Ever since the earliest days of the internet, webmasters have used Link Exchange as a method for boosting traffic to their sites, and today, in a world where the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! Place so much emphasis on the value of links in their ranking algorithms, getting as many links as possible to your web site can give you a huge benefit in the search engine results pages (SERPS).

 

The idea behind a link exchange is that two sites which are relevant to each other in some way agree to add a link to one of their pages that will allow users to head from one to the other. There are many reasons outside of search engine optimization why one site may link to another.

 

One example of a link exchange for traffic purposes is when there are two sites that offer the same service in two different countries. If users want to get that service in another country, they can switch to the other site, and the webmaster is very helpful in providing them with a link.

 

Of course, these days, the majority of link exchanges are made in order to boost search engine positions in some way. Quite simply, the more links you have, the better your position in the search engines is likely to be.

 

There are however, a number of factors to consider when exchanging links with another site, and by being careful in how and why you exchange links, you can gain additional benefit from them.

 

As search engine algorithms have got more complex, they have begun to measure how relevant pages that link to one another are to each other. In essence, this means that if two sites that are entirely unrelated to one another exchange links, the links will have less of a value to the search engines than if the two sites are closely related. An example of an unrelated link exchange might be between an insurance site and a celebrity gossip web page. On the other hand, a related link exchange might be a car review website, and a classified site offering listings of cars.

 

Exchanging links is a way of boosting your web site’s PageRank, but you should be careful not to simply dismiss links from sites on the grounds of what their current PageRank score is. A link from a relevant site with PR2 may be worth just as much as, or even more than a link from an unrelated site with PR6 when it comes to how your page is ranked in the search engines, especially if the page that you get the link from only has a few outbound links on it.