Link Exchange

So there has been some questions running about about if link exchanges would be good for your site to get more visitors or not. some sites popular like Linkmarket.com offer free link exchange service. Though the question is does it help? well that is what i will try to help give some more info for you to determine if it is.

link exchange can bring more traffic to your site. this is true as long as you get good links from people and not ones that just show up on a link page that no one would ever know about.

it is pointless to exchange links with someone that does not even have a link to their link page on their front page. this is pointless.

though their is always a downside to every upside.

if you use Google webmaster central you should probably know their guidelines that they use and you agree to.

here is a little snippet from their page Link Schemes
"Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

Links intended to manipulate PageRank
Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank"

As you see this can hurt your website in the long run when google indexes their sites. so you may start by benefiting in the short run though be hurt in a long run when your trying to get higher rankings in search engines so people can find you more easily.

so how do you get higher ranking and more visitors. well just like everything in life it requires a little work.

you want "natural" links. which mean you want to have people linking to your content on your website or blog. The more people that link to you on particular subjects or what not the higher ranking you will get in google.
Though this brings up the question how do you get people to see your website if they can't find it on a search engine. well it is with advertising. you could advertise in paid way to help people come to your site or you could also use social networks and blogs and forums that are relevant to the same topics.

I hope you found this helpful and if there is anything that you like to add please leave a comment.