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I know that link exchanges were a very popular SEO tactic a few years back, but are they still worth it.
I thought that Google has caught on to these co-ops. Are they still a venture worth looking into, or is it better working on backlinks via articles?
I don't think you should focus on just one method, I think you should use a combination of both, along with many other techniques. Yeah I'm sure Google devalues an "exchange" a little. But as long as it is on a relevant site, I think it still holds some value!
I wasn't focusing on only one method. I am doing guest posts on other sites, and I have been activily submitting articles to article directories for quite sometime.
My question is a general inquiry if there is still any SEO value on having a link directory and exchanging links with other relevant sites.
Reciprocal links worked well back in the day but Google figured these out and devalued them, now for these to work you need a lot more than was needed back then. The only big downfall now is to do reciprocal linking with just any site and then accidentally doing it with a bad neighbourhood site. If Google sees you link to one of these your site can can get penalized.
@craig96 - That what I thought. It seems to me it isn't worth the work, as little as it is. However, there are a lot of requests on this forum to exchanges, so I thought I would ask.
I think I will just work on quality one-way links to my site the old fashion way. Unless someone tells me different and that I shouldn't neglect the link exchanges.
Sites that have been approval by GPWA are more likely to be sites that are not doing anything dodge, if you build up something like 20 then this would probably help if the sites have authority also, but getting 1000s of them from just anyone just seems like it may backfire.
I agree with craig96....
The thing is not to blindly go where... few people go(almost a famous quote :P), i mean check the websites first using the page ranking by google.
And also check if the websites pages where you whant to post are indexed by google, else that won't help you at all.
Checking the pages or sites with google PR Tool is not much help because the Toolbar PR itself is not much value.
I find sites with little or no toolbar pr that I would rather exchange with and sites with higher pr that I would never exchange with all the time.
Like someone else mentioned, I also would rather exchange with members of the GIA, GAP or GPWA than non-members.
Rick
Universal4
I think you're confusing things here. An exchange doesn't have to be in a big list of other links on a directory/links page.
As you (OP) have described it, I would say yes "exchanges" are not worth while any more. But there is no reason why there isn't still a place for exchanges to be done, but in a more effective manner... such as by exchanging in-content links (like a blog post, or article page) or some other "cleaner" form of SEO-juice-passing link.
The issue is still an open discussion. There are few people saying that exchange link can put negative impact to site, especially reciprocal link exchange, while some don't believe. But I still believe that link exchanges are still worth doing and it has been and still a major part of internet marketing and search engine optimization.
Working on backlinks via articles is also good. No doubt that it is one of the most effective ways. Like what other said, don't focus on one method only. There are other ways you can do to create backlinks to improve your rankings and popularity.