BUILDINGS LINKS TO ESTABLISH VOTES FOR YOUR WEBSITE

An incoming link to your website can be looked at like a vote for your products/services from a referring website. Search engines look at incoming links as providing clue as to the value of the content on your website - if other websites are linking to you, you must have some worthy content.

But not all links are created equal. First lets look at the different types of links -

Reciprocal / Link Exchanges

This is the most common form of links found on the web. Basically, you place a link to another website on your website, and in return, the other website links back to you.

There are two ways to approach this form of linking, manually, and having some level of automation to manage the exchange (Link Exchange Software). A typical manual scenario would be you scouring the web and finding non-competing websites in a related industry, placing a link to the website on your links page, then emailing the website owner and asking that they link back to you. Why add their link first? - since you are making the initial approach for a link exchange, etiquette dictates that you should already have their link in place. You could skip that step and word your email/approach in a way that promises to add the link once they've agreed upon the exchange.

You can see already that this could be a time consuming process with a very low ROI.

Using software to automate part of the process can help. There are various link exchange software tools available along with some networks that not only provide the mechanism for the exchange but can help source compatible link partners too.

But what do search engines make of 'link exchange programs?' - well it's not absolutely clear, but it would certainly seem that the operations designed to provide fast and easy link partners (networks) my not be in favor at present. Using software automation to help manage your link exchange program is fine, so long as you follow some basic rules. Unless you are a directory, stay clear of adding links to/from websites that are off-theme from yours. Focus on building link partnerships with sites that have some compatible content. They're harder to come by but the extra effort can be worthwhile.

Summary - fully manual exchanges are hard work. Some automation via software is fine, but avoid link farms where links are built automatically.

One-Way Linking

These are hard to come by since there's no real incentive for a website owner to link to you unless you link back. But in some cases you might have content that is of use to the other websites readers and they may choose to link to you without reciprocation. It will largely depend on what your website has to offer and your method of approach.

Paid Links

You can purchase links from other websites. Many directory websites offer paid links, put there's some evidence that the value of the link may be low. You may in some cases even be penalized for using too many paid links, so tread carefully here.

In all cases, be sure to supply the linking text to the other website so you have control over what is within the link back to you. Don't send everyone the same text, vary the text so that it doesn't look to 'staged'. Use keywords but don't overuse.

There's strong evidence that incoming links are very useful in getting your website ranked well. With a good linking campaign, a well-aged domain and good site content, you should be able to make changes to your web content without loss of position. I'll expand on that last comment soon, it's quite important and I've been doing some research into the subject which is almost complete.