Link exchange and SEO

The viability of reciprocal link exchanges

Link exchanges between sites, whether one way or reciprocal, are a vital source of backlinks. This technique allows netlinking to easily obtain large numbers of incoming links and themes similar or identical to that of your site. Thus, it is a significant gain of time and a real lever to increase its online visibility.

Why trade links should be of a special care?

Link exchanges can be done with all types of sites:

• Directories
• Blogs
• Online magazines
• Sites with strong content
• Social Sites

Depending on the type of site and type of exchanges (link on a page link on every page, link on every page of a particular section and so on …), the number of backlinks pointing to your site can vary considerably . It should therefore be monitored assiduously as the loss of these links may lead to some disaster in your position.

Indeed, with the emphasis by search engines such as Google or Bing to the number of links directed to your page, a link exchange can become unreliable in a failure of your SEO strategy. Therefore we must regularly check the viability of its trade links to ensure the good health of your netlinking campaign .

How to check links easily?

The problem then is to find the time to perform these audits. It is a very tedious task, that involves both some personal organization and a strong discipline and diligent monitoring.
Manual checks are the source of many partnerships unsuccessful because they are not made precisely. You can safely rely on Alexa’s (free report). For example, if you click and go to this link; you will find this website’s number of back links. To check your site, simply click Site Info and enter the url of your website and hit search:

You will get the details in the next page.

Why Google Webmaster Tool showing thousands of links but Alexa showing only a few?

Google spiders all the links it come across; but link from a domain is counted only once. For our site, Webmaster tool shows Total links : 268,491; but it is 14 domains which are linking us.