I have done a lot of research on this subject. I have tried for years to just get one site I build visible to people searching in the Google index. When I studied Search Engine Optimization back at the start of the internet, the key was apparently Meta Tags. I started by slamming my pages with meta tags. Making sure my code was just a step better than the competition. I looked at sites ranking toward the top and I was astounded at what I found their keywords to be. Reputable businesses had meta keywords like Free XXX, Nudity, etc. Why? Because it that day these were big search terms, even though not related to their business, they wanted to pull any free traffic they good. One specific one selling contact lenses had stuffed their keywords with all kinds of crazy things. But they were ranking number 1. As you can imagine, I duplicated everything I could in their code I waited months, and I was never ranked anywhere.
My next feeling was that it must have been the size of the site that had to do with the ranking. I had a problem though in that I would not be able to build large sites because there really wasn’t much content on a subject. Every number one site seemed to have a ton of indexed pages. Then I cam across Traffic Booster Pro. This is a program that takes RSS feeds, randomized them and creates a ton of highly optimized pages. Within days I saw results. I was ranked number 60 for a very competitive keyword. I was so excited, I had finally figured it out. Google crawled several times a day. I had the bigger site. This program built all those pages I needed, and redirected each user to my homepage. I got a major increase in traffic for a period of time, but one day because Google crawled so much it crashed my entire data center. Then I noticed my rankings fell completely off Google. I figured once the data center was fixed and I slowed Google’s crawl rate on my site my rankings would return. Big mistake, Google had penalized my site. My site doesn’t even rank number 1 for the made up keyword in my domain now, all because of this program.
I studied some Guru’s and they said link exchanges were effective. The more links the better. I joined a site called Linkmarket.net and set up my page to exchange links. This is worthless, 400 links later I didn’t see a change in rankings. I decided to see if the Guru’s were really using this strategy. I go on their websites and they have no partner directories or instructions on exchanging links. They already know this is ineffective. I again so no results from this action. Links do help though. A search for click here on Google leads to a result of number one for Adobe. Best part is Adobe doesn’t have the words click here anywhere on the page. Links work, just not exchanged links.
To answer the question no you should not EXCHANGE links. There are two ways to get links to your site that impact your rankings. First of all you share information like this. This article is going to get a bunch of links to my site, and help my rankings, and all I do is share my experience. I do this several times a day with several topics that have to do with my sites. So how do I get links that help my site.
There are two ways. Link bait, and content sharing. Link bait is like the chicken website that Burger King built. I don’t know if you ever saw it, but it was a dude dressed up in a chicken suit dancing around and crap. It ranked them number one on Google for the broadest phrase you could think of. Chicken. The drawback to link bait is you have to be extremely creative to get something built that people actually want to link to. Or you can pay an expert in this field thousands to create link bait for your site. There are better ways.
I prefer to use content sharing like this article you are reading. I publish informative articles and distribute them to directories that webmasters go to get content for their site. If people like my information they will publish my article. For instance this article will probably get published by SEO website trying to provide current advice on improving rankings. This benefits the webmaster because if they are constantly adding new content spiders will hit their site more, therefore each change will be indexed faster. That catch is that to use my content they must provide a link back to me in my resource box. This box cannot be modified. If no webmaster likes my article, it is still published in 1000s of directories that I submit to, creating great links back to my website. I do not have an outbound link on my site. I have meta tags that are almost worthless, but my 3 page site ranks very well for keywords due to content sharing.
To conclude, it is not a big site, website code or meta tags. The highest I have ever ranked came from writing unique articles and distributing them. It is so much fun to share information that I find through articles. It is also a manual process which Google loves. Each one of my articles is unique so Google knows I am not just generating gibberish to throw off their index. This causes my links to be weighted very nicely. My basic job to promote my websites is to share the free information and pull links to my site.
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