In this article, you will learn what is link exchange in SEO.
Link exchange is an effective online marketing strategy based on the exchange of hyperlinks between two domains. This method is usually used to increase the number of unique visitors to a website. The process of link exchange helps websites to improve their ranking in various search engines, which increases the chances that their services, products, or information will be found by a web user. There are three levels of link exchange: one-way, two-way, and three-way.
As the internet became populated with large amounts of content, websites needed a way to stand out. Link exchange was developed as a technique to help websites increase the likelihood of their content being found by a search engine if a user enters a specific set of keywords or phrases. By collaborating with each other, webmasters were able to make their content visible despite the large number of websites devoted to similar topics on the internet.
The process of link exchange is essentially a manipulation of how search engines work. Typical search engines have complex algorithms that decide which websites best match the keywords or phrases defined by a user. In addition, search engines also regularly send out web-crawlers, specialized automated software that scours the Web for websites and indexes them based on their content, links, and other information. One of the basic principles of search engines is ranking; websites that have more references to them are automatically ranked higher. When a user types in a keyword, the highest ranked pages are displayed first, followed by the lowest ranked pages.
Link exchange takes advantage of the tendency of search engines to assign a higher rank to websites that have more links to them. For this reason alone, webmasters collaborate by including links to each other's sites. One-way link exchange is when a website receives an inbound link from another website, but there is no reciprocation; This type of exchange includes directory submissions, blog posts, and social bookmarks.
Two-way link exchanges, the most popular type, consist of an exchange of links between two websites. Three-way link exchanges are typically performed between a group of lower-ranking websites and a higher-ranking, higher-quality website. The conglomerate of lower-ranking websites will place two or more links for each link placed on the higher-quality website.