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Is reciprocal link exchange dead?
By: Shazia Shah
One of the most debated topics in online marketing. We have all done it in the past and were told for years of the pros of reciprocal link exchanging. It seems like a perfect utopian way of doing business. I add your link to my site and you add my link to yours. To understand if link exchanges are dead we need to explore the reason behind link exchanges and what sort of effects they have for websites.
According to Google, a link exchange is like giving a 'vote' to another website, you are in a way 'vouching' for this site by adding a link to them. Google reads this link on your site and gives credit to that site. The premise according to Google, is to make webmasters exceptional and dynamic websites which would have other webmasters naturally link to you.
There we always these that try to cheat the system by exchanging links with any and all sites. By link exchanging in this way, you will be trying to influence search engine results to enhance your site page rank and position. This is not a good idea and your site can even be penalised, by this and/or exchanging links with 'bad neighbourhoods'. The penalties can be severe including banning from the Google search engine.
All over the world webmasters are painfully beginning to realise that their receipical link exchanges have been discontinued and as a result their position on search engines have dropped. Were these sites penalised? It is against Googles policy to try and attain higher position by trying to 'fool' the system. Best thing to do if you feel you may have been penalised is remove all of these reciepical link exchanges. When you do add a link of another website to yours, use google 'no follow' tag which will not allow the link to be spidered by Google and therefore not count against your site.
It is best to only add sites you feel would be beneficial to visitors of your site. Don't try and 'cheat' the search engines. Let the value of your site speak for itself and people would want to link to you.
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