by Chuck Stevens
Links have invariably been an important part of SEO and this article examines the merits of several types of link exchange.
First, let's review what a link actually is. It is basically a hypertext link comprised of HTML code combining the URL of a web page with a keyword. The keyword can be a phrase or a single word. This link, may then be found by search engine robots to affect the score allocated to the linked web page by the search engine ranking algorithm.
Furthermore, the value of the link depends on factors of the page where it appears such as the volume of other links on the page, the positioning of the link in areas on the page for example in-content, or the footer.
Since links should really be naturally added by people that like the content that the link points to, link exchanges can look to be artificial. This is most apparent with direct 1:1 link exchanges between 2 sites where the link is in isolation or part of a list on a page.
The most natural way to link is from an in-content link to provide the reader with further reading on the same topic. This type of link might be obtained by submitting articles, or by doing guest posts on blogs.
In-between both of these extremes we have 3-way links where 3 web pages link in a ring of 3, and N-way linking, where a large number of sites inter-link. A key point here is that the sites in the ring are served from different IP addresses, on different servers, and the domains are owned by different people.
So it can be found that the closer to a natural linking pattern is achieved, the better for SEO purposes. Many services exist to offer link exchanges. These often use a code module that member's add to their websites. Then this displays links to web pages within the system.
Where a network of websites already exists, the owner may supply a 1-way linking service where your links are combined with sites inside the network for a fee.
So furnished with the aforementioned information, you can evaluate which service may best suit your requirements.
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