Google's recent change in its algorithm has been found that while giving your website a page rank it gives more weight to quality and relevant inbound links to your website. So do not think of automatic reciprocal links exchange as of simple link swap, because low-value link swap will not help you with ranking and real targeted traffic from search engine.

Way back when the internet first evolved, link building was not nearly as important as it is today. With primitive search engine technology and limited access to incoming and outgoing links, the only purpose of building links and their popularity was in getting traffic from someone else’s sight. As the internet evolved though and search engines started ranking sites and links on the quantity and most importantly quality of incoming and outgoing links, link building’s importance surged.

Once upon a time, link building was something a site owner or web master would work on after all of the tedious work of actually building a site was done. It was an individual prospect. However, today it has become one of the leading industries on the internet, with millions in cash flow.

So what do the search engines look for that there are so many people making a living off of link building? It’s in the algorithms really. Search engines use complicated algorithms that break down the value and importance of each link and its authenticity. The more positive, organic links you have to your site, the more endorsements you’ve wrangled from the web community, something that search engines absolutely love.

Unfortunately for site owners, this organic link building is a very time consuming, tedious prospect and isn’t nearly as efficient as it needs to be. So there are multiple other methods that people have developed over time to get the links they need. This can be a dangerous proposition though as the last thing you want is for a search engine to tag you as a malicious link builder. Fooling a search engine is tricky, so keep these in mind when building a link creation strategy:

Link Buying

Google doesn’t like this. The whole idea of their algorithm is that they are substituting mechanical processes of weeding through millions of websites for human opinion. Buying that opinion is considered cheating and it’s possible to not get credit for these types of links. This doesn’t hurt you in any way other than wasting your time. However, if you offer a link back to these link farming sites, you’ll likely find yourself in Google’s timeout, possibly losing your search engine index altogether.

3 Way Links

This system uses a method of linking known as 3-way linking. Unlike the traditional one-way link, where only one site benefits, with a 3-way link all 3 sites get what Google sees as a one-way link to their web site.

In the old reciprocal link method, site A linked to site B and site B linked back to site A. Google does not value that kind of link very much at all anymore. Google wants to see one-way links (or at least what it believes are one-way links). The linking process needs to be done in a natural methodical process as having too many sites suddenly linking to yours all at once can set off the alarms.

Presentation

The whole point of search engine algorithms is to pick apart sites as a person would. For that reason, they attempt to decide if your links are user friendly and placed in easily reached places. Do not separate links to a links only page and keep them near prominent sections of your site. Don’t load everything with keywords either; it needs to appear genuine or you’ll lose your indexing.

To be Successful

You need to run your site as a casual, natural looking site. The search engines get smarter every day and if you farm or buy links and stuff keywords in them, you’ll likely risk losing whatever good you might have had or even losing your place in the search engines altogether. Don’t fall for the trap of ease over substance and you’ll be building great links in no time.