Merits and Demerits of Link Exchange

Link exchange or reciprocal link is the practice of placing another person’s link on one’s website and getting an inbound link to the first person’s website in return. It is a form of link building strategy that is mainly done by website owners who are starting out to get their sites noticed on the Web. Link exchange has its advantages and disadvantages. And here we’re going to weigh those pros and cons.

The Advantages of Link Exchange:

• It is one of the easiest ways of acquiring a large amount of backlinks. We all know that inbound links play a significant role in search engine optimization (SEO). So, the more links you get, the more your link popularity grows.
• It helps to get a site crawled and indexed by search engine crawlers.
• Reciprocal linking does not cost money. You do not have to pay anyone to secure a link exchange with that person’s site.
• Link exchange is a good form of link building strategy that helps webmasters to get targeted relevant links. As long as one only gets these links from sites that are related to his/hers, the links will help to get that site to at least indexed, if not rank well on search engine results pages.
• For someone who doesn’t have money for SEO or is on a very tight budget, link exchange is one of the best ways to get his/her site out there on the Internet.
• If the reciprocal links are done with related sites, their visitors might as well be genuinely interested in what you offer. And that might mean more business for you.

We have seen the advantages of this method of search engine marketing strategy. But that doesn’t mean everything about it is good. After-all, all that glitters is not gold. Now we’re going to see its demerits.

The Disadvantages of Link Exchange:

• The link juice a site gets from inbound links gets diluted by the links it gives away to other sites. According to the ways major search engine algorithms are programmed to work, every link you give away causes a “leak”. That’s the reason why seasoned webmasters do not easily give away links.
• Link exchange can result to diversion of traffic to competitors’ sites. Even though relevant link exchange might help to rank a site well on SERPs, it can cause you to lose some customers and potential ones.
• Your website can easily be flagged as a link farm, if you overdo or carelessly do the exchange. This is very true with those who create dedicated web pages specifically to add external links that have nothing to do with their sites. Once such site triggers the spam filters of search engine algorithms, it will subsequently be penalized. This type of ban means your site will be de-indexed and will stop appearing on search results.
• It is time-consuming, in the sense that you have to first of all send a message to every site owner to request for reciprocal link.
• There’s no binding guarantee that your link will remain on others’ web pages for a long period of time. Some people will even remove your links shortly after you validate them, while theirs remain on your site.
• It is generally unacceptable to send unsolicited emails to others just to request link exchanges. It is seen as one of the worst forms of spamming.

While link exchange might be a good starting point for search engine optimization, its demerits outweigh the merits. If you choose to do it, only a few links from quality and relevant sites are better than thousands of irrelevant links from spam-infested sites. A rule of the thumb is to get backlinks from related sites, but never exchange links with your direct competitors. Sincerely, SEO specialists who are worth their salt do not engage in reciprocal link schemes. Some even claim that link exchange is very old fashioned.