Links exchange can be a healthy way of promoting your site and boosting your search engine rankings, but if you use it the wrong way, it can do you more harm than good. Read on to find out what kinds of link exchanges you should be careful about, and kinds can be good for your site.

The ‘ugly’ news about links exchange

Links exchange sometimes comes to an unhealthy point, especially when unregulated. Too much links exchange results to what are called ‘link farms,’ which are actually groups of web pages that contain totally unrelated hyperlinks to one another or to a particular mother page. These link farms are designed solely for search engine ranking purposes, and therefore do not offer any other valuable purpose. Most search engines penalize these types of links exchanges.

Be very careful not to fall into the same link farm trap – you may get too caught up in building a links exchange that you don’t realize you are already building a link farm. Remember that search engines interpret too many uncategorized links as a type of ‘spam.’ You and your site could be liable if you are not careful about links exchange.

The ‘bad’ news about links exchange

The value of links exchanges is now being questioned. Search engines are becoming smarter than ever, for example, and soon, it won’t anymore be relying on links exchanges to determine the relevance of a site. Search engines now refocusing their technology to give less premium on link exchanges and more on content – the latest buzz in search engine optimization.

This is why the cost-benefit analysis of link exchanges is now being questioned by web experts. Most of them are saying that the minimal benefits of link exchanges are not worth all the work that comes into building a link directory (efforts in maintaining links, finding good sites to link with, etc.)

The ‘good’ news about links exchange

Still, link exchanges have an intrinsic value to them (regardless of whether or not they help improve search engine rankings). Links exchanges are a great way to promote your sire for free, and also to help your site visitors find related links from your pages. The key is to be able to do links exchanges in moderation, and to keep link exchanges related. The trend right now seems to be going towards keeping all web content relevant. Keep your texts, images and links related to your site, and the readers (and high rankings) will come in no time.