Now that you have learned what a link exchange is from kwblue’s excellent summary, let’s talk about link etiquette and what to watch out for.
If your site is new but shows potential you shouldnt have trouble finding quality link partners – though some will turn you down because to cultivate a link section that will pass some PR. You cant have 200 low quality partners on one page or you will pass very little.
1. Be Fare
If you have a high quality site with a decent PR, don’t offer a link exchange to a ridiculous crap site thats only obvious purpose to cultivate three ways. This often happens because people hire third party consultants to seek one way links.
2. Things to watch for
– Trade and remove : people love to make a trade then remove your link after a few months so they can use that space to make more trades. Keep track of all your trades and check them periodically.
– nofollow :
You need to check three things
i. look for (rel=”nofollow”) in the link of your page.
ii. look for in header (or anywhere ont he page for that matter.
iii. look for http://www.thesite.com/robots.txt and see if it has any directives not to follow links in the directory or file that you are listed in. If you want to be thorough you can look for a robots.txt file in each subdirectory along the heirarchy to the one that you are listed in.
note : if they really want to be evil they can create a no follow meta directive in iis.
When buying links people often check to see if the pages come up in the backlinks of sites that are currently posted.