Everyone wants to be at the top of the search engine totem pole. Here are some tips on Link Exchanges and how they can help you achieve that goal.

The internet incorporates a website indexing system that creates website ranking according to keyword relevancy. Keyword relevancy is developed according to the types of keywords (also known as meta tags) built into the website content, and the keywords you submit to the search engines describing that specific website. When websites link together, internet indexing spiders (the software mechanism that indexes the internet) are more likely to cross over your website, because they will travel to all links provided on each individual website. The more often these spiders cross over (or index) a website and find the same link back to your site, the more likely it is that your website indexing increases. You thus want your link to be in as many places as possible. The more often Spiders cross over the same website, the more important that website is assumed to be.

Also, in the reverse, websites with many links have many resources (i.e. information provided on other sites) and thus provide a wider array of services. A wider array of services means that your clients are more likely to find what they are looking for, and as such the website becomes a resource for additional information. The availability of more information always yields an increase in traffic.  

Finally, exchanging links develops goodwill between website owners and it is free. One word of warning however, you as the website owner are responsible for the links working properly and also linking to the website the link is describing. If the content of a website changes, you need to adjust the wording of the link, or completely remove it. According the federal law you are responsible for ALL content on your site and if a link of a dress shop suddenly changes to a pornographic website, you could find yourself in a great amount of trouble misrepresenting the link.  

Please view our section entitled "Introduction to Search Engines, Directories and Optimization" for further details.