Internet Marketing | How to do link exchanges in Google friendly way

Quality Backlink, is the single most important item, which establishes a blog on the blogosphere. Backlinks give your blog the much needed traffic, they provide you the Google Juice and thus push you top on the SERPs.

Nothing new, I know you already know it.

I also know that you have come across the numerous ways to build backlinks, which have been told to you by 36,521 SEO gurus on the Web. Some of these ways include…

• Write great content; I know - I know, content is the king
• Build relationships with other bloggers
• Write articles on e-zines
• Participate in blog carnivals
• Indulge yourself in guest blogging
• Participate in Link baiting
• Exchange Links with other blogs
• Scratch others back, I mean interchange reviews on each other’s blog
• Submit to Blog Directories
• Submit to RSS Directories
• Submit to Social Networking sites
• Submit here,
• Link there…

In this post, I am going to share my views on link exchange, a highly controversial method of link building. If you have some contrarion views, just let me know.

What is link exchange

Easy. You know this also.

People say that link exchanges are dead. Links gained through such exchanges are not counted by Google any more. But I have some contrarion views. I believe that rash and arbitrary link exchanges are certainly useless, and sometimes counter-productive also, but if it is done intelligently, it can certainly help you.

Most of the link exchanges, which I have seen on the blogs, are just placing a link to your homepage and vice-versa. These links are generally placed in the sidebars, or sometimes in the footer also. The Anchor Text used is generally the name of the other blog.

These links might be giving you 5-10 visitors per day, but they are useless from SERP point of view. The Search Engines today are smart enough, to understand the reason and purpose behind these link exchanges. This practice is not going to help you and your blog.

What is important in a link exchange

For any link exchange to be successful, there are a few important things to be kept in mind. The primary characteristic of a backlink should be that it should be looking to be as natural as possible. If you can make it look like natural and organic to the human beings, it is most likely, that Search Engines, will also look it as a natural link.

Following things can make a back link look natural to both human and Search Engines.

1. Choose related Niche blogs: The backlink should be from a blog, which is in the related niche. For instance, a backlink to my blog on web tools, should not from a celebrity blog.
2. Don’t link from sidebars and footers: These links are not organic. Instead link from within the post amd cloak them well within the context. Remember, they should appear to be natural. If you can cloak them from human beings, posiibly you can appear them natural to Search Engines as well.
3. Make links contextual: The context of the link is also important. For instance, Court, on his blog CourtneyTurtle.com, writes about various topics including Internet marketing, SEO, Link Building, RSS etc., but these topics are not my domain. However, one some fine day, if Court writes about browsers, web tools etc. and he prefers to grant me a backlink, I would prefer to have a backlink from an anchor word, which is my Primary keyword. (Could you notice, how I had linked CourtneyTurtle.com with his primary keywords).
4. Use your primary keywords as the anchor text: I have seen many link exchangers swapping links, which are anchored on with the bloggers name or the blog’s name. It is a sure shot way for Google to understand that this backlink is arranged, not gained. Don;t do that mistake. Instead, use your primary keywords for getting the backlink. This tells the Search Engines, that the linked blog has some authority over the keyword, and thus Google Juice is passed on.
5. Change your Anchor text: If all the backlinks to your blog, have the same anchor text, this is the best way for Google to raise a flag. How can it happen that 374 out of 412 backlinks pointing to your blog have the same anchor text, and that too which is not a common term used by many people. For this purpose, choose 8-10 of your primary keywords, and use them intelligently.
6. Use deep linking: Remember to get the links to the Permalinks of the posts or tags, not to the homepage. Also the link must be made from within the posts. They are more natural and thus more important.
7. Slow pace: Don’t do it fast. Do it slowly and more importantly, naturally. It should have a coherence with your posting frequency.

How do I do it

In fact, I have been experimenting this link building exercise, by making a team of about 10 bloggers, within the same niche. We will choose one blooger each day among ourselves. Others will ink to one of his posts on that day, strictly observing all the above thumb rules. Next day will be the term of the next blogger.

Following are a few more examples of how I propose to use link exchanges.

If you wanna be a team member, you can visit my blog webtoolsandtips.com, which is about browsers, firefox addon and other tips to make your digital life more productive.

(This post is written courtesy of Court, who I am a regular reader for the last four months. And I prefer to read him in web browser, not in my feed reader. Believe me he is more enjoyed on his website).

If you would like to learn more about blogging and making money online, subscribe to my full feed RSS. My RSS feed is updated daily.

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