In the old days of SEO one of the best ways of getting links was doing link exchanges with other web site owners.
These exchanges were usually with customers, suppliers, industry contacts and other organisations with some sort of personal or business relationship.
For a variety of reasons link exchanges went out of fashion as link-building automation systems and software became very popular.
You see, exchanging links with another web site owner takes a little bit of work and negotiation. You have to make contact, you have to put their link on your links page (which takes a little bit of technical skill), and ensure they return the favour by linking to your web site.
Yes, link exchanges went out of fashion. The thing is though they worked very well then and still work very well today.
You can imagine the benefits of getting 10 – 20 permanent links from relevant web sites that have decent PageRank. For most industries, that sort of link-power would get you on page one of Google pretty quickly.
And In case you’re wondering it is considered “white hat” because:
a. It’s manual, not automated
b. No money is involved
c. You have a relationship with the site you are exchanging links with
d. The links are usually from relevant content
So how do you go about it?
Here’s the steps:
- Create a link or partners page on your web site.
- Put a link on your home page to that new links page. A link using the anchor text Sites We Like, Partners or Associates should be enough. Over time the PageRank from your Home page will flow onto your links page.
- Contact your suppliers, customers, friends and associates via telephone or email and ask if they want to exchange links.
- For those that agree to the exchange, put a link on your links page using the anchor text they request.
- Tell them when you have added their link to your link or partners page and request they return the favour.
- Check to see that they have in fact added your link to their links page.
Yes, it does take a little effort, but it is worth it. To get you started I’d like to do a link exchange with you.
Click here for details and instructions. You will get a nice juicy link from a page with a PageRank of 2.
Resources
Here’s an interesting post about using Scrapebox to get whitehat links.
