Link exchange network

One of the main aspects of search engine optimization is link popularity. Link popularity defines a number of links from other sites that point to your site. More quality links is better.

How one can achieve this Webmasters manually trade links with related sites. This however, can be a very time consuming process. You need to send emails to webmasters asking them to trade links. Then you have to wait for their response. This process is slow, tedious, and non scientific.

Link exchange networks appeared to solve this problem.

There are a number of networks available. The common thing between these networks is that links are served by a server side script. This script fetches links from the main server and after that these links are glued within the site s HTML code. As a result you are getting static links.

Link exchange networks more or less could be considered a linking scheme. Google advises web masters to stay away from linking schemes. Here is a quote from Google Webmaster Guidelines Don t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site s ranking or PageRank . Manual link exchange could be considered as a linking scheme too. Sometimes it is very hard to distinguish between Black and White Hat SEO methods.

= Link Exchange Networks =

[http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/ Digital Point Coop Network] This network basically was a pioneer is automatic link exchange networks. Links are served by a server side script. Once in a while this script fetches list of link from the main server. After that, while the page is generated, links are glued with the HTML code. As a result, the webmaster is getting static links within HTML code of the site. A number of links that a member is getting depends on a number of pages he has on his site, page rank of his pages, etc... The exact algorithm is unknown. Links are distributed in automatic manner.

Sites can choose to display links as static, dynamic (rotating) or a mixture thereof. A problem is the relevancy of links, basically you are not getting any relevancy because links are distributed in automatic way.

This is currently the largest network with over 20,000 sites. Digitalpoint describes coop as an advertising network, not as an automated link exchange system. I see just one problem within the existing solution. This network is serving ads that are not relevant to page content. So I do not expect high click rate.

[http://www.link-vault.com/ Link-Vault Link Exchanage Network] Link-vault was opened just few months ago, but it has gained a lot of members already. These network solved part of the problems that existed in Digital Point Coop Network. Basically links are cached per page. So, if some page was selected to show a link, it will show this link all the time. This network is distributing links in an automatic manner with respect to the category of site. Number of links that your site will get depends on some unknown algorithm. Number of pages and page rank are taken into account. [http://www.bannershift.com/link-ad-exchange/ Banner-Shift Link Exchange Network] This is the youngest alternative, it was opened just recently. This network represents a closest solution to manual link exchange. Instead of automatic distribution links like the previous networks, members are selecting individual pages where they want their link to be listed. This network has a search engine in the backend. Every page that this network tracks is crawled in a constant manner. Using a simple search request, you can gain hundreds of relevant links. The number of links that your site will get depends on other members. If somebody placed a link to one of your pages, you would get 1 credit point. You can use this credit and get a link for yourself. Pages that display links are selected in manual manner as a result page rank is not taken into account.