Secondly, the visitors that come from related websites are highly targeted and you've a much better chance of selling them your product or service since they've come to your site through a link on a related website. The logic behind this is simple they came from a site that had a theme related to yours. So we can make the assumption that they are interested in your product or service. So hand picking who you should exchange with should be very clear now.

Link Exchange Services

I am sure you have all seen the ads before that go something like "Get 1000's of backlinks to your site!" These services really do not work well. They are designed to include all of its members links to be seen on your website. Some places have filters we you can specify the content based on the category another member might have placed themselves in. There are a few reasons this is really bad. One reason is that any member can put themselves in any category so the filter system can be compromised quite easily. Another reason is these services are not worth it is that you can find a lot higher quality sites by simply searching. Again, this can be time consuming but in the end it is worth it. All these members are sites looking for shortcuts and are typically not well ranked in search engines anyway so why would you want to be on these sites anyway? Finally, why would you pay for something that is free?! You can contact everyone of these webmasters and build a mutual relationship instead of going through a middle man and paying a premium on top of that.

Can Link Exchanges Hurt Me?

A very common misconception about link exchanges is "The more links you have the higher you will be ranked." While part of this is very accurate, we must understand that the wrong types of links can do more harm then good. You would do well to avoid participating in link farms (FFA, or free-for-all link lists that you can add your site to), the reason to stay away form this is because these have become recognized by the search engines, and by Google's anti-spam algorithm specifically, as red flags for spam - and can often get your site banned from their index. And it makes sense - if you have thousands of non-relevant links pointing to your site, that does not say much about the legitimacy of your content. Major search engines have begun to aggressively penalize web sites that are deemed to be engaged in such linking strategies.

Do Reciprocal Links Still Work?

Well the bottom line is if they did not work this article would not have been written. But with that said it is a known fact that reciprocal links are NOT as effective as they used to be. This does not mean abandon ship as many other webmasters have done. This just means they do not play the same role as they used to. They do however have the long term effect and can still bring you a bunch of targeted traffic at no cost to you. The biggest claim on the net as far as link popularity and links are concerned is "one way links" work better then reciprocal links. Here is the difference between the two, if you link to another web site and the other web site links back to you, it's a reciprocal link. If you link to another web site and the other web site doesn't link back to your site, it's a one way link. One way links obviously are harder to find and usually cost some money to have.