Google’s webmaster guidelines are a great reality check for newbie optimizers when it comes to separating the wheat from the chaff. Recently, Google added some information on Link Schemes to their webmaster guidelines that is worth a read. In a nutshell:
- Create Good content – make your site ‘link worthy’
- Use common sense when linking out – ask yourself – will this benefit my site users?
- Build a quality site and link to quality sites
- Avoid ‘exchanging links’ just to ‘get’ a link. If it doesn’t make sense for your site to link to that site – don’t.
- Avoid building partner pages solely to exchange links without any benefit to your site user
There are so many ways to build quality links today, that the old ‘link exchange’ is hopefully soon dying… and good riddance. It worked once – just like keyword meta tags did in 2001 – it doesn’t work so well now … so move on. Let common sense be your guide. If it doesn’t make sense for you to link to this site and for that site to link to you – then don’t. Focus on your site, ‘market’ yourself, and the links will likely come to you!