The importance of gaining links from other websites to point to your website has never been more important. Google and most other search engines now give great importance to these links, indicating that your site must be more popular because others are linking to it.
Participating in link exchange automated systems however can be very risky as many search engines consider these to be a scam. These should be avoided at all costs and instead, a preferred method would be to contact webmasters directly and request a link exchange. This involves both parties making a mutual agreement to each display the others link on their respective websites. These link exchanges are often the best method as the links become long term and will even provide valuable traffic to your site.
Better still would be to gain a one way link. These you would normally have to pay a fee for as the website displaying the link doesn't gain any benefit from this link. In most cases it is even a negative for the website linking out as they are loosing the visitor to your site. Often a trade off is adopted.
A common tactic is to offer some kind of reward for the link to be placed on the website. Sometimes this will be a cash incentive but another incentive being offered more and more is that the person requesting the link will write some kind of document, article or other unique content for the host site to display along with the link. These articles would generally be on a topic which is relevant to both parties. These articles are offered for free in exchange for the returning link.
Many websites offer the opportunity to link exchange and these should be used as often as possible. Building good quality, long lasting links will increase your sites prominence on the internet, supply your site with traffic and improve your rankings within the search engines.
If you are unable to find a link on the host website for exchanging a link with them, the best course of action is to contact the webmaster of the site and make the suggestion. All that is required is that you make a polite introduction, complementing them on their website and that you think by exchanging links would benefit sites. It would also be beneficial to suggest how you would like your link to be displayed on their site.
Try and gets links from sites offering a similar service or subject to your own, but naturally you will not have much success with sites in direct competition with your own. For example, if your site was to be selling cars, another car sales website is not really going to want a link taking their potential customers away and sending them to your car sales website. Use a certain amount of common sense when requesting link exchanges.
Kimpton Computers has recently began to offer a link exchange for free and better still has a method of allowing long term one way links in exchange for a small yearly fee. Kimpton Computers has a great many topics in which they will allow link exchanges. ADSL Broadband, Website Design, Tutorials, Local Services. Visit their website, place their link code on your website and fill in the simple form in order to submit a link exchange. Your link will appear on their website within a week and become a long term, valuable link providing traffic and that all important search engine ranking to your website.