Is Link Exchange Still Effective?

Besides SEO consulting in San Diego, I also work for an advertising agency in Encinitas as senior SEO strategist. One of my employer’s clients wanted us to do some link exchange for their Los Angeles Bail Bonds location,  and as an SEO expert and consultant, I had to advise against it.

Almost never, in any of my link building strategies I recommend link exchange! It is just not my preferred way of link building.

So is link exchange dead?

The correct answer is that link exchange in traditional meaning could be effective but there is also a huge chance of it being spammy. Google guidelines advise against “too many link exchanges” but they never tell you what the number is. That is why I advise against link exchange for most of my clients because neither I nor any SEO know about that number.

What if client insists on link exchange?

Sometimes clients insist on link exchange because of a partnership they have with a vendor or a local business or there is a good link with high page rank and traffic offering link exchange.  My advice is to go for it only if the link is somehow relevant to your website and the source of link exchange is not a spammy site. As per Google guidelines, linking to spammy sites could hurt your ranking and since link exchange requires you to link to them, you must be careful the site isn’t a spammy site and isn’t banned from Google. (just look at its PR and rankings).

Keep it as relevant as possible and as minimal.

For example if the same client wants to do a link exchange with another Bail Bonds in Oakland, then that should be OK given the fact that they don’t do too many link exchange in a short period of time. It looks perfectly natural for a bail bond site to link to another one.

Again make sure you don’t do too many link exchanges specially in short period of time as that would violate Google and other search engine guidelines and could flag  your website as a spam.