Link farms and link exchange schemes - do not use them

Link exchange schemes are old news. Using them will not benefit your website, but will probably attract a penalty.

What are link exchange schemes?

Link exchange schemes allow members to easily find, and exchange reciprocal links with other members of the scheme. The principal being that it is easy to find members willing to exchange reciprocal links with you, therefore the scheme was any easy way of gaining more backlinks. Typical systems allowed members to login, and then search for partners using similar keywords. Once you had found partners, you would link to them, inform them, and wait for them to link back to you.

Why link exchange schemes are bad for SEO

As tricks like link exchange schemes became more popular, search engines changed their rules to work around such systems. Link exchange schemes offer no benefit anymore. Search engines identify the link exchange schemes. Because members are always listed in the link exchange schemes websites, the search engines identify who is taking part. The search engines then penalize those websites it considers to be gaining advantage from using such a system. Reciprocal links are not as effective as they once were, and you can better spend your time and finances when gaining more backlinks.

What to do instead

There are many ways in which to gain more backlinks. Link exchange schemes simply put you in touch with webmasters wishing to trade reciprocal links. Trading reciprocal links with websites of a related topic to yours is still a good idea. Avoid non-topic related websites though, it is easy to find topic related websites. Search for them, and then try and trade links with them. It helps to link to the potential partner first, and then email them. You can always remove the link to them if they do not wish to participate.

Link exchange schemes are old news, and will not gain you any benefit. Avoid them, and use your time and skills to gain backlinks yourself.