link; nofollow renders the link useless to your ranking efforts because Google doesn't credit your page for having that incoming link.

Guidelines for Link Exchange:

1. Only high quality links. No use of automated software, FFA links, no link farms, no pages or websites that have been banned on Google.
2. 75% of the links must be from PR2 and above pages.
3. If the page immediately above/preceding the links page (Directory page) has less than a PR4, then the links page itself must have a minimum PR3.
4. If the page immediately above/preceding the links page (Directory page) has at least a PR4, then the links page can be PR1.
5. If the page immediately above/preceding the links page (Directory page) has at least a PR5, then the links page can be as low as PR0.
6. No more than one link on same IP.
7. No more than 3 links from the same C class of IP addresses.
8. Links should come from sites in related industry only.
9. Links pages must not have more than 40 links on it.
10. Only links from static pages (.htm/.html/.php). No links from dynamically generated pages (with the following in the URL: ?, =).