Does Link Exchange Still Work?

It used to be that if you wanted to get backlinks you could ask webmasters to give you links to your site and you would give them links from yours. This probably still works to a limited extent, but it is becoming more difficult for a number of reasons.

One of the problems with reciprocal links is that you will tend to be linking to sites which are at the same level as yours in the Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERPS) and as everyone is trying to climb the pages linking with lowly indexed pages will not help yours to climb. It is no longer the number of links that you have to your site which counts with Google and other search engines, but the quality of the links that your site has.

Because this is the case, few of the top ranking sites will actually want to link to your site. Why should they? If you have a superb site that those highly ranked sites would like to link to, then, of course there will be no problem. However, why would you want to ask for a reciprocal link if your site is so good? I guess you understand the problem. Top ranking sites don't need reciprocal links, only smaller sites lower down the SERPS think about such things.

Then of course, links have to be to sites within the same niche in order to be important in the Search Engine's scheme of things. Think about it, would you want to help your competitors rise in the rankings by giving them a link to your site on the understanding that they will link to yours?

As it would seem that reciprocal linking is no longer a valid option, unless you have been a member of a forum for some time and are well-respected in your own right, you will have to consider other ways of linking. If you have been a member of a forum for some time and people respect your views and opinions, and your site is new, then you could ask for links to your new site, and people might respond well to your request.

What you shouldn't do is try to link with sites by writing spammy comments which have little relevance to the contents you are "commenting" on simply in order to get a link. This simply irritates the site owners and your comment is deleted, so there is not much point in your wasting time and effort on such tasks.

Your best bet to get links to sites that are highly ranked is to answer some questions within your niche in the ask.com questions and answers pages, or the wikianswers pages, or Yahoo! or any other similar pages which have a lot of traffic.

Link your content with sites that are highly ranked and hope that this doesn't increase your bounce rate (when visitors don't stay on your site for even a second, but bounce out of it). If your site has good, informative and original content this will lower the risk of that happening.

So in answer to the question, "Does link exchange still work?" the answer has to be that although it might, it probably doesn't in the vast majority of cases. You have to be work harder these days to get good quality links to your site.

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