Google has been very inventive in fighting SERP (search engine results page) manipulation with the use of reciprocal link exchange, three-way link exchange, paid links, etc. In the end, the quality of results is affected by such manipulation, and the high quality of search results was something that once made Google stand out against other competitors in the very beginning of its rise.
Since then, Google has been using various penalties against webmasters to prevent exorbitant link exchange. I personally experienced two major penalties:
1. Website gone from Google SERP or moved to a remote page (I called it a 101 page) of the SERP. This means that you have lost your Google traffic because being on a 101 page of Google search means that nobody would ever find you. This penalty is usually applied to entire website, and the webmaster really needs to do something serious to get it.
2. A milder penalty is the reduction of your PageRank. I have seen my websites to drop from 4-5 PR to 0 (zero). Luckily, this does not necessarily affect your ranking in SERPS. Usually, all pages including the index page are affected, many of the secondary pages receive an UNRANKED or UNDEFINED pagerank.
There are three major factors or measurements that I have identified as crucial for a link exchange to avoid a penalty. I call them quality, quantity and timing.
Quality
Quality is about the quality of websites that you exchange links with. Usually webmasters look at the website’s pagerank. Often, they mention a PageRank of more than Zero it is a prerequisite for a successful link exchange. Here you need to remember that a presently successful website with high pagerank can become a penalized outcast tomorrow if Google decides so, and the link leading from your page would become detrimental to your website. You don’t know what happens to your partnering websites over time, what ideas and promotion techniques their webmaster is using, so you need to be prepared that once a successful link exchange deal may eventually turn into a spoiler.
Related websites
Another vague aspect of a quality link exchange, often mentioned in various online guides is that you need to exchange links with related-topic website. I have done a lot of work on that, both with good and bad outcomes, and after years of link exchanges I would formulate this rule differently: you need to exchange links with related topic PAGES rather than websites. The reason for that is dual: identical topic websites are likely to be your online competitors and they would not agree to a link exchange. Similar topic websites is a thing I could never really understand: if you have a website about travel in Vietnam, what would be similar or related topics and websites? Vietnam War veterans? Cambodia travel? Space Travel or Time Travel? Manufacturing wooden beds for hotels (also travel related, isn’t it)?
Everbody understands related topics differently, and, imho, there is no strict rule about that.
Also, not every good website is devoted to a single topic. Small websites usually are. Who can tell what is Google.com or Yahoo.com about? If it is not about Vietnam Travel, would you then object to having a link from them? Unlikely, I think … There are website directories which are devoted to thousands of websites, for example, DMOZ, with PR8 on its first page. Being listed in DMOZ is something every webmaster is trying to achieve in a website promotion strategy. An important thing about DMOZ listing is that your website is listed on a related page, or subcategory of DMOZ. Our Vietnam Travel website would be listed in something like
http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Vietnam/Travel_and_Tourism/
http://www.google.com/Top/Regional/Asia/Vietnam/Travel_and_Tourism/
and this is viewed ok by DMOZ itself and its loyal partner Google, who transfers DMOZ results to their own directory.
Conclusion: it is not really important what your partnering website is about. More important is what the webpage that links to you is about. The topic of the linking page is important. In this regard, please, read the Messy Link Pages article.
Quantity
Quantity is about how many outgoing links your website has. All outgoing links on your website are your full responsibility. This can be compared to a situation where you are requested to provide a letter of recommendation to a person. You would normally think twice if you don’t know the person well, right? Same rule with links. Every your outgoing link is a recommendation that you trust the partner website and you believe it is useful and interesting to the public. If you issue too many recommendations to too many people, this can undermine your own credibility, just like in the real world.
Timing
Link exchange is not a one-time exercise. It is a continuous process, and many webmasters are involved in exchanging links over the entire life cycle of the website. It is, therefore, extremely important to realize how link exchange should be organized in terms of its pace and timing. Many webmasters think the more links you get the better. Doing several exchanges a day, and twice as much the following day gives you a feeling that all goes well. After some time, however, you might wake up in the morning to find that PR is set to 0, or, worse, your website is on page 101 of Google.
What is needed to avoid this? Patience, above all. The main rule of link exchange: number of links must grow steadily and evenly. This steadiness, in the opinion of Google and other search engines, would mostly resemble the natural link building process, when incoming links are gained slowly and distributed evenly over time. (You can read another my article which discusses what the Natural Link Building is about). Also, another risky thing is the correlation between the growing number of outgoing and incoming links, and the fact that the quickly growing number of incoming links are all reciprocal.
See also the article on Reciprocal vs One-way Incoming and One-way Outgoing Links.
Summary
Three virtues a link builder should keep to are good quality of links, moderate quantity and moderate pace of adding new links. Abide by these to avoid Google penalty and you will certainly have a successful link exchange.
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Comments
| | | | | I once had a Google penalty for too speedy link exchange, it was decreasing PR to zero, both main page and all other pages. Amazingly, it didnot affect serp rankings. |
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| | | | | | Thanks man!!!
I really needed this.
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| | | | | | I once had a Google penalty for too speedy link exchange, it had been decreasing PR to zero, each main page and every one different pages. Amazingly, it didnot have an effect on serp rankings. |
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