Link exchanges no longer a big mistake?

[Nightwing]

Good Morning from Zero Degrees C very icy Wetherby UK...

For eons i was under the understanding that if you had a choice over just inbound links verses a link exchange just inbound links wins hands down. Ive always just chased inbound links and never advocated link exhanges ie I link to you, you link to me.

But stop the bus! I just read this here on the A - Z of link building strategies which advocates recipricol link exchanges:

"Creating link pages that carry hundreds of links to slightly relevant 'partners' don't work anymore (ever wondered why most links.php pages have a grey PageRank?), but establishing link partnerships with a small amount of highly relevant websites can definitely be useful."

So is it best practice now to have link exchanges? I always thought this was a mistake as it would lead to SEO juice leakage (Hate this term, but couldnt muster another one)unless you "Covertly" added a do no follow snippet in your outbound links.

Any insights welcome

[Highland]

While I like Simon's answer, it's also important to note that linking strategies are a natural part of SEO. While it's preferable that you pretend Google doesn't exist, Google DOES exist and they DO like links. As such, you have to have a linking strategy. When you go to build your links, you have 3 basic concepts of linking (from an SEO view). These concepts have very different ROI.

1. One-way links (they link to you only). These are universally accepted as the best kind of link and it's well known that Google likes these best. Most common SEO tactics to get these are called "link bait", where you write a high quality content page and draw interest to it. Incidentally, social media links (including blog comments) don't fall into this category because they typically employ nofollow, which passes no PR (doesn't mean they have no value, only that you won't gain the "link juice" from a normal link).
2. Three-way links. "A" links to you and you link to "B", where "A" and "B" are run by the same person or someone with a vested interest. Harder to track but also riskier because a common tactic employed is that "A" is a worthless link farm and "B" is a high quality site, meaning you're not getting any real PR value.
3. Reciprocal links typically have the least value of any strategy. As Simon pointed out, a common mistake here is to build solely for SEO purposes. Back in the day these were all the rage, but they had a hidden pitfall: they can waste your time. Say you sell tires. Along comes a florist and you reciprocate links. But what relationship do you have to them? If you don't pay attention and do this right, you might not lose "link juice" (and this is a bad way to look at outbound links) but you might waste your time that you could have been spending doing something productive (like writing a blog entry). Anytime you put a link on your site for reciprocal purposes, ask yourself what the value of it is. Because this does take a fair amount of time to properly vet links, it's not something that people advocate as a primary link strategy.

[SimonCullum]

Thank you Doug.

Likewise, some good points & views from yourself there.

[DougRoberts]

Good advice from Simon. I would say that reciprocal linking does occur naturally and helps determine your position in your online neighbourhood.

Imagine a site like SEOMoz, I'm sure many of the sites that get links from SEOMoz (Distilled, SEER etc) link back to SEOMoz...

These links are of course entirely natural and authentic and I don't think there's anything wrong in taking proactive steps to create these relevant, in context,  relationships.

Where things start to go wrong is where two parties agree to place links to each other on their "links" page, page footers etc. Especially when the only reason you could give to explain the presence of the link is "SEO!"

[SimonCullum]

Hi Nightwing

I suspect you'll likely get several differing views to this question as it's a highly topical and debatable area of SEO for which there is no hard & fast right or wrong answer, it's down to ones' own views, beliefs, ethics and experience.

My view is:

• If providing a link out will likely benefit visitors (which means it's a valuable, relevant, value-adding link) then by all means link out.  It adds to the user experience if they have good quality relevant links to follow to other websites.

• If the link is purely there as a part of a link exchange and/or purely for SEO reasons (i.e. visitors won't benefit from visiting the site being linked to) then don't link out to that site.

• If the link out will benefit visitors from following it and just so happens to be a part of a focused & select link exchange, then go ahead (always with careful consideration) as it benefits the visitor and helps to create a positive user experience.

So in summary;  link exchanges can be beneficial to a website owner and to the visitors, however only when certain conditions are met.  If those conditions are met, then go for it.  If not, then don't partake.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon