| Link Exchange: What is it?
Link Exchange, often referred to as “Reciprocal Link Exchange,” is the process of putting up a link of another’s site, and in return they put a link up to your site. The primary reason for link exchange is for Search Engine Optimization (to learn more about SEO click here). The more links that lead to your site, the higher the ranking your site will receive. Link Exchange: History Link exchange has been around since the beginning of the World Wide Web. Link exchange was provided for users so that they might be able to find links that are related to the site on which there were visiting. However, in 2000, there was an explosion in link exchange due to the way Google and other engines performed its searches. Among other techniques, Google started to award web sites higher rankings that are directly related to the quantity of links pointing to a site. As a result, webmasters began launching enormous link exchange campaigns in order to earn higher rankings from leading search engines. However, recently search engine developers noticed this exploitation and have started to change how the engine searches. The way in which search engines rank sites is an ever-evolving process. Search engine companies are constantly looking for new ways to deliver the searcher the most relevant sites. As a result, to determine the exact way that search engines rank a site is nearly impossible, not only because they are constantly changing, but also because each search engine searches differently. Despite the changes, the techniques used for SEO are effective. The link exchange process is still used and produces results. Search engines have begun to start moving away from reciprocal link exchange as a rank building method. However it is still a method that does yield results though they are less relevant to rank than they used to be. - By Mark Daiss of Atak Interactive, Inc.
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